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S. Mark

xii. 13.

The interview abruptly ended with our Lord's refusal to give any other answer to their inquiry than what they had received. He then turned to the people and resumed His teaching, to be interrupted again, if not by the same disputants, yet doubtless by men urged on at their instigation, to try to bring Him into collision with the civil power, but with the same result. No weapon of argument forged against Him could stand, for He had truth on His side, and it always prevailed. It was only when they enlisted treachery and force on their side that their end was gained.

NOTES.

1 The hereditary spiritual office was represented by the heads of the twenty-four Courses of the Priests. The Elders were the real Senators of the Council, selected for age and dignity. The Scribes embodied the knowledge of the nation.

2 He had called the Temple " His" House, and had swept aside by a single stroke all the rules and regulations which the Chief Priests had sanctioned; and as a Teacher He had taught the people with such an air of authority that they regarded Him as superior to the Scribes.

3 It has been said that every Scribe received at his ordination a key, as the symbol of his office, showing that it was given to him to unlock the treasures of knowledge.-S. Luke xi. 52; Plumptre on S. Matt. xvi. 19, and Lightfoot's Exercit. in loco. For some account of an ordination of a Scribe, cf. Edersheim, ii. 382, where, however, he denies the "tradition" of the key.

4 Cf. ii. 119.

LIV.

The Parable of the Wineyard.

S. MARK XII. 1-12.

IO.

my son. 7. But those husbandmen
said amongst themselves, This is
the heir; come, let us kill him, and
the inheritance shall be ours. 8.
And they took him, and killed him,
and cast him out of the vineyard.
9. What shall therefore the lord of
the vineyard do? he will come and
destroy the husbandmen, and will
give the vineyard unto others.
And have ye not read this scripture;
The Stone which the builders re-
jected is become the Head of the
corner: II. this was the Lord's
doing, and it is marvellous in our
eyes? 12. And they sought to lay
hold on Him, but feared the people;
for they knew that He had spoken
the parable against them: and they
left Him, and went their way.

1. And He began to speak unto them, saying, They will reverence them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. 2. And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. 3. And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. 4. And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled. 5. And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some. 6. Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto

ONE Who was wont to illustrate His teaching by imagery drawn from the objects which surrounded Him, could hardly fail in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem to speak of vineyards. The hills and

Ritter's

Compar.
Geog.
iii. 196.
Stanley's
Sin. and

Palest. 164,

421.

S. Matt.
XX. I.

S. Luke

xiii. 6.

S. Matt.

xxi. 28, 33. S. John

XV. I.

table-lands of Judah were the home of the vine. Five times our Lord availed Himself of this figure for His parables, and though it is doubtful in what locality He spoke that of the Labourers in the Vineyard,1 it is almost certain that the remaining four are intimately associated with Jerusalem.

In many places in Southern Palestine the features of this parable may still be traced. The loose stone fences, like the walls so familiar to the eye in Wales or Derbyshire; the remains of the old watch-towers,2 generally in one corner of the enclosure; and the cisterns hewn in the solid rock in which the grapes were pressed—all remain to the present day. It was the custom in our Lord's time for the owner in leasing a vineyard to tenants, to arrange for the rent to be paid not in money but in kind, a certain portion of the produce being set apart as "a first charge" for the landlord. The system prevails in modern times in some parts of France, and more widely under the name of "ryot-rent" in India. The inner meaning of the parable is quite obvious. It had become perfectly familiar to the Jews from the frequent comparison of Israel to a vine in the Old Testament. Isaiah had said, "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel," and had spoken of God as a Vine-dresser, bestowing the

utmost care upon the nation, only to receive in Isa. v. return a worthless vintage. "He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes."

The Psalmist had sung of the vine brought out of Egypt, transplanted into a carefully-prepared soil, and growing over the whole land, only to be devastated by "the boar out of the wood, and the wild Ps. lxxx. 13. beast of the field."

XV. 2-5.

Ezekiel had warned the nation that if they bore Ezek. no fruit they would be useless, just as the barren vine was good for nothing but to be "cast into the fire for fuel."

Sin. and

Indeed, the figure seemed to the Jews so peculiarly applicable that they appropriated it as their emblem, and it was perpetuated "on the coins of Stanley, the Maccabees, and in the colossal cluster of golden Palest. 164. grapes which overhung the porch of the second Temple; and the grapes of Judah still mark the tombstones of the Hebrew race in the oldest of their European cemeteries at Prague."

Whether in the parable the hedge and winefat and tower had each a special application in the system of God's Providential care for His ancient people, we cannot say; but at least in one particular we may trace a peculiar fitness in the figure of "the hedge."

What was it that protected the land of Israel year by year during the three Great Festivals, when by the Divine Law the country was denuded of its male population; when every man, from north, south, east, and west, from the most unguarded districts, leaving their flocks and herds, their wives and little ones, totally unprotected from their bitterest enemies, went up to Jerusalem, the centre of religious worship?

What was it that held in check the Moabite and Ammonite, and the robber tribes of Arabia ? 4 It was the fence of Divine protection, which, like "a wall of fire," God in His Providence had built up, so that no one dared to pass it. The husbandmen were the leaders and chief rulers of the people; the servants were the prophets. The successive missions point perhaps to the earlier and later,-Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Baptist. All were received with persecution or death. One was threatened wherever he went, another sawn asunder, a third beaten and thrown into the dungeon, a fourth denounced the people in the Temple, and perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Indeed, with such unbroken cruelty Neh. ix. 26. were the messengers of God treated, that, looking back over the history of wellnigh a thousand years,

Jeremiah

XX. 2, 3. 2 Chron.

xxiv. 21.

Heb. xi.

37, 38.

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