Mat 21:34-41 | JFB | STEP | 34. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen-- By these "servants" are meant the prophets and other extraordinary messengers, raised up from time to time. See on . that they might receive the fruits of it-- Again see on .

‏ Matthew 21:34-41

34. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen--By these "servants" are meant the prophets and other extraordinary messengers, raised up from time to time. See on Mt 23:37.

that they might receive the fruits of it--Again see on Lu 13:6.

35. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one--see Jr 37:15; 38:6.

and killed another--see Jr 26:20-23.

and stoned another--see 2Ch 24:21. Compare with this whole verse Mt 23:37, where our Lord reiterates these charges in the most melting strain.

36. Again, he sent other servants more than the first; and they did unto them likewise--see 2Ki 17:13; 2Ch 36:16, 18; Ne 9:26.

37. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son--In Mark (Mr 12:6) this is most touchingly expressed: "Having yet therefore one son, His well-beloved, He sent Him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence My Son." Luke's version of it too (Lu 20:13) is striking: "Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send My beloved Son: it may be they will reverence Him when they see Him." Who does not see that our Lord here severs Himself, by the sharpest line of demarcation, from all merely human messengers, and claims for Himself Sonship in its loftiest sense? (Compare He 3:3-6). The expression, "It may be they will reverence My Son," is designed to teach the almost unimaginable guilt of not reverentially welcoming God's Son.

38. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves--Compare Ge 37:18-20; Joh 11:47-53.

This is the heir--Sublime expression this of the great truth, that God's inheritance was destined for, and in due time is to come into the possession of, His own Son in our nature (He 1:2).

come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance--that so, from mere servants, we may become lords. This is the deep aim of the depraved heart; this is emphatically "the root of all evil."

39. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard--compare He 13:11-13 ("without the gate--without the camp"); 1Ki 21:13; Joh 19:17.

and slew him.

40. When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh--This represents "the settling time," which, in the case of the Jewish ecclesiastics, was that judicial trial of the nation and its leaders which issued in the destruction of their whole state.

what will he do unto those husbandmen?

41. They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men--an emphatic alliteration not easily conveyed in English: "He will badly destroy those bad men," or "miserably destroy those miserable men," is something like it.

and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons--If this answer was given by the Pharisees, to whom our Lord addressed the parable, they thus unwittingly pronounced their own condemnation: as did David to Nathan the prophet (2Sa 12:5-7), and Simon the Pharisee to our Lord (Lu 7:43, &c.). But if it was given, as the two other Evangelists agree in representing it, by our Lord Himself, and the explicitness of the answer would seem to favor that supposition, then we can better explain the exclamation of the Pharisees which followed it, in Luke's report (Lu 20:16)--"And when they heard it, they said, God forbid"--His whole meaning now bursting upon them.