New Testament

After three parables in response to a challenge to his authority, the Pharisees and Herodians plot to entangle Jesus with a political question with no safe answer: paying taxes to Caesar. For Pharisees and Herodians to join forces is a little like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump joining forces against a common enemy. Impossible!

This is a plot (συμβούλιον, literally, “take council”) to capture Jesus (v. 15). Matthew uses this word five times (12:14; 22:15; 27:1, 7; 28:12), each time describing a plot against Jesus. The idea is of plotting, etc. This incident was foreshadowed in 12:14, just after Jesus declared that the Pharisees were committing an unforgivable sin.

The plot should trap Jesus by his own words. The verb (παγιδεύω) is only used here in the New Testament, elsewhere it is used for snaring birds with a net (BrillDAG). The word evokes the image a net entangling something so that they cannot get out of a trap. We have all said things we immediately regret, then try to back out of what we said and end up saying something even worse.

The Pharisees flatter Jesus before asking the question (v. 16). This is not at all unusual (especially if this is a younger disciple) and the questioner does not say anything untrue about Jesus.  Jesus is true and he does teach the way of God truthfully. “The way” may refer to the way of righteousness (Psalm 1, for example). Jesus is not swayed by appearances, literally, “to look at the face of men.” This usually means “does not show favoritism.”

After laying on the flattery, they ask the question: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? (v. 17). The question asks for a decision based on the Law, does the Mosaic Law require us to pay taxes to Rome?  If Jesus answers yes, then he sounds “pro-Rome” and risks being attacked by the patriotic crowds gathered for Passover. If he says no, then he risks being arrested by the Romans as an anti-Rome rebel.

What was the problem with taxes? Taxation was both a political and religious issue in the first century.  In A. D. 6, a Galilean Jew named Judas led a revolt against paying taxes to Rome (Acts 5:37; Josephus, Ant. 18.1). For Judas the Galilean, any tax paid to Rome was a symbol of subjugation. His sons were executed in AD 46 (Ant. 20.5.2) and his grandson was involved in the First Jewish Revolt (Menachem ben Judah, JW 2.433-450). Rome set high taxes in Palestine since the region was troublesome (Nolland, Matthew, 896).

Josephus, Jewish Wars, 2:118 Under his [Archelaus, AD 6] administration it was that a certain Galilean, whose name was Judas, prevailed with his countrymen to revolt; and said they were cowards if they would endure to pay a tax to the Romans, and would, after God, submit to mortal men as their lords. This man was a teacher of a peculiar sect of his own, and was not at all like the rest of those their leaders.

Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered.

Another issue may have involved the imagery used on Roman coins. A Roman denarius almost always used an image of the emperor and propaganda calling the Emperor a son of the divine Augustus, the savior, etc. In all cultures, money is propaganda. Rome used coinage to create the image of an all-powerful empire responsible for peace and prosperity. “The Essenes refused to use the denarius, ‘saying that they ought not either to carry, or behold, or fashion an image” (Davies and Allison, Matthew 3:216, but they cite no source for this).

Jesus responds with great wisdom (22:18-22). He is fully aware this is a trap and that the whole crowd is waiting for his answer. Jesus calls them hypocrites. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees is the theme of Matthew 23. The word originally referred to an actor, someone playing a role, a “pretender” (BDAG). The Pharisees asking the question are pretending to be respectful towards Jesus, but they are full of malice and want to trap Jesus into saying something worthy of arrest and maybe even execution.

Jesus asks then to show him a “coin for the tax.” A Roman denarius is a common coin worth about day’s wage for a laborer. In Matthew 20:1-2, the owner of a vineyard promised some workers a denarius for working one day in his vineyard. It is not unusual a Pharisee would have a Roman coin. Even if they hated Rome, they still needed the coins to buy and sell. (Imagine visiting China and refusing to use money with Mao’s picture on it.)

Jesus declares, “Give Caesar what is due to Caesar.” What happens if you do not “Render unto Caesar”?  Jesus is saying something like “pay Caesar what you owe him.” Some people in the audience might think “we owe him nothing” while others see taxes as payment for the service the Romans provide (roads, aqueducts, military protection). Could someone pay the taxes without worshiping Caesar?  A Pharisee might say yes: if we pay the taxes then Rome leaves us alone and we can study Torah in peace. A Herodian would agree as well, they are the local government benefiting from Roman taxes, although they might have been more inclined to offer more deference to the emperor (there was an Augustan Temple in Caesarea, for example).

Jesus then adds, “But give to God what is due to God.” If Jesus is right about paying taxes to Rome because they are obligations which are due, then how much more important are one’s obligations to God!  In the context of the first century, one’s obligation to God might include the Temple Tax (which Jesus paid, Matthew 17:24-27, for example).

Consider all of Jesus’s teaching in Matthew: one’s obligations to God go far beyond money (tithes and offerings). There are several times in the book Jesus’s demands from the true disciples go far beyond the Pharisees, for example.

In the context of the parables in Matthew 21-22, the Pharisees and Herodians who are asking him this question are not giving to God what he is due, they are hypocrites. Since they rejected Jesus as Messiah, they are not “rendering unto God.”

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son (Matt 22:1). The people he invited to the banquet refused to come, so he replaced them with people living on the fringes of society. As the replacement guests settle into the banquet, the king comes to look over his guests. He discovers an unprepared man not wearing a wedding garment (22:11b-12). Who is the unprepared guest?

The king calls the man “friend,” but this word (ἑταῖρος) refers to someone who is not a friend (φίλος). Some translations will use “comrade,” although that English word bad connotations. It refers to an acquaintance who is not a friend, but it is strange to call someone an acquaintance to their face. The word is rare in the New Testament and Matthew may have chosen the word to foreshadow who he wants us to see as the unprepared guest. In Matthew 20:13, the master of the vineyard refers to the workers who complain about their pay as “friend.” In that context, the all-day workers are the religious leaders in contrast to the recent workers, likely Jesus’s disciples and the lowly types following him.

More foreboding, this is the word Jesus uses when Judas approaches him in the Garden (Matt 26:50). Judas appeared to be in the inner circle, but he was not really part of the inner circle. When the kingdom of heaven arrives, there will be some who appeared to be part of Jesus’s family who were not genuine members, the were false insiders. So, Matthew used the word for the religious leaders who complain about his lowly followers and Judas, the disciple who betrayed him.

How was he supposed to get a wedding garment? Remember the replacement guests were the poor, people living on the fringes of society. They are not likely to own fancy clothes worthy of the king’s wedding banquet. There is no good explanation for how he should have obtained his wedding banquet. This does not stop commentaries and pastors from passing along the idea the king would hand out nice clothes to the guests as they entered the banquet hall, as if this was modern restaurant that requires men to wear a coat and tie. But there is no evidence this ever happened in the ancient world, nor does the king offer loaner clothes in the parable.

What does the wedding garment represent? For many interpreters, the wedding garment represents salvation because they have already allegorized the wedding banquet as eternal life or the replacement guests as the church. In a previous post I argued the replacement guests are not the later (gentile) church, but rather Jesus’s disciples and other followers. They were people from the fringes of society: Galilean fishermen, tax-collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners. They have entered the wedding banquet and have been eating with Jesus all along. It was the religious establishment, the Pharisees, scribes, and other Temple aristocracy who refused to follow Jesus. But are all Jesus’s followers really true disciples? The guest without proper wedding garments is a follower who is going to reject Jesus in the next few days when he is arrested and crucified. The most obvious example is Judas, but there were many who rejected Jesus as messiah when he was crucified.

The unprepared guest was unable to answer the king. The verb (φιμόω) literally means “he was muzzled.” The king therefore order the man be bound and cast into the outer darkness, in the place where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (22:13). This is a key phrase in Matthew and refers to the final, eschatological judgment. In Matthew 8:12 the “sons of the kingdom” will be thrown there. When the Son of Man comes his angels will gather all the law breakers out of his kingdom and throw then in the fiery furnace where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (13:42, 50). The wicked servant who does not expect the return of hos master will be cut in pieces put with the hypocrites in a place where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (24:51). Finally, the foolish servant who does not properly invest on behalf of his master is also thrown into the outer darkness where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (25:30).

Jesus concludes, “Many are Called, Few are Chosen” (Matt 22:14). This cryptic line is usually assigned to a later layer of tradition which sought to apply the parable to a new situation in the early church. For example, Dodd thought the line was added by Matthew to “guard against the reception of the Gentiles into the Church on too easy terms” (Dodd, Parables of the Kingdom, 122).

Like the image of a wedding feast for an eschatological kingdom, the idea of the “elect” is a powerful image in Second Temple Period Judaism.  Of critical importance is the election of Israel as God’s people and the covenant he made with them. Philo, for example, said “Yet out of the whole human race He chose as of special merit and judged worthy of pre–eminence over all, those who are in a true sense men, and called them to the service of Himself, the perennial fountain of things excellent” (Spec. Laws 1.303).

If my reading of the Wedding Banquet parable is correct, then perhaps the saying plays on the idea of Israel’s election in general, and Jesus’ followers in particular. The saying means something like: “not all of the elect Israel are chosen to enter the kingdom.” The first guests are “all Israel,” the second guests are the outsiders who have participated in table fellowship with Jesus and have entered the Kingdom of Heaven. As Snodgrass concludes, while some Jews have rejected Jesus as Messiah, “other Jews will respond” (Stories with Intent, 321).

In Matthew’s gospel, the Parable of the Wedding Banquet is the third of three parables which answer a challenge to his authority (Matt 21:23-27). The brief Parable of the Two Sons (Matt 21:28–32) contrasts two types of responses to Jesus’ invitation to participate in the kingdom. The one who have responded to Jesus’ invitation are the tax–collectors and sinners. These outsiders are entering the kingdom before the chief priests and elders of the people. The Parable of the Tenants (Matt 21:33-45) described the religious leaders as not only failing to respond properly to the call of the owner of the vineyard. This third parable in the series describes the kingdom of heaven as a wedding banquet to which the subjects of a king are invited. As in the first two parables, there are two groups described; those who enter the wedding feast and those who do not.

Some features of a wedding are missing in this parable. For example, there is no bride and the not important. Some writers who comment on this parable assume the bridegroom is Jesus (a reasonable assumption given Jesus’s own words in Matt 9:15), but also that the bride as the Church. This is unwarranted allegorizing since the bride is not mentioned at all. To try to fit an unmentioned bride into the parable causes problems, this usually leads to the replacement guests as the later New Covenant gentile church replacing the Old Covenant Jewish people. This is not what Jesus intended by the parable of the Wedding Banquet. The point is not the marriage of the bride and groom, but the king’s invitation to enter the wedding feast

A King Made a Wedding Banquet for His Son (22:1-10). Wedding banquet background, important event honoring the heir. A banquet of this type would be expected to be a village–wide event, a wedding feast hosted by a king would the main event in the capital city of a kingdom. Blickenstaff reports a papyri invitation which invites the whole village to attend the celebration (κῶμος) of a wedding (‘While the Bridegroom is With Them,’ 57). A calf would feed 35-75 people; Matthew 22:4 says at least two bulls have been slaughtered along with at least two fatted calves. At a minimum, this banquet would feed two hundred people. To miss a wedding banquet hosted by the king could be a politically dangerous choice, easily interpreted as both disrespectful and treasonous.

Why does the king send two invitations? The first invitation determines how much food to prepare, the second calls the people to come to the banquet and begin to eat the food that has now been prepared (like a “save the date” card in a modern wedding). When the food was nearly ready servants would be sent to gather the guests into the banquet. In the ancient world the food served at a banquet of this sort would have to be eaten that night or it would be wasted.

Anyone who refused the second invitation would have been especially rude. Since the food was prepared based on the first invitation, the original listener would have been struck by the absolute lack of social manners demonstrated by the invited guests. This observation frees the parable from the temptation to allegorize the two sets of servants as various prophets, etc.

When the banquet was about to begin, the original guests refused to come (22:5-7) The first-invited guests were unwilling to come. This is the working the parable of the Two Sons, the second son is not willing to obey the father, but eventually does obey (21:19). In the Parable of the Two Sons, the chief priests and Pharisees say they are willing, but refuse the father.

The invited guests pay no attention to the invitation, and some go off to their field or business. The word used for the careless attitude of the invited guests (ἀμελέω) appears four times in the New Testament. More importantly, the word appears two contexts in Jeremiah which employ the marriage metaphor. In LXX Jer 4:17 the word is a translation of the Hebrew מרה, to be “recalcitrant or rebellious” (HALOT).

The king responds dramatically: he destroyed their city while the dinner was on the table! The response of the king is exaggerated. He becomes angry and orders soldiers to burn the city with fire. Most commentaries on the Parable of the Wedding Banquet assume verses 6-7 refer to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But parables often exaggerate, there is no need for the destruction of a city to prophesy the fall of Jerusalem (or anything else).

The original guests were not worthy (22:8). Like the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (21:33-41), the original guests are the religious leaders, and the replacement guests are Jesus’s followers. This parable says the original guests have already been replaced by new guests.

Since the food is prepared, the king replaces the original guests with other people, both bad and good (22:8-10). The king is now faced with a dilemma. He has prepared an enormous banquet, but those who were invited were not worthy to enter. He therefore sends out a second set of servants to gather whomever they should find to fill the wedding feast.

The replacement guests are not the sort of people who would have been invited at all. They are “outsiders” in the kingdom of the parable. The noun διέξοδος has the sense of the edges of society but is used in the LXX for the borders of the Land (for example, Num 34:4). These are not outsiders in the sense that they are drawn from outside of the King’s domain, but outsiders in the sense that they live on the fringe of society.

This second set of invitations is routinely taken as an allegory of Christian mission, but Klyne Snodgrass calls this “merciless allegorizing” (Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 315).  I agree. If this parable is consistent with the previous two parables, then the replacement guests must be those who have responded to Jesus’ invitation, they have already been eating and drinking with Jesus. They are the tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners who live on the fringe of Jewish society. They are the very people who have been “filling the banquet” hosted by Jesus since the beginning of his ministry.

At this point, the parable seems quite clear, the original guests (the religious establishment) have been replaced by new guests (Jesus’s disciples). But are all of Jesus’s followers going to remain in the banquet? This parable has a second part to address this issue.

Bibliography:  Marianne Blickenstaff, ‘While the Bridegroom is with them’: Marriage, Family, Gender and Violence in the Gospel of Matthew (LNTS, T&T Clark, 2005). Phillip J. Long, Jesus the Bridegroom: The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels. Pickwick, 2012.

As a conclusion to the parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus declares he is the son who is about to be taken outside the vineyard and killed. In fact, he quotes Psalm 118 and claims to be the “stone the builders rejected” which becomes the cornerstone. Jesus is obviously referring to himself as the cornerstone. The chief priest and Pharisees even understand the parable is about them (21:45-46). The problem for understanding this parable is the identity of the replacement tenants.

 “Have you never read the Scriptures?” (21:42-44). Jesus concludes by quoting Psalm 118:22-23.  Many scholars have suggested this conclusion is secondary to the parable itself, added at a time after the crucifixion by the early church to put a prediction of the resurrection into the mouth of Jesus. But the quotation goes back to Jesus is clear from the intentional wordplay between “son” and “stone”, ben and aben in Aramaic (Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, 228). Similar wordplay is found in Exodus 28:9-10.

The most remarkable parallel comes from the Aramaic Targum on Psalm 118:22, which reads “The boy who the builders abandoned was among the sons of Jesse, and he is worthy to be appointed king and ruler.” The Jewish interpreters took the “stone that was rejected” as a son of Jesses, specifically, David.  “It is more plausible to view this as fragments of an agenda generated by Jesus, inspired by certain Scriptures, frequently interpreted in light of their understanding in the Aramaic-speaking synagogue, and passed on by his disciples” (Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, 229).

This is less a prediction of the resurrection than a claim to be the heir of David. Just as David was initially rejected as king and later restored, so too Jesus will be rejected by his own people. But unlike David, Jesus will be killed by the leaders. Although there may be a hint of resurrection, it is muted at best. The point for now is Jesus is the anointed son of David who has arrived in Jerusalem, and he s about to be rejected.

The rejection of the stone refers to the Jewish leaders already in a state of rejection. Jesus has offered the kingdom of God throughout his ministry. The restoration of the stone is still future, when the kingdom is given to the ones who are producing fruit.

The kingdom “will be taken away and given” and given to a people who are producing fruit. The first verb is a future event, but the people are presently producing fruit. Who are the replacement tenants?

In the context of the previous parable, this must refer to those that are following in the way of righteousness witnessed to by John the Baptist, the ones who are following Jesus. Remember the sign of the fig tree: the Temple aristocracy is not bearing fruit and they have fallen under judgment. Jesus’s followers are “producing fruit” will continue to do so as the enter the kingdom of God.

This parable does not teach that the kingdom is take from the Jews and given to the Gentiles (i.e.., the Christian Church). This is not replacement theology, the idea that Christians replace Jews as God’s people. On the contrary, Jesus says those who are already following him will be the first to enter the kingdom. The people who are currently in leadership, the Temple aristocracy and various teachers of the law, have already rejected Jesus and will not participate in the kingdom. The next parable describes the kingdom of God alike a wedding banquet where the ones who expect be in the banquet are not (their city is destroyed). But the ones who did not expect to be invited to the wedding are at the banquet.

When the Pharisees challenged his authority, Jesus responded with the parable of two sons and declared that tax collectors and sinners were entering the kingdom. The parable of the wicked tenants also expects the teachers to come to the conclusion that those responsible for not doing the will of the landowner are guilty and under judgement.

A landowner planted a vineyard and made extensive improvements to his property. His vineyard and made in self-sufficient and well protected.

• The wall could have been a hedge of thorns, intended to keep out animals that might eat the grapes, not a wall for defense against people.
• The tower can be used for observation, but also it is a place for the workers to live. During the harvest the tower as protection against thieves.
• The winepress is added so the grapes could be made into wine within the vineyard. After the grapes are harvested the tenants produce the wine, the purpose of the vineyard. The owner will sell the wine to turn a profit on his investment.

Each of these improvements are drawn from Isaiah 5:2, the Lord prepared a vineyard, but it only bore bad fruit. But there are differences, in Isaiah 5 the owner looks for the fruit, he does not hire tenants. In Matthew, the tenants are the ones who do not fulfill their calling by not delivering a return on the land-owner’s investment.

The landowner went away to another country. The verb (ἀποδημέω) can refer to traveling on a journey or to “travel abroad” (BrillDAG), but probably just means he is an absentee landowner. He has prepared the vineyard and invested money which he expects will turn a profit when the vineyard begins to bear fruit/wine. The man is very wealthy, he has money to invest in a vineyard, at least two sets of servants imply a large household. He is called an οἰκοδεσπότης, a word which can refer anything from a head of a household to a national leader or government official (BrillDAG).

The owner hired workers, tenant farmers, to work the vines. Later sends servants to collect his rent. It takes several years for the land to become profitable; the workers must work long and hard before the rewards of the vineyard are realized. That the landowner expects his share of the fruit may imply the tenants have harvested the grapes, pressed them, and produced wine, now stored in jars for transport to market.

The owner sends two sets of servants sent to collect the owner’s share, but they are ignored and abused. The slaves are beat, killed and stoned. He then sent a second set of servants, even more than the first. The point of sending many servants is that the owner gave the tenants plenty of time to produce the fruit they owed the owners. He not only invested in the vineyard, but now has send more than ample resources (slaves) to collect fruit of the vineyard. The tenants therefore have no excuse, they know what the slaves wanted, and they are in a state of rebellion against the owner!

The owner therefore decides to send his son to collect his share. The tenants should respect the son as they would the owner. The tenants ought to recognize the son and they obey his authority as the son of the owner. The son can act legally on behalf of the owner, to abuse the son would be a direct attack on his father, the landowner.

When the son arrives, the tenants think they can kill the son and take the vineyard for themselves. This is odd, since they are not related to the owner. Some have thought that the owner was away for so long that under law he forfeited his land, or that the owner was dead, and the son was now the owner. But as Nolland points out, there is not good legal or political explanation for the tenants’ plan (Matthew, 874). That the son is taken outside the vineyard is important since this refers to the crucifixion of Jesus. He was taken outside of Jerusalem and executed.

Jesus asks the teachers of the Law what they thought the owner would do to the wicked tenants when he returns (21:40-41). When the “lord of the vineyard” seems to put the parable’s conclusion into an apocalyptic context. There is no other place, as far as I know, where God is called the “Lord of the Vineyard,” but if the vineyard is Israel, the title is clear. When God visits his people, there will be a devastating judgment.

The teachers respond with the obvious answer: the owner will come and “bring those wretches to a wretched end.” I can imagine people in the crowd shouting similar answers, maybe references to others who have rebelled against Herod or Rome in the past who were executed. The teachers also say the first tenants will be replaced by tenants who will give him his due share of the vineyard at harvest time.

The core elements of this parable would be familiar to the religious leaders who first heard this parable.

• God is the landowner, the vineyard is once again the world that God has created and placed his people in, or more specifically, the city of Jerusalem.
• Jerusalem as God’s vineyard is based on Isaiah 5:1-7. This passage describing Israel as God’s vineyard.
• The servants are the prophets sent to Jerusalem to call her back to covenant faithfulness. There are many examples of prophets beaten in the Old Testament (Jer 20:2; 22:6; 1 Kings 19:14; Neh 9:26; 2 Chron 24:20–22).

Who are the first tenants? They are the people who have overseen God’s people but refused to listen to God’s prophets and (now) are threatening to kill God’s son. The chief priests and Pharisees understand the parable is about them (21:45). This sequence of events began with a prophetic demonstration calling the Temple a “den of thieves” and a parabolic miracle, cursing a fig tree which had no fruit. Jesus is the son sent to the vineyard to represent the father, and the current leaders are not accepting the son’s authority and are planning on killing him.

Like the cursing of a fig tree in Matthew 21:18-22, the owner of the vineyard sent his servants to the vineyard, the owner expected to find fruit from his investment. But the people who were supposed to bear fruit did not respond to the servants or the son, and therefore will be replaced by other tenants who will bear fruit for the owner of the vineyard.