NOTES for Mat 21:33-42

In today’s Gospel reading, the Savior uses the device by which the prophet Nathan once called King David to repentance. Nathan told the king a parable about a man whose actions aroused David’s indignation, and then said, “You are the man”—and the king repented in tears. The Lord likewise tells the chief priests and the Pharisees a parable about themselves. Like David long ago, His listeners are outraged by the crime described in the parable and tell Christ, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death.” It is astonishing: did no one remember at that moment the beginning of the Book of Isaiah, where an almost identical parable speaks of Israel as God’s vineyard? Perhaps someone did shudder with fear and bitterness, but the chief priests and Pharisees refused to draw such obvious conclusions. The hardness of heart that seized them was the direct result of the collision between their unreadiness to repent and the truth spoken by the Creator’s own lips.