NOTES for Mat 21:33-42

In today's Gospel reading, the Saviour uses the method 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 Pharisees a parable about themselves. Like David before them, His listeners are indignant at the crime described in the parable and say to Christ that “[the owner of the vineyard] will put those wretches to a miserable death”.

It is astonishing: did no one at that moment recall the beginning of the book of Isaiah, where an almost identical parable speaks of Israel as God's vineyard? Perhaps someone did shudder in fear and bitterness, but the chief priests and Pharisees refused to draw so obvious a conclusion. The hardness of heart that seized them was the direct result of the collision between their unwillingness to repent and the truth spoken by the Creator.