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Old Testament Antecedents and Other Comments
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Mark 12 |
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My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it
up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built
a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well… The vineyard of the LORD
Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his
delight The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is
mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. (Leviticus 25:23) |
He then began to speak to them in parables: "A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. (12:1) |
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Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded
only bad fruit…And he looked for…righteousness, but heard cries of distress
(Isaiah 5:2-7) What misery is mine…there is no cluster of grapes to eat…The godly have been swept from the land; not one upright man remains (Micah 7:1-2) When I came, why was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? (Isaiah
50:2) |
At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. (12:2) But they…sent him away empty-handed. (12:3) |
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I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. (Isaiah 50:6) They…twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. (Mark 15:17-20) |
Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man
on the head and treated him shamefully.
(12:4) |
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Then the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest. He stood before the people and said, "This is what God says: `Why do you disobey the LORD's commands? You will not prosper. Because you have forsaken the LORD, he has forsaken you.'" But they plotted against him, and by order of the king they stoned him to death in the courtyard of the LORD's temple. (2 Chronicles 24:20-21) |
He sent still another, and that one they killed. (12:5a) |
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The LORD warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and
seers… They forsook all the commands of the LORD their God (2 Kings 17:13) They were angry with Jeremiah and had him beaten and imprisoned (Jeremiah 37:15) “They killed your prophets, who had admonished them in
order to turn them back to you..” ( Nehemiah
9:26) |
He sent many
others; some of them they beat, others they killed. (12:5b) |
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Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the
LORD's prophets left |
He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, “They will respect my son.” (12:6) Mark has Jesus allude to himself. |
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Moreover the prince shall not take of the people’s inheritance by oppression..(Ezekiel 46:18) They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take
them. They defraud a man of …inheritance. (Micah 2:2) |
But the
tenants said to one another, “This is the heir. Come, let's kill him, and the
inheritance will be ours.” (12:7)1 |
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So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death… Ahab…went down to take possession of Naboth's vineyard. (1 Kings 21:13-16)
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So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the
vineyard. (12:8) |
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The LORD enters into judgment against the elders and
leaders of his people: "It is you who have ruined my vineyard…” (Isaiah 3:14) Saul died because he was unfaithful
to the LORD…So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David
son of Jesse. |
What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. (12:9) |
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When the people heard this, they said, "May this
never be!" (Luke 20:16) |
Error #2: Mark omits the people’s exclamation needed to explain (below) why Jesus admonishes them for not remembering scripture. |
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The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:22-23) |
Haven't you read this scripture: "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; (12:10) “the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes” ? (12:11) |
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The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he
is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread, and he will be a
sanctuary; but for both houses of Israel he will be a stone that causes men
to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem
he will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble; they will fall and
be broken, they will be snared and captured." (Isaiah 8:13-15) |
Error #3: Mark
needs to follow up on his capstone comment to show that Jesus--the stone on which
the priests will trip--will be the agent by which the killing referred to in
12:9 will be accomplished. Luke does this, but Mark overlooked it. |
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Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard…
it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be
trampled. I will make it a
wasteland…(Isaiah 5:5-6) |
As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!" "Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down." (Mark 13:1-2) |
Notes
[1] Dennis R. MacDonald argues in his book, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (Yale University Press, 2000), that Mark borrowed many of the elements of his gospel from Homer’s epics for the purpose of having his readers compare Jesus favorably to the epic heroes. In Mark’s wicked tenants parable, MacDonald believes there exists
“a problem within the parable that often has stumped interpreters. The tenants assumed that if they killed their heir they would inherit the vineyard, but no society would award property to an heir’s murderers. The same problem appears in the epic. One of the suitors proposed that they kill Telemachus and distribute his possessions among them…” (page 36).
Thus, MacDonald implies that we should wonder why Jesus thought anyone would believe that any tenant farmers would think they would get away with killing the landowner and then receive his inheritance. MacDonald seems to conclude that Mark was more interested in retaining a Homeric connection than he was in telling a tale that made complete sense.
This is too much to believe. First of all, Mark knew his readers would know that he wasn’t talking about grape-growing farmers murdering the landowner and being awarded his property. Mark was talking about Jesus’ prediction of his own death at the hands of those who would--in a sense--seize the Lord’s inheritance by murdering the Lord’s son. Furthermore, the story of Ahab and Jezebel conspiring to murder Naboth and seize his inheritance in 1 Kings 21 tells Mark’s readers that murderers in the past have thought they might inherit the victim’s property, so why couldn’t the tenants in Jesus’ story make the same mistake?
Other
Articles about Mark’s Gospel:
David and Jesus
Jesus Walks on Water
Loaves and Fishes
Wicked Tenants Parables