One of the parables of Jesus Christ, given in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, tells of evil vinedressers. In the presentation of all three authors, it sounds almost the same, with only a slight difference in details. Jesus Christ told this parable in the temple, being there the day after His triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Let's remember her text, because it contains a deep meaning, which has not lost its relevance even today.
A parable that survived time
The parable of the tenants says that a certain owner, having planted a vineyard, took care to enclose it with a fence, build a tower and set up a winepress ─ a reservoir for grape juice. Having entrusted further work to his workers ─ vine-growers, he left. When the time came for the harvest, the owner sent servants into the vineyard to bring him the fruits of the labors of his workers.
But the vinedressers, according to Jesus, stoned them and cast them out with dishonor. The owner tried to send other servants, but the same story repeated with them. Finally, he sent his beloved son to the vineyard, hoping that they were his.be ashamed, do what is right. However, instead, the evil vinedressers killed him, hoping that, having de alt with the heir, they themselves would become the owners of the vineyard.
Having completed the parable of the evil vinedressers, Jesus addressed a question to the people gathered around Him, among whom were the chief priests and elders. He asked what, in their opinion, the owner would do with these workers, and received the answer that he would put the villains to a fierce death, and entrust the care of the vineyard to his more worthy servants.
Interpretation of images of the owner, vineyard and fence
Many Christian theologians and holy fathers of the church devoted their works to the interpretation of the above parable of the vinedressers. Based on their work, it has become a tradition to endow the images used in it with the meanings disclosed below.
By the owner of the vineyard, Jesus means God, the Creator of the world and everything in it. The vineyard is nothing but the Jewish people themselves, entrusted with the preservation of the faith. Later, the image of a bunch of grapes or a vine firmly established itself in Christian symbolism, becoming the personification of the community of people who made up the earthly Church of the Lord.
The fence is the Law of God received by the chosen people through Moses. At the very beginning of the forty-year wandering in the wilderness, the Lord on Mount Sinai informed His prophet, who led the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, a set of prescriptions regarding religious and social life.
The image of the winepress, the tower and the winegrowers
The whetstone is an altar, and the winepressthe juice is the blood shed on it. The ancient Jews traditionally sacrificed various animals and birds, the blood of which, it was believed, contributed to the purification of people from their sins. In this case, the interpreters of the parable see a prophetic prediction about the blood shed by Jesus Himself on the cross.
The Tower is nothing but a temple built in Jerusalem. At the time when Jesus spoke the parable of the vinedressers, the Second Temple stood in the capital of the Jewish state, the construction of which began in the period following the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity (516 BC), and ended only two decades before Christmas Christ. The first temple was built by King Solomon in 950 BC. e. Its destruction in 598 BC. e. was the beginning of the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, which lasted almost 60 years.
By vinedressers, Christ means the high priests and all the elders of the Jewish people. It is to them that he directs his diatribe. On the pages of the Gospel, they are called scribes and Pharisees and are characterized as people, although they had knowledge of the Law of Moses, but for the sake of their own interests, they reduced the service of God only to the formal fulfillment of prescriptions, while ignoring the essence of the teaching. Subsequently, the word "pharisaism" became a household word, meaning hypocrisy and hypocrisy.
The symbolic meaning of the absence of the owner, his servants and fruits
The absence of the owner, according to the interpreters, is the time that has elapsed since the Lord brought His chosen people out of Egyptslavery. According to Scripture, this historical event dates back to around 1400 BC. e. Therefore, in the parable, the Lord means a period that spans almost a millennium and a half.
The servants sent to the vinedressers are prophets who are known to have been persecuted by the high priests or killed. Throughout their history, the Jewish people and their rulers repeatedly deviated from the Law given to them by God, and even more than once fell into paganism. In these cases, the Lord singled out from their midst the most worthy people (prophets), through whose mouths he denounced the iniquities that were being committed. Many of them were killed or suffered various persecutions.
The fruits that the owner expected to receive from his workers are the spiritual growth of the people and their knowledge of God. Coming out of Egyptian captivity, the people of Israel were full of remnants of paganism, and it was the duty of the priests to educate them in the spirit of the Laws of Moses.
The image of the owner's son, his murder and subsequent retribution
By son and heir, Jesus undoubtedly means Himself, sent by the Heavenly Father to save people. One of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which represents the three hypostases of the One Deity. In it, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit united inseparably and inseparably. The embodiment of the second hypostasis is Jesus Christ.
The murder of his son is a prophecy of His own coming execution on the cross, which He was to endure in the atonement of all the people of the world,afflicted with original sin and doomed to eternal death as a result.
The arrival of the owner himself is interpreted as the Second Coming of Christ, when each person will be rewarded according to his deeds. On this day, the archangels of God will sound and call people to the Last Judgment of the Heavenly Father.
The meaning of the parable of the vinedressers
As mentioned above, many theologians devoted their works to this gospel story. From the interpretation of the images given in the parable of the evil vinedressers, it becomes clear that in his own words Jesus Christ denounced the high priests, the elders, and all those who had been entrusted by God with the care of preserving and increasing the faith. Passing off their own words as the will of God supposedly revealed to them, these people beat and killed the prophets sent by the Lord to admonish them. Having done their dirty deed, they plotted reprisals against the Son of God Himself.
It is characteristic that, having heard from the mouth of Jesus the parable of the vinedressers, the priests and elders present at the same time understood its meaning, and nevertheless unwittingly denounced themselves with exclamations that the workers to whom the vineyard was entrusted are villains. Thus, they themselves passed judgment, speaking of the inevitable retribution that the Lord would bring down on them.
Note that in most interpretations of the parable of the evil vinedressers, Jesus allegoricallypredicts the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in 70 AD and the incalculable disasters of the Jewish people that followed.
Sermons on the Feast of Pentecost
Like all other passages from the Gospel, this parable is heard during divine services, and then explained from the church ambos. According to a tradition that was established many centuries ago, the sermon on the evil vinedressers is usually read on the 13th Week after Pentecost.
In order to avoid errors in understanding this dating, we note that in the Church Slavonic language the word “week” does not denote the seven-day period from Monday to Sunday (it is called “week”), but only Sunday. It is the seventh in a row, and its ordinal number, as you know, is not divisible by anything without a remainder, except by itself or by one. This is where the word "week" comes from. Therefore, it should be understood that the sermon about the evil tenants is heard from church ambos on the 13th Sunday after the Trinity ─ the holiday, also called Pentecost.
Birth of the Church of Christ
The holiday was established in honor of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles on the fiftieth day after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Since it is this event that is traditionally considered the birth of the Church of Christ on earth, it is important for all its members on this day to once again think about the meaning of the parable of the evil vinedressers.
Pictures and engravings created on this subject by various artists help to more clearly present what Jesus Christ told in the walls of the temple for the nextday after His entry into Jerusalem. Some of them are presented in our article.
