“And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.”
Jesus 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 — the vineyard parable draws directly from Isaiah 5:1–7, the song of the vineyard in which God's vineyard is Israel. The specific elements — wall, winepress, watchtower — appear in Isaiah 5:2, and every listener would have recognized the allusion. The vineyard is God's investment in Israel; the farmers are the leaders of Israel entrusted with its care; the owner who goes away on a journey is God whose patience has been long but is not infinite.
Church Fathers on Mark 12:1
After the Lord had closed the mouths of His tempters by a wise question, He next shews their wickedness in a parable.
God the Father is called a man by a human conception. The vineyard is the house of Israel; the hedge is the guardianship of Angels; the winefat is the law, the tower is the temple, and the husbandmen, the priests.
Or else, the hedge is the wall of the city, the winefat is the altar, or those winefats, by which three psalms receive their name.
Read all 22 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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