Later text
Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey.
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey.
Earlier text
Isaiah 5:1-7BSB
I will sing for my beloved a song of his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour! “And now, O dwellers of Jerusalem and men of Judah, I exhort you to judge between Me and My vineyard. What more could I have done for My vineyard than I already did for it? Why, when I expected sweet grapes, did it bring forth sour fruit? Now I will tell you what I am about to do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be consumed; I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and thorns and briers will grow up. I will command the clouds that rain shall not fall on it.” For the vineyard of the LORD of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the plant of His delight. He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard a cry of distress.
Jesus deliberately retells Isaiah's vineyard parable with a crucial shift in focus. Isaiah's vineyard (Israel) produced bad fruit instead of justice; Jesus' version focuses on wicked tenants (religious leaders) who reject the owner's servants (prophets) and finally kill his son (Jesus himself). This announces judgment specifically on Israel's current leadership rather than the nation as a whole. The parable predicts Jesus' death and warns of kingdom stewardship being transferred from unfaithful leaders to a new people who will produce proper fruit. For the Vine and Vineyard trajectory (TT 168) this pair carries the fulfillment axis of Isaiah 5: the tenants' rejection of the Son, and the kingdom given to a people who will produce its fruit (Matthew 21:43); the curse-of-fruitlessness axis (Isaiah 5:5-6 — the hedge taken away, the wall torn down, thorns and briers) is carried by the Thorns and Thistles trajectory (TT 190).