Mark 12:1-9
“Then He began to speak to them in parables: ‘A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around {it, dug a place for} the wine vat and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. 2 Now at vintage-time he sent a servant to the vinedressers, that he might receive some of the fruit of the vineyard from the vinedressers. 3 "And they took [him] and beat him and sent [him] away empty-handed. 4 "Again he sent them another servant, and at him they threw stones, wounded [him] in the head, and sent [him] away shamefully treated. 5 "And again he sent another, and him they killed; and many others, beating some and killing some. 6 "Therefore still having one son, his beloved, he also sent him to them last, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 7 "But those vinedressers said among themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 8 "So they took him and killed [him] and cast [him] out of the vineyard. 9 "Therefore what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vinedressers and give the vineyard to others.”
The Lord highlighted the words for me that I have highlighted here from this parable. These words are not in the original document and were added by translators “for clarity.” The issue is that their addition convolutes the real understanding of the parable. Let’s break it down.
The man who planted the vineyard is a metaphor for God. So if God planted the vineyard and placed a hedge around it then the enemy could never have broken in. For we find in Job that God set a hedge around Job and it was Job’s fear {Job 3:25} that gave the enemy access to his life. Thus, when examining the portions of the parable that follow our highlighted non-existent words, we can argue that the vinedressers allowed the enemy in via strife against the owner’s representatives. {the owners’ representatives int the parable are the prophets of the Old Testament} However, I present you an alternate rendering sans the highlighted section.
If we accept that the vineyard’s owner is God, and the vineyard itself is the world, then the wine vat is where the value us extracted from the grapes. The wine vat is inside the vineyard but does not compose the whole vineyard. Further, the vinedressers are parabolic symbols of Israel so one could reasonably argue based on semantics that the vineyard technically is only Israel and not the entirety of the world. Again that is semantical bias and not scriptural fact. Therefore if God planted place to grow the hearts of men as set forth by the parable, and we remove the highlighted section, it is glaringly evident that the hedge was only set around the wine vat as opposed to the circumference of the vineyard. This notion is further promulgated by the idea that the only threat to the harvest was actually internal to the vineyard.
What I am saying then is that God’s harvest is the hearts of me. And His protection has extended solely around the hearts of men. But because mankind had authority over the world and allowed someone else to enter the vineyard and whisper in their ears then the hearts of men became threatened internally. The nation of Israel, then, is seen to desire to retain the hearts of men for themselves instead of harvesting them for God- the vineyard owner.
I used to believe that this parable represented Israel desiring to steal the “inheritance” of the physical world and all of the profits there with, yet now, because of this illumination, it is clear to me that the real issue at stake here is the hearts of men. The motive behind this nefarious plot of Israel was a veiled attempt really to gain access to and authority over the riches of the world because if you have the heart of someone, then you also have the money of that one. Thus, by extension, I was correct in my first understanding, but that understanding was not good enough. Incidentally, an inheritance cannot actually be stolen really. It is true that the physical inheritance of money or property can be taken by another, but it will never actually belong to the thief. Unless the inheritance is animate and not inanimate- such is the case with the hearts of men. Thus, the vinedressers killed or beat anyone who would try and convince the harvest {mankind} that their true benefactor was God the vineyard owner and not the menial vinedressers. The “harvest” must be convinced within themselves whose they were in order to yield their hearts and ultimately their entire substance.
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