While they are fumbling to find a diplomatic answer which will not in some way incriminate or embarrass them, he goes straight on to tell his story.
It's a story which, we are told, his inquisitors were convinced was directed against them personally. I'm sure they weren't victim to any irrational paranoia in entertaining that suspicion. Anyone familiar with the Old Testament knew that the imagery of the vineyard which Jesus uses was not original. He had borrowed it. The prophet Isaiah, 800 years earlier, composed an allegorical song along very similar lines to Jesus' parable here. And the relationship between the two is unmistakable.
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.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.
(Isaiah 5:1–5)
Isaiah, however, interprets his allegory:
The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are the garden of his delight.
(Isaiah 5:7)
Isaiah's song was far too famous, and the parallels with Jesus' parable far too obvious, for the implication to be lost on these Jewish Bible scholars. The vineyard of which Jesus' parable speaks was the same as Isaiah's. It was Israel, the people of God. The one who planted this
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