vineyard had to be God himself. The servants he had sent as emissaries were dearly the prophets of the Old. Testament. And the wicked tenants to whom Jesus attributes the blame for the vineyard's unproductiveness: who are they? Well, one did not need to use much imagination to realize that they represent Israel's leaders, the very chief priests and teachers of the law who were trying to discredit Jesus at that moment. They were fully justified in thinking it was preached against them.
It wasn't the first time that Jesus had publicly denounced the hierarchy of his nation in this way. Back in Luke 11 there is a pungent attack, including one comment that you could almost regard as a commentary on this parable:
Woe to you [experts in the law], because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute’ (Luke 11:47–49).
It is that strange divine strategy of sending his servants to a rejecting people that Jesus is allegorizing here in his story. The people of God refused to yield the fruit of righteousness which he requires of them. Instead they cruelly reject his servants the prophets whenever he sends them.
The danger for us, of course, is that in recognizing that the immediate reference of this parable was to Israel and to its leaders, we may evade its applications for us. We may say to ourselves perhaps, just as we did with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax man: 'Ah, those hypocritical high priests and scribes! We all know what wicked people they were. Thank God we are not among
