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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Mark 12:1 - 12:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
He began to speak unto them in parables (ērxato autois en parabolais lalein). Mark’s common idiom again. He does not mean that this was the beginning of Christ’s use of parables See note on Mar 4:2), but simply that his teaching on this occasion took the parabolic turn. “The circumstances called forth the parabolic mood, that of one whose heart is chilled, and whose spirit is saddened by a sense of loneliness, and who, retiring within himself, by a process of reflection, frames for his thoughts forms which half conceal, half reveal them” (Bruce). Mark does not give the Parable of the Two Sons (Mat 21:28-32) nor that of the Marriage Feast of the King’s Son (Mat 22:1-14). He gives here the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen. Also in Mat 21:33-46 and Luk 20:9-19. See discussion in Matthew. Mat 21:33 calls the man “a householder” (oikodespotēs).
A pit for the winepress (hupolēnion). Only here in the N.T. Common in the lxx and in late Greek. Matthew had lēnon, winepress. This is the vessel or trough under the winepress on the hillside to catch the juice when the grapes were trodden. The Romans called it lacus (lake) and Wycliff dalf (lake), like delved. See note on Matthew for details just alike.
Husbandmen (geōrgois). Workers in the ground, tillers of the soil (ergon, gē).