³³“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away.^* ³⁴When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.^* ³⁵But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.^* ³⁶Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. ³⁷Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’^* ³⁹So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. ⁴⁰Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” ⁴¹They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”^*

⁴²Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;^s

this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is amazing in our eyes’?^*

⁴³“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits.^* ⁴⁴The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”^t

⁴⁵When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. ⁴⁶They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.^*

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Footnotes

sOr keystone (in an arch)
tOther ancient authorities lack 21:44

Cross references

*Ps 80:8; Isa 5:1–7; Mt 25:14, 15
*Mt 22:3
*2 Chr 24:21; Mt 23:34, 37; Heb 11:36, 37
*Ps 2:8; Mt 26:3; 27:1; Heb 1:2
*Mt 8:11; Acts 13:46; 18:6; 28:28
*Ps 118:22, 23; Acts 4:11; 1 Pet 2:7
*Mt 8:12
*vv 11, 26