And he began to speak unto them by parables.
A certain man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and dug a place for the winepress, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into a far country.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
The parable of the vineyard13Touching the paying of tribute18 The Sadducees confuted35 A difficulty proposed to the scribes.
Planted a vineyard. Gr. ε̉φÏτευσεν, Vulg. pastinavit. The verb pastinare is especially used of vines. It means to dig the soil of the vineyard, and prepare it for planting vines, So the word repastinare means to dig up vines when they are sterile.
And dug a lake (Vulg.), a receptacle into which the must pressed from the grapes might flow. The Gr. is Ïπολήνιον, i.e, beneath the winepress. For ληνός means winepress. Hence the Arabic translates, and dug a winepress in it. S. Matthew (xxi33) uses the same expression. For torcular, or winepress, means not only the actual press itself, but the vat or receptacle beneath the press in which the grape juice was received. This last was said to be dug, or, as in Isaiah 5:1, to be cut out.
Under these figurative modes of speech, or parables, Jesus Christ began to trace out for their reflection a true portraiture of their ingratitude, and of the divine vengeance. By this man we are to understand God the Father, whose vineyard was the house of Israel, which he guarded by angels; the place dug for the wine-vat is the law; the tower, the temple; and Moses, the prophets and the priests, whom the Jews afflicted and persecuted are the husbandmen or servants. (St. Jerome)
This same parable was employed by Isaias, (v. 1.) where speaking of Christ, he says: My beloved had a vineyard, and he fenced it in. (Tirinus)
He went into a far country, not by change of place, for he is every where, but by leaving the workmen the power of free-will, either to work or not to work; in the same manner as a man in a far country cannot oversee his husbandmen at home, but leaves them to themselves. (Ven. Bede) -- This parable is thus morally explained: Jesus Christ planted a Church with his own b...
