11. According to Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, what kind of treatment was the Messiah to receive at the hands of the cultivators at the time of the vintage?

¹¹ The time was due for the vintage of this symbolic national “vine” when Jesus the Son of God came as the anointed one, or Messiah, in 29 C.E. What would be the fruitage that he as God’s representative would gather from this “vine”? On Nisan 11, 33 C.E., three days before the close of his public ministry of three years and a half, Jesus illustrated the kind of reception that he would get, by telling a parable. Directing this to the chief priests and the elders in the temple by way of comment on their objections to his activities and teachings, he said:

“Hear another illustration: There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and erected a tower, and let it out to cultivators, and traveled abroad.

Matt. 21:33-44.