Jesus next shows that the failure of these religious leaders is not simply in neglecting to serve God. No, but they are actually evil, wicked men. “There was a man, a householder,” Jesus relates, “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. When the season of the fruits came around, he dispatched his slaves to the cultivators to get his fruits.

The “slaves” are the prophets that the “householder,” Jehovah God, sent to “the cultivators” of his “vineyard.” These cultivators are leading representatives of the nation of Israel, which nation the Bible identifies as God’s “vineyard.”