Questions Reveal Both Resistance and Recognition

The “winefat” is not the press itself but the vat cut into the rock beneath it, where the trodden juice ran down; the Greek means an under-trough. “Husbandmen” are tenant farmers who would pay rent in a share of the crop, and absentee owners of this kind were a familiar feature of Galilee.

“At the season” means the time of fruit. Under Leviticus 19:23–25 a new vineyard’s grapes could not be used for its first years, so this first collection may come only after a long wait. The servant asks only for the owner’s agreed share, not the whole harvest.

The servant came to receive and goes back “empty”, the Greek word for empty-handed. The tenants reverse his errand exactly: he was sent for fruit and is returned with nothing but bruises.

Stoning belonged to Israel’s memory of how prophets were treated; Zechariah son of Jehoiada was stoned in the very court of the house of the LORD (2 Chronicles 24:21). “Shamefully handled” is one Greek word for dishonouring, an insult aimed at the owner through his man.

The sentence loses its shape here, trailing into “many others; beating some, and killing some” without a main verb, as if the sending simply went on too long to count. Jeremiah 7:25 has God sending his servants the prophets daily, rising up early.

“Wellbeloved” is the word the voice from heaven used of Jesus at the baptism (1:11) and on the mountain (9:7), so Mark’s readers know whom the parable means before anyone in it does. “Last” is the Greek eschaton: there is no one after him to send.

“Come, let us kill him” is word for word what Joseph’s brothers say in the Greek Old Testament (Genesis 37:20), another beloved son sent by his father. Some scholars suggest the tenants assume the father has died and that ownerless land would fall to its occupants; that is an inference, not stated.

Mark’s order is killed, then cast out: the body is thrown over the wall unburied, a final insult in a culture that treated burial as a duty. Matthew and Luke reverse the order, cast out and then killed.

Jesus asks the question and answers it himself; in Matthew’s account the hearers pronounce the sentence. “Others” is left unnamed. The owner, absent since verse 1, finally comes in person.

“Have ye not read” is pointed when spoken to the scholars of the temple, men who had read little else. “Head of the corner” can mean the foundation cornerstone or the capstone set last at the top; either way it is the stone the whole building depends on. Hebrew ben, son, and eben, stone, sound alike.

This is the second half of the quotation from Psalm 118, the psalm the crowd had drawn its “Hosanna” from on the road in (11:9). It belonged to the Hallel sung at Passover, the feast now two days away (14:1). The reversal is credited to God, not to the builders changing their minds.

Three verbs close the scene: they sought, they feared, they left. In chapter 4 outsiders hear parables without understanding; these men understand this one perfectly, and it changes nothing about what they intend.

“They send” is Mark’s vivid present tense, and the senders are the chief priests, scribes and elders of 11:27. Pharisees and Herodians were last paired in 3:6, plotting how to destroy him. “Catch” is a hunter’s word, used of snaring an animal, and appears nowhere else in the New Testament.

“Regardest not the person of men” is literally “you do not look at the face of men”, a Hebrew idiom for favouritism. “Tribute” is kensos, the Latin census, the head tax Rome imposed when Judea became a province in AD 6, which provoked the revolt of Judas of Galilee (Acts 5:37).

The doubled question pins him to yes or no. “Tempt” means test, the verb used of the Pharisees in 8:11 and 10:2. The “penny” is a denarius, a labourer’s day wage, and “that I may see it” suggests Jesus has none on him, while his questioners produce one inside the temple courts.

A denarius of Tiberius carried his laurelled head and the legend “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, Augustus”. For a Jew bound by the second commandment it was a portrait with a claim of divinity attached. “Image” is eikon, the word the Greek Genesis uses for humanity made in God’s image.

They asked whether to “give” tribute; Jesus answers with a different verb, “render”, which means give back or pay what is owed. The coin already belongs to the one whose face is on it. The second half of the sentence has no coin to point to and is left open.

This is the only appearance of the Sadducees in Mark. They were the priestly aristocracy, and Josephus says they held that the soul perishes with the body and accepted only the written law. Acts 23:8 adds that they denied angels and spirits as well, which bears on verse 25.

Their paraphrase blends Deuteronomy 25:5–6 with Genesis 38:8, where Judah tells Onan to “raise up seed to thy brother”. The custom, later called levirate marriage from the Latin levir, brother-in-law, kept a dead man’s name and land in his line.

Seven brothers make the case as complete as the number itself. Jewish readers knew a tale in the book of Tobit (3:8) of a woman whose seven husbands each died on the wedding night; the Sadducees may be drawing on something like it, though Mark does not say so.

“And the third likewise” compresses the rest of the scenario into a shrug. The Sadducees can afford to hurry; the repetition is not the point, only the count at the end.

The woman is never named and never speaks. In the puzzle she exists only as the one the seven “had”, and her death is added last to clear the stage for the resurrection question.

“Whose wife shall she be” is a question of ownership, put in the Greek possessive. They use the language of rising only to make it look ridiculous, since by their own belief no one will rise at all.

Jesus names two failures, the scriptures and the power of God, and then answers them in reverse order: God’s power in verse 25, the scriptures in verse 26. The question form expects the answer yes: surely this is why you go wrong.

Mentioning angels to Sadducees is pointed if, as Acts 23:8 says, they denied angels too. Marriage in their scenario exists to keep a name alive against death; where there is no more dying, the levirate duty has nothing left to do. That last step is an inference from the argument.

Before chapters and verses, a passage was cited by its subject, so “in the bush” means in the section of Exodus about the bush. Jesus argues from Moses because Moses was the authority the Sadducees had just quoted and the part of Scripture they held above the rest.

The words at the bush were spoken to Moses centuries after Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been buried, and God still names himself by them. “Ye therefore do greatly err” is Mark’s alone, a blunt closing sentence that Matthew and Luke both leave out.

Later rabbinic tradition counted 613 commandments in the Law, and asking which one weighed most was a familiar exercise. “First” here means foremost in rank, not earliest in the list. This man comes because he liked the last answer, not to trap the next one.

The opening line of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4, recited by devout Jews morning and evening. Only Mark includes it; Matthew and Luke begin at the command to love. Jesus starts with a confession about who God is before any command about what to do.

Deuteronomy 6:5 names three things, heart, soul and might. Mark’s list has four, adding “mind”, as if no part of a person is to be left over. The repeated “all” is the weight of the verse.

Leviticus 19:18 stands in a chapter about gleanings, fair wages and the deaf and blind. Joining two commands because both begin “thou shalt love” was a recognised Jewish way of reading texts together. The two are then counted as one standard: “none other commandment greater than these”.

“Well” picks up verse 28, where he saw that Jesus “answered them well”. His reply adds a phrase from Deuteronomy 4:35, “there is none else beside him”, showing he knows the texts behind the answer and can extend them.

He says “understanding” where Jesus said “mind”, reshaping the list in his own words rather than parroting it. The comparison with burnt offerings stands in a line with 1 Samuel 15:22 and Hosea 6:6, both of which rank obedience and mercy above sacrifice.

“Discreetly” in 1611 meant with discernment, not quietly; the Greek means having sense, and occurs only here. “Durst” is the old past of dare. The questions stop, and in the next verse Jesus asks one of his own.

“Answered” with no question before it is a Hebrew way of saying he took up the conversation. The scribes’ teaching rested on 2 Samuel 7, where David is promised a son whose throne will stand for ever.

Psalm 110:1 is the Old Testament verse most quoted in the New. The King James capitals mark the difference in Hebrew: “The LORD” is the divine name, “my Lord” is adoni, a title for a master or king. Ancient kings were shown with their feet resting on bound captives, which is what a footstool of enemies pictures.

“Common people” is literally “the great crowd”. “Gladly” is the same word Mark used of Herod, who “heard him gladly” when John preached (6:20) and still had him beheaded. Enjoying a speaker is not the same as following him.

The “long clothing” is the stole, a flowing robe that marked a man of standing and kept him from any manual work. “Salutations in the marketplaces” were public greetings with titles; Matthew 23:7 says the title they wanted was Rabbi.

The chief seats were the bench at the front of the synagogue, facing the congregation beside the chest of scrolls. “Uppermost rooms” is a 1611 sense of room as place: the Greek means the first couches at a banquet, beside the host.

Mark does not say how widows’ houses were devoured. Scribes often served as trustees of estates, and some are thought to have taken fees or abused that trust. The Law set widows under God’s particular protection (Exodus 22:22), so the charge lands among the gravest Israel knew.

The Mishnah describes thirteen trumpet-shaped chests in the temple court, each labelled for a different offering. Jesus sits “over against”, meaning opposite, and watches the manner of the giving, not only the sums. Heavy coins dropped into bronze would not have gone unheard.

The mite, lepton, was the smallest copper coin in circulation. Mark translates for Roman readers: two of them make a quadrans, the smallest Roman coin, here called a farthing. She had two, and could have kept one back.

“Verily” is amen, the solemn opening Jesus uses for his weightiest sayings. He calls his disciples over as for a lesson, the same summons that preceded teaching in 8:34 and 10:42. This is the last scene of his public teaching in the temple.

“All that she had, even all her living” says the same thing twice to close any loophole: the Greek bios means livelihood, the means of staying alive. In the very next verse a disciple admires the temple’s great stones, and Jesus says none will be left standing.