12:9a

What then will the owner of the vineyard do?: This is a rhetorical question. It makes the hearers think about what the owner in the parable should do. Although the people probably knew the answer to the question, Jesus answered it himself. Jesus used this question to direct attention to the obvious conclusion of his parable. There are at least two ways to translate this:

• As a rhetorical question. For example:

Jesus then asked, “What do you think the owner of the vineyard will do?”

• As a statement. For example:

Now then, here is what the owner of the vineyard will do.

Use whichever form is most natural in your language to direct attention to the conclusion of a story or parable.

then: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as then connects Jesus’ question in this part of the verse to the parable he had just told. This question causes the hearers to consider what should be the conclusion of Jesus’ story. Some English versions use a result connector like “so” to do this. Other versions begin a new quote here. Consider how you would indicate such a result or conclusion in your language. Some ways to do this were given in the examples above.

12:9b

He will come: The words He will come indicate that the owner will go to his grape farm where the farmers are. In some languages it may be more natural to say, “He will go.” Make sure that you use come and “go” in a consistent way in this story. Use them in a way that is natural in your language for this context. You may also need to make explicit where the owner would go. For example:

He will come/go to his grape farm and kill those farmers

and kill those tenants: Jesus probably implied that the owner would cause other people to punish the grape farmers by killing them. So in some languages it may be better to translate this as:

and cause others to kill those grape farmers

tenants: The word tenants continues to refer to the farmers who had agreed to take care of the grape farm for the owner.

12:9c

and will give the vineyard to others: This phrase will give the vineyard to others indicates that the owner would choose different people to take care of his grape farm for him. It does not indicate that the owner would give the farm away. He still would be the owner. After the owner killed the evil farmers, he would lease the farm to men who would be more faithful to him.

© 2008 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.