Parable of the Vineyard Owner

12 Jesus began to speak to them [the chief priests, scribes and elders who were questioning Him] in parables: “A man planted a vineyard and put a ^[a]wall around it, and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower; and he rented it out to tenant farmers and left the country.^{(A) 2} When the harvest season came he sent a ^[b]servant to the tenants, in order to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. ³ They took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ Again he sent them another servant, and they [threw stones and] wounded him in the head, and treated him disgracefully. ⁵ And he sent another, and that one they killed; then many others—some they beat and some they killed. ⁶ He still had one man left to send, a beloved son; he sent him last of all to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ⁷ But those tenants said to each other, ‘This man is the heir! Come on, let us kill him [and destroy the evidence], and his inheritance will be ours!’ ⁸ So they took him and killed him, and threw his body outside the vineyard. ⁹ What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants, and will give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰ Have you not even read this Scripture:

¹² And they were looking for a way to seize Him, but they were afraid of the crowd; for they knew that He spoke this parable in reference to [and as a charge against] them. And so they left Him and went away.