Mark 12:6

Mark

GOD’S LAST ARROW

Mar 12:6.

Reference to Isa 5:1 - Isa 5:30 There are differences in detail here which need not trouble us.

Isaiah’s parable is a review of the theocratic history of Israel, and clearly the messengers are the prophets; here Christ speaks of Himself and His own mission to Israel, and goes on to tell of His death as already accomplished.

I. The Son who follows and surpasses the servants.

{a} Our Lord here places Himself in the line of the prophets as coming for a similar purpose. The mission to Israel was the same. The mission of His life was the same.

The last words of the lawgiver certainly point to a person {Deu 18:18}: ‘A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you like unto me. Him shall ye hear.’ How ridiculous the cool superciliousness with which modern historical criticism ‘pooh-poohs’ that interpretation! But the contrast is quite as prominent as the resemblance. This saying is one which occurs in all the Synoptics, and is as full a declaration of Sonship as any in John’s Gospel. It reposes on the scene at the baptism {Mat 3:17}: ‘This is My beloved Son!’ Such a saying was well enough understood by the Jews to mean more than the ‘Messiah.’ It clearly involves kindred to the divine in a far other and higher sense than any prophet ever had it. It involves pre-existence. It asserts that He was the special object of the divine love, the ‘heir.’

You cannot relieve the New Testament Christ of the responsibility of having made such assertions. There they are! He did deliberately declare that He was, in a unique sense, ‘the Son’ on whom the love and complacency of the Father rested continually.

II. The aggravation of men’s sins as tending to the enhancement of the divine efforts.

The terrible Nemesis of evil is that it ever tends to reproduce itself in aggravated forms. Think of the influence of habit; the searing of conscience, so that we become able to do things that we would have shrunk from at an earlier stage. Remember how impunity leads to greater sin. So here the first servant is merely sent away empty, the second is wounded and disgraced, the third is killed. All evil is an inclined plane, a steady, downward progress. How beautifully the opposite principle of the divine love and patience is represented as striving with the increasing hate and resistance! According to Matthew, the householder sent other servants ‘more than the first,’ and the climax was that he sent his son. Mightier forces are brought to bear. This attraction increases as the square of the distance. The blacker the cloud, the brighter the sun; the thicker the ice, the hotter the flame; the harder the soil, the stronger the ploughshare. Note, too, the undertone of sacrifice and of yearning for the son which may be discerned in the ‘householder’s’ words. The son is his ‘dearest treasure,’ his mightiest gift, than which is nothing higher.

The mission of Christ is the ultimate appeal of God to men.

In the primary sense of the parable Jesus does close the history of the divine strivings with Israel. After Christ, the last of the prophets, the divine voice ceases; after the blaze of that light all is dark. There is nothing more remarkable in the whole history of the world than that cessation in an instant, as it were, of the long, august series of divine efforts for Israel. Henceforward there is an awful silence. ‘Forsaken Israel wanders lone.’

And the principle involved for us is the same.

‘Christ crucified’ is more than Christ miracle-working. That ‘more’ we have, as the Jews had. But if that avails not, then nothing else will.

He is ‘last’ because highest, strongest, and all-sufficient.

He is ‘last’ inasmuch as all since are but echoes of His voice and proclaimers of His grace.

He is ‘last’ as the eternal and the permanent, the ‘same for ever’ {Heb 13:8}. There are to be no new powers for the world; no new forces to draw men to God. God’s quiver is empty, His last bolt shot, His most tender appeal made.

III. The unwearied divine charity.

‘They will reverence My Son.’ May we not say this is a divine hope? It is not worth while to make a difficulty of the bold representation. It is but parallel to all the dealings of God with men; and it sets forth the possibility that He might have won Israel back to God and to obedience. It suggests the good faith and the earnestness with which God sent Him, and He came, to bring Israel back to God. But we are not to suppose that this divine hope excluded the divine purpose of His death or was inconsistent with that, for He goes on to speak of His death as if it were past {Mar 12:8}. This shows how distinctly He foreknew it.

Its highest aspect is not here, for it was not needed for the parable. ‘With wicked hands ye have crucified,’ etc., is true, as well as ‘I lay it down of Myself.’

Let us lay to heart the solemn love which warns by prophesying, tells what men are going to do in order that they may not do it {and what He will do in order that He may not have to do it}. And let us yield ourselves to the power of Christ’s death as God’s magnet for drawing us all back to Him; and as certain to bring about at last the satisfaction of the Father’s long-frustrated hope: ‘They will reverence my Son,’ and the fulfilment of the Son’s long-unaccomplished prediction: ‘I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

12:6 Mark’s early readers would have immediately associated his son whom he loved dearly with Jesus (cp. 1:11; 9:7; see also 1:1; 3:11; 5:7).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Mar 12:6. Ἔτι, as yet) Construe with having.—ἕνα ἀγαπητὸν, one—His well-beloved) These two words do not altogether signify the same thing.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

6. The text is confused; read ἔτι ἕνα εἶχεν υἱόν, ἀγαπητόν· ἀπέστειλεν αὐτὸν ἔσχατον πρὸς αὐτούς ([2700][2701][2702][2703]); other witnesses support portions of this reading. In Mar 12:6; Mar 12:9; Mar 12:20; Mar 12:23; Mar 12:27; Mar 12:37, the οὖν is almost certainly an interpolation. Perhaps Mar 10:9, Mar 13:35, Mar 15:12 are the only places in Mk in which οὖν is original; Mar 11:31 is doubtful. Scribes often inserted particles for the sake of smoothness, as γάρ in Mar 12:36.

[2700] Codex Sinaiticus. 4th cent. Discovered by Tischendorf in 1859 at the Monastery of St Katharine on Mount Sinai. Now at St Petersburg. The whole Gospel, ending at Mar 16:8. Photographic facsimile, 1911.

[2701] Codex Vaticanus. 4th cent., but perhaps a little later than א. In the Vatican Library almost since its foundation by Pope Nicolas V., and one of its greatest treasures. The whole Gospel, ending at Mar 16:8. Photographic facsimile, 1889.

[2702] Codex Regius. 8th cent. An important witness. At Paris. Contains Mar 1:1 to Mar 10:15; Mar 10:30 to Mar 15:1; Mar 15:20 to Mar 16:20, but the shorter ending is inserted between Mar 16:8 and Mar 16:9, showing that the scribe preferred it to the longer one.

[2703] Codex Sangallensis. 9th or 10th cent. Contains the Gospels nearly complete, with an interlinear Latin translation. The text of Mark is specially good, agreeing often with CL. At St Gall.

6. ἀγαπητόν. It is possible to take the term as a Messianic title in Mar 1:11 and Mar 9:7, but not here. Put a comma between υἱόν and ἀγαπητόν, “one son, a beloved one,” i.e. an only son (Jdg 11:34). Cf. Gal 4:4; Heb 1:2. In N.T. ἀγαπητός is used only of Christ or of Christians.

Ἐντραπήσονται. In all three. The meaning seems to be that of “turning towards” a person to pay respect to him (Luk 18:2; 2Th 3:14; Heb 12:9). But the act. (1Co 4:14) means “I put to shame,” which may come from “I turn in,” i.e. “make a man hang his head,” either in reverence or in confusion; cf. ἐντροπή (1Co 6:5; 1Co 15:34). This meaning is found in LXX. and in late colloquial Greek, as shown in papyri. The question of “turning towards” or “turning in” is unimportant.

This is parable or allegory, not history, and the owner of the vineyard is a man (Mar 12:1), who might be mistaken about the effect of sending his son. He acts, not as God acts, but as He appears to act. God sometimes seems to repent of His own actions (Jer 18:8; Jer 18:10; Jer 26:13; Joe 2:13; Amo 7:3; Jon 3:9); but this is only man’s point of view (Num 23:13). Cf. Isa 5:4.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

(6) His well-beloved.—Added by St. Mark to St. Matthew’s briefer form, “he sent unto them his son.”

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

6. Having yet therefore] Note here the description of this last of the ambassadors of the householder. Not only was he his son, but his only one, his well-beloved, “a sone most dereworth,” Wyclif. This marks as strongly as possible the difference of rank between Christ and the prophets, by whom “at sundry times and in divers manners God spake in times past unto the fathers” (Heb_1:1), the distinction between them and the dignity of Him, Who only was in the highest sense His Son, and Whom He hath “appointed heir of all things” (Heb_1:2; Heb_3:5-6).

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Having yet therefore one son, his well beloved,.... The Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the one, and only Son of God his Father, his only begotten Son, for he has no other Son in the same way of filiation; and who is his dear Son, the Son of his love, who was loved by him before the foundation of the world; and whom he declared to be his beloved Son, both at his baptism, and at his transfiguration upon the mount, by a voice from heaven: this Son he having with him, in his bosom, as one brought up with him, and rejoicing before him,

he sent him also last unto them; after all the prophets had been with them, when the last days were come, the end of the Jewish state, civil and ecclesiastical; see Heb 1:1;

saying, they will reverence my son. The Syriac, Arabic, and Persic versions read, "perhaps they will reverence my son", as in Luk 20:13; See Gill on Mat 21:37.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

5 And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.

6 Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.

Ver. 6. They will reverence my son] They will surely be ashamed to look him in the face. This is the proper signification of the word εντραπησονται. But sin had woaded {a} an impudence in their faces, that they could blush no more than a sackbut.

{a} To dye, colour, or stain with woad, sometimes (in dyeing) as a ground for another colour. ŒD

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 6-8. Having yet therefore one son, his well-beloved. There is strong evidence in favor of a different reading here: namely (eti ena eicen uion), he had yet one, a beloved son. There is something very touching in this form of expression. Many messages had been sent; many means had been tried. But one other resource remained. "There is one, a beloved on. I will send him; they will, surely reverence him (entraphsontai ton mou). They will reflect, and reflection will bring shame and submission and reverence." This was the last effort of Divine mercy the sending of the Incarnate God, whom the Jews put to death without the city. St. Mark"s words seem rather to imply that they killed him within the vineyard, and cast out the dead body. But it is possible that in his narrative he mentions the climax firstthey killed him, and then returns to a detail of the dreadful tragedy; they cast him out of the vineyard, and there slew him (See Mat_21:39)

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

son

Jesus Himself. Cf. Heb 1:1-3

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

a beloved son

It is implied that this is the owner's son. AT: "his beloved son" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

the heir

This is the owner's heir, who would inherit the vineyard after his father died. AT: "the owner's heir" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

the inheritance

The tenants are referring to the vineyard as "the inheritance." AT: "this vineyard" (See: Synecdoche)

translationWords

beloved

heir

inherit

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

6. Ἔτι ἕνα εἶχεν, υἱὸν ἀγαπητόν· ἀπέστειλε αὐτὸν ἔσχατον πρὸς αὐτούς—Still (after losing all these), he had one (other to send), a beloved son: he sent him last to them. ἐντραπήσονται τὸν υἱόν μου—they will respect my Son_4 The Son in the allegory represents Jesus himself. The nation, which had rejected God’s servants, the prophets, will finally put to death the Son himself, the Messianic King.

εἶχεν υἱὸν, instead of υἱὸν ἔχων, Tisch. Treg. WH. RV. א BC2 L Δ 33, Harcl. (Pesh.). Omit αὐτοῦ his after ἀγαπητόν, Tisch. Treg. WH. RV. א BCDL Δ mss. Lat. Vet. Egyptt. Vulg. Pesh. Omit καὶ after ἀπέστειλε Tisch. Treg. WH. RV. א BLX2Δ 13, one ms. Lat. Vet. Pesh.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Therefore. The best texts omit. Last. Mark only.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.