10
When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants to receive his share of the crop from the vineyard; but the tenants beat him up and sent him away empty-handed.
11
He sent another servant; they beat him too, insulted him and sent him away empty-handed.
12
He sent yet a third; this one they wounded and threw out.
13
"Then the owner of the vineyard said, `What am I to do? I will send my son, whom I love; maybe they will respect him.'
14
But when the tenants saw him, they discussed it among themselves and said, `This is the heir; let's kill him, so that the inheritance will be ours!'
15
And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. "Now what will the owner of the vineyard do to them?
16
He will come and put an end to those tenants and give the vineyard to others!" When the people heard this, they said, "Heaven forbid!"
17
But Yeshua looked searchingly at them and said, "Then what is this which is written in the Tanakh, `The very rock which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'?
18
Whoever falls on that stone will be broken in pieces; but if it falls on him, he will be crushed to powder!"
19
The Torah-teachers and the head cohanim would have seized him at that very moment, because they knew that he had aimed this parable at them, but they were afraid of the people.
20
So they kept a close watch on the situation. They sent spies who hypocritically represented themselves as righteous, so that they might seize hold of something Yeshua said, as an excuse to hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor.