Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
11| When the rulers of the Jewish nation, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, had gathered together in Jerusalem, and he himself was spending his time in the temple itself, he foretold obscurely, by way of the parable, what they would soon dare to do against him, and the destruction that would overtake them for their daring, in this manner [….] The parable is like the one in the prophet Isaiah, where it runs as follows: "A vineyard was made for the beloved on a hill, in a rich place; and I put a hedge around it and fenced it and planted it, and built a tower in the middle of it, and dug a winevat in front of it, and I waited for it to produce grapes, but it produced thorns." But the parable in the prophet set out the vineyard, and he also explained what it was, saying: "For the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah his beloved young plant; I waited for it to do justice, but it did lawlessness, and not righteousness but an outcry." The Savior's parable is told in the same way as the prophet's, so that it might be recognized and discerned by those present and listening; yet it does not speak about the vineyard, since the prophet had already given his prediction about that. What the prophet had passed over in silence, he himself puts into the parable: I mean what concerns the tenants of the vineyard. These were the elders of the people and the chief priests, rulers and teachers. They were the ones responsible for the whole multitude bringing forth evil fruit, and because of them the vineyard has been left desolate, that is, their whole nation, and its hedge has been torn down, plainly meaning those who once fought for the nation and guarded the people together with the place itself; and the tower in it is the temple itself, and the winevat is the altar. All these, at any rate, were utterly torn up from their foundations because of the bloodguilt of the tenants, who killed the first servants and the second sent to them, plainly the prophets in their several times. The old scripture bears witness to the account, and among the prophets Elijah, saying in prayer to God: "Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I alone have been left behind, and they are seeking my life, to take it." These, then, are the charges the prophet brings in his prayer against the rulers of the Jewish nation; and they, not content with the murder of the prophets, later killed the son himself too, that is, the Son of God, not in ignorance, but knowing very well and precisely that he was the heir. The Savior was hinting at these things about himself before the passion, anticipating what was to come by his foreknowledge. And he says this while spending his time in the temple itself, to the tenants of the vineyard in his own day, the chief priests and teachers and the rest of the leaders of the people, contriving, very clearly, through the parable, that they should pronounce sentence against themselves. So at the end of the parable he asks them: "When the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" But they, who did not yet grasp that this had been said of them, cast their vote against themselves [….]
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/114-on-the-theophany-greek-fragments-chapter-11#p11), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
← All of Eusebius of Caesarea: The Works of Eusebius of Caesarea