Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 21:33

"Hear another parable: There was a man that was a householder, who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country." — Matthew 21:33 (ASV)

Which planted a vineyard — The frequent recurrence of this imagery during this period of our Lord’s ministry is significant (Matthew 21:28; Luke 13:6). The parable that now meets us points, by its very opening, to the great example of this image's use in Isaiah 5:1.

Taking the thought suggested there as the key to the parable, the vineyard is “the house of Israel.” The “fence” finds its counterpart in the institutions that made Israel a separate and peculiar people. The “winepress” (or better, wine-vat—that is, the reservoir underneath the press) represents the Temple, as that into which the “wine” of devotion, thanksgiving, and charity was to flow. The “tower,” used in vineyards as a place of observation and defense against plunderers , symbolizes Jerusalem and the outward polity connected with it.

In the same way, letting the vineyard out to husbandmen and the owner going “into a far country” corresponds historically to the conquest by which the Israelites became possessors of Canaan. They were left, as it were, to themselves to make what use they chose of their opportunities.