Marcos 12

BLIVRE · Chapter 12/16

1Então [Jesus] começou a lhes dizer por parábolas: Um homem plantou uma vinha, cercou-a, fundou [nela] uma prensa de uvas, edificou uma torre, e a arrendou a uns lavradores; e partiu-se daquela terra.

2E, quando chegou o tempo, mandou um servo aos lavradores, para que recebesse dos lavradores do fruto da vinha.

3Mas eles, tomando-o à força, feriram-no, e mandaram-no vazio.

4E voltou a lhes mandar outro servo; e eles, apedrejando-o, feriram-no na cabeça e voltaram a mandá-lo maltratado.

5E voltou a mandar outro, ao qual mataram, e [mandou] muitos outros, e a uns feriram, e a outros mataram.

6Tendo ele, pois, ainda um, o seu filho amado, mandou-lhes também por último a este, dizendo: Pelo menos respeitarão o meu filho.

7Mas aqueles lavradores disseram entre si: Este é o herdeiro; vinde, e o matemos; então a herança será nossa.

8E pegando dele, mataram[-no] , e lançaram[-no] fora da vinha.

9Que, pois, o senhor da vinha fará? Ele virá, destruirá aos lavradores, e dará a vinha a outros.

10Acaso ainda não lestes esta escritura: “A pedra que os edificadores rejeitaram, esta foi feita por cabeça de esquina.

11Pelo Senhor foi feito isto, e é maravilhoso em nossos olhos”?

12E buscavam prendê-lo, mas temiam a multidão; porque entendiam que era contra eles que dizia aquela parábola; então o deixaram e se retiraram.

13E mandaram-lhe alguns dos fariseus e dos herodianos, para que o apanhassem em [alguma] palavra.

14Eles se aproximaram e lhe disseram: Mestre, sabemos que és homem de verdade, e não te interessa [agradar] a ninguém, porque não te importas com a aparência humana, mas com verdade ensinas o caminho de Deus. É lícito pagar tributo a César, ou não? Devemos pagar, ou não devemos?

15E ele, entendendo a hipocrisia deles, disse-lhes: Por que estais me tentando? Trazei-me uma moeda, para que eu a veja.

16E trouxeram. E perguntou-lhes: De quem é esta imagem, e a inscrição? E eles lhe disseram: De César.

17Então Jesus, lhes respondeu: Dai, pois, a César o que é de César, e a Deus o que é de Deus. E admiram-se dele.

18E vieram a ele os saduceus, que dizem não haver ressurreição, e perguntaram-lhe:

19Mestre, Moisés nos escreveu que, se o irmão de alguém morresse, e deixasse mulher, mas não filhos, que seu irmão se casasse com a viúva , e gerasse descendência ao seu irmão.

20Houve, pois, sete irmãos, e o primeiro casou-se com a mulher, e morrendo, não deixou descendente.

21Casou-se com ela também o segundo, e morreu; e nem este deixou descendente; e o terceiro da mesma maneira.

22Os sete casaram-se com ela, mas não deixaram descendente. Finalmente, depois de todos, morreu também a mulher.

23Na ressurreição, pois, quando ressuscitarem, ela será a mulher de qual deles? Porque os sete a tiveram por mulher.

24E Jesus lhes respondeu: Acaso não é por isso que errais, por não conhecerdes as Escrituras, nem o poder de Deus?

25Pois, quando ressuscitarem dos mortos, nem se casarão, nem se darão em casamento; mas serão como os anjos que estão nos céus.

26E quanto aos mortos que ressuscitarão, não lestes no livro de Moisés, como Deus lhe falou com a sarça, dizendo: Eu sou o Deus de Abraão, o Deus de Isaque, e o Deus de Jacó?

27Deus não é [Deus] de mortos, mas de vivos. Portanto errais muito.

28Então aproximou-se dele um dos escribas, que os havia ouvido discutir. Como ele sabia que [Jesus] havia lhes respondido bem, perguntou-lhe: Qual é o primeiro mandamento de todos?

29E Jesus lhe respondeu: O primeiro de todos os mandamentos é: “Ouve Israel, o Senhor nosso Deus é o único Senhor;

30amarás, pois, ao Senhor teu Deus com todo o teu coração, com toda a tua alma, com todo o teu entendimento, e com todas as tuas forças.” Este é o primeiro mandamento.

31E o segundo é semelhante: “Amarás ao teu próximo como a ti mesmo”. Não há outro mandamento maior que estes.

32E o escriba lhe disse: Muito bem, Mestre, com verdade disseste que há um só Deus, e não há outro além dele.

33E que amá-lo com todo o coração, com todo o entendimento, com toda a alma, e com todas as forças; e amar ao próximo como a si mesmo, é mais de que todos os holocaustos e sacrifícios.

34Jesus viu que ele havia respondido sabiamente, e disse-lhe: Não estás longe do Reino de Deus. E ninguém mais ousou lhe perguntar.

35E Jesus respondia e dizia, enquanto ensinava no templo: Como os escribas dizem que o Cristo é filho de Davi?

36Porque o mesmo Davi disse pelo Espírito Santo: Disse o Senhor ao meu Senhor, senta-te à minha direita, até que eu ponha os teus inimigos debaixo dos teus pés.

37Ora, [se] o próprio Davi o chama de Senhor, como, pois, é so eu filho?E a grande multidão o ouvia de boa vontade.

38E dizia-lhes em seu ensino: Cuidado com os escribas, que gostam de andar com roupas compridas, das saudações nas praças,

39das primeiras cadeiras nas sinagogas, e dos primeiros assentos nas ceias.

40que devoram as casas das viúvas, com pretexto de longas orações. Esses receberão mais grave condenação.

41Quando Jesus estava sentado de frente à arca do tesouro, observava como a multidão lançava dinheiro na arca do tesouro; e muitos ricos lançavam muito.

42E uma pobre viúva veio, e lançou duas pequenas moedas, de pouco valor.

43Então [Jesus] chamou a si os seus discípulos, e disse-lhes: Em verdade vos digo que esta pobre viúva lançou mais que todos os que lançaram na arca do tesouro;

44Porque todos lançaram daquilo que lhes sobra; mas esta, da sua pobreza lançou tudo o que tinha, todo o seu sustento.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

Jesus tells the parable of the wicked tenants, answers about paying tribute to Caesar, refutes the Sadducees regarding the resurrection, sums up the law in loving God and neighbor, raises the question of the Messiah being the son of David, and praises a poor widow's humble offering.

Explanation

The parable of the tenants who mistreat the servants and kill the vineyard owner's son is a clear allegory of the historical rejection of Israel's prophets and, ultimately, of Jesus himself by the religious leaders of the time. The answer about tribute to Caesar, 'render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,' avoids the political trap of choosing between loyalty to Rome or to the Jewish people, pointing instead to a greater principle of right priorities. The greatest commandment, joining love for God and love for neighbor, was a synthesis already debated among Jewish teachers of the time, but Jesus presents it with a clarity and authority that impresses even a scribe present. The poor widow's offering, two small low-value coins, is praised by Jesus not for the amount, but for the sacrificial proportion in relation to the little she had, contrasting with the larger but proportionally smaller donations of the rich.

Fun facts

  • The widow's two coins were 'lepta,' the smallest monetary unit in circulation in Judea at the time, and together they were worth only a Roman quadrans — the smallest practical fraction of currency used in daily trade.
  • The 'stone the builders rejected' quoted by Jesus comes from Psalm 118, a messianic text that the early Christians would use repeatedly to explain Jesus' rejection and exaltation.

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Marcos 12:1The elements of this parable, hedge, winepress, tower, come almost directly from an ancient song by the prophet Isaiah about a vineyard, an image already familiar to the crowd as a symbol of Israel.
  2. Marcos 12:2Leasing land and expecting part of the harvest as payment was a common arrangement when the owner lived far away. The scene describes a real agricultural practice of the time, not just a plot detail.
  3. Marcos 12:3The tenants' first reaction already sets the tone of the story: instead of paying, they beat the messenger and send him away empty-handed.
  4. Marcos 12:4The violence escalates with the second servant, wounded in the head and treated with disrespect, raising the tension of the account.
  5. Marcos 12:5The repetition of servants killed or beaten represents, in the reading of the time, a long history of prophets rejected and mistreated throughout history.
  6. Marcos 12:6The owner's naive hope, "they will reverence my son", deliberately contrasts with the brutal outcome that follows.
  7. Marcos 12:7The tenants' logic is twisted: they treat the owner's absence as if it were final abandonment, imagining that killing the heir would secure them ownership of the land.
  8. Marcos 12:8Killing the son and throwing him out of the vineyard almost exactly foreshadows what will happen to Jesus: killed and cast out of the city of Jerusalem.
  9. Marcos 12:9Jesus answers His own rhetorical question, and His listeners understand it as a prediction about the fate of the religious leadership that rejected His authority.
  10. Marcos 12:10The quotation comes from Psalm 118 and was already used as a reference to someone rejected by leaders who later becomes central, a text the early Christians applied directly to Jesus.
  11. Marcos 12:11The continuation of the same psalm reinforces the idea that this reversal, from rejected to essential, is God's doing, something surprising in human eyes.
  12. Marcos 12:12Once again, fear of the crowd's reaction prevents an immediate arrest. The leaders understand perfectly that the parable was about them, but choose to hold back for now.
  13. Marcos 12:13Pharisees and Herodians unite against Jesus once more, the same unusual alliance that had already appeared earlier, in chapter 3.
  14. Marcos 12:14The exaggerated flattery at the start of the question is bait for a trap: the tribute to Caesar was a politically explosive topic, tied to recent revolts against the Roman tax.
  15. Marcos 12:15The Roman coin used to pay taxes bore the emperor's image, considered offensive by many Jews under the law against carved images. Asking whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar was a trap: saying yes angered the people, saying no was sedition against Rome, and Jesus' answer turns the question back without falling into either side.
  16. Marcos 12:16The Roman coin carried the emperor's image and, in many versions, an inscription that practically declared him divine, something offensive to Jewish religious sensibility, which gave extra weight to the question of paying tribute with it.
  17. Marcos 12:17The answer avoids both possible traps: saying yes would look like collaboration with Rome, saying no would be sedition. Jesus turns the question back without landing on either side.
  18. Marcos 12:18The Sadducees were a religious group that only accepted the first five books of the Bible as authority and rejected newer ideas like resurrection, which explains why this particular question comes from them.
  19. Marcos 12:19The law of Moses required that, if a man died without children, his brother should marry the widow to produce an heir in the dead man's name, a custom meant to protect the family line and the widow herself. The Sadducees, who did not believe in resurrection, use an extreme example of this law to try to show that life after death made no practical sense.
  20. Marcos 12:20The scenario of the seven brothers is built on the levirate marriage law cited in the previous verse, taken to an extreme to sound absurd.
  21. Marcos 12:21The repetition of the same fate for the second and third brothers builds up the exaggeration of the story before reaching the final question.
  22. Marcos 12:22After going through all seven brothers with no children, even the woman herself dies, closing the hypothetical cycle set up by the Sadducees.
  23. Marcos 12:23The final question is the logical trap: if the resurrection were real, whose wife would the woman be, having had seven husbands? The intent was to make the idea sound absurd.
  24. Marcos 12:24Jesus goes straight to the root of the error: they were misjudging both the Scriptures and the power of God, not just making a simple logical slip.
  25. Marcos 12:25The answer completely changes the picture: life after the resurrection would not simply continue earthly relationships, including marriage, but would be something of a different nature altogether.
  26. Marcos 12:26The bush refers to the burning bush where God appeared to Moses, one of the best-known episodes of that tradition. Jesus uses the way God describes Himself there, in the present tense, as the God of patriarchs who had died centuries earlier, as an argument that they were still somehow alive to God.
  27. Marcos 12:27The conclusion follows directly from the previous quotation, about God identifying Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the present tense. For Jesus, that alone was proof enough that they were, in some way, still alive to God.
  28. Marcos 12:28This scribe approaches in a different tone from the other hostile questions in the chapter, acknowledging that Jesus had answered the previous questions well.
  29. Marcos 12:29Jesus' answer opens by quoting the Shema, the central declaration of Jewish faith recited daily: "The Lord our God is one Lord".
  30. Marcos 12:30The rest of the quotation calls for loving God with everything, heart, soul, mind, and strength, a total devotion, not a partial one.
  31. Marcos 12:31The second commandment, loving one's neighbor as oneself, comes from another book of the law and is placed by Jesus side by side with the first, as a summary of what the whole law asks.
  32. Marcos 12:32The scribe not only agrees but repeats and reinforces Jesus' answer, a rare moment of agreement between them amid so many confrontations in the chapter.
  33. Marcos 12:33The scribe goes further, concluding on his own that loving God and neighbor matters more than all the temple sacrifices, an idea already found in ancient prophets as a criticism of empty ritual.
  34. Marcos 12:34Jesus acknowledges the wisdom of the answer with a rare compliment for a religious authority, and this moment marks the end of the chapter's string of hostile questions. No one else dares to challenge Him after this.
  35. Marcos 12:35After answering everyone else's questions, it is now Jesus who poses a riddle to the scribes about the identity of the Christ.
  36. Marcos 12:36The quotation comes from Psalm 110, attributed to David speaking by the Spirit, one of the texts most used by early Christians to explain who the Messiah was.
  37. Marcos 12:37The riddle points to something greater than a mere descendant: if David himself calls this Christ "Lord", He would be more than just a son in his line, and the crowd, unlike the leaders, hears this with delight.
  38. Marcos 12:38Long robes and seats of honor in synagogues and dinners were visible marks of social and religious status that the scribes actively sought. Jesus criticizes not the position itself, but the taste for appearance and privilege combined with the abuse of trust against widows, defenseless people in that society.
  39. Marcos 12:39The criticism of the scribes continues with two more habits: seeking the best seats in synagogues and at banquets, visible marks of status they cultivated.
  40. Marcos 12:40The most serious accusation comes here: using long prayers as a religious front while financially exploiting widows, one of the most vulnerable groups in that society.
  41. Marcos 12:41The temple treasury sat in an area with trumpet-shaped receptacles, where people dropped in monetary offerings. Jesus watches this activity seated facing the spot.
  42. Marcos 12:42The two small coins were the smallest copper coin in circulation, together worth very little; the text explains they amounted to only a few cents. What impresses Jesus is not the amount, but the proportion: the rich gave out of their surplus, she gave everything she had to live on that day.
  43. Marcos 12:43Jesus' statement flips the expected math: in His eyes, the value of the poor widow's offering outweighs that of everyone else who gave far more in absolute terms.
  44. Marcos 12:44The difference lies in proportion: the others gave out of their surplus without feeling the loss, while she gave everything she had to live on, a direct contrast with the criticism of the scribes who exploited widows, made only two verses earlier.

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