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Mark 12

KJV · Chapter 12/16

1And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.

2And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.

3And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty.

4And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.

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

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

7But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.

8And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.

9What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.

10And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner:

11This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

12And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.

13And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words.

14And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Cesar, or not?

15Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.

16And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Cesar’s.

17And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Cesar the things that are Cesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.

18Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying,

19Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

20Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed.

21And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise.

22And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also.

23In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife.

24And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?

25For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

26And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?

27He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.

28And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?

29And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:

30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

32And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:

33And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

34And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.

35And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David?

36For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.

37David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.

38And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces,

39And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts:

40Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.

41And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.

42And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.

43And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:

44For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.

📖 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 12:4The violence escalates with the second servant, wounded in the head and treated with disrespect, raising the tension of the account.
  5. Mark 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. Mark 12:6The owner's naive hope, "they will reverence my son", deliberately contrasts with the brutal outcome that follows.
  7. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 12:13Pharisees and Herodians unite against Jesus once more, the same unusual alliance that had already appeared earlier, in chapter 3.
  14. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 12:29Jesus' answer opens by quoting the Shema, the central declaration of Jewish faith recited daily: "The Lord our God is one Lord".
  30. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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. Mark 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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