Husbandman

A title given to Jehovah in His relationship with Israel. He had planted Israel as a vine on the earth, and He looked for fruit; but, alas, it produced only wild grapes. Isa 5:1-7. He then planted the true Vine on the earth which in every way gave much fruit. Joh 15:1. In another metaphor, Jehovah let out a vineyard to Israel, and prepared it for fruit-bearing; but when He sent for the fruit, His servants were ill-treated and killed. Last of all He sent His Son, but Him they killed also. God has destroyed those husbandmen, and has let out His vineyard unto the Gentiles: Mat 21:33-41: cf. Rom 11:21.

HUSBANDMAN (γεωργός).—Jesus knew well the life of the fields. His keen eye for illustrations fell readily on the most fundamental of occupations; one universal since the primeval days when simple patriarchs began to be husbandmen, and princes digged at the up-springing well (‘which the nobles of the people delved, with the scepter and with their staves,’ Num 21:18 Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ). Agriculture, in Israel’s best days, had been the chief employment, and still from out the scattered villages men were to be seen at work upon the croft like patches. As sure token of happy and successful labours, the plain was verdant with the growing grain, the vines hung graceful from the terraced slope. The human mind never fails to be arrested in religious mood by the mystic forces of nature; and in the case of the Jews there was this added discipline, that Scripture, read statedly in their hearing, teemed with references to the tilling of the soil. Ready to the lips of Jesus, therefore, was an allusive speech which should prove powerful in appeal to educated and uneducated alike. The way into the popular sentiment was clear for Him. People were at least grounded in the elements of literary thought. On the principles and growth of the great Kingdom He could discourse profitably under the familiar images of seed-time and harvest, tree or plant culture in their gardens, or the on goings in their season of the workers in the vineyard on the hill.

What probably commended this line of teaching to Jesus, however, was the fact that husbandry suggests, in singular fashion, the co-ordination of man’s activity with God’s. Without, on the one hand, what is graciously supplied to us—soil and seed, rain and sunshine—man’s labour could be of no avail; yet, on the other hand, without that labour well directed, mankind would perish. The lesson is writ large in cultivated fields that faith and hope, zeal and patience, have a reward assured which comes immediate from the hand of God. Further, this rural imagery of Jesus met the fact that the minds hearing Him were not all equally ready to see the truth in His light. For such persons, pictures from the outer and familiar realm stored up material for self-culture in the future. And nothing better certifies the supreme instinct of the Master than this, that the thousand revelations of the natural science of to-day illustrate only the more those spiritual principles and universal laws of the unseen which He was wont to enforce by reference to phenomena around Him as He spoke.

The slighter glances recorded of Jesus in this realm are fairly numerous. Compare the references to plants and trees (Mat 7:16-20; Mat 12:33, Luk 6:43-45), the putting of the hand to the plough (Luk 9:62), the application of salt to the land (Mat 5:13, Luk 14:35), the ox fallen into the pit (Luk 14:5), the action of the airs of heaven (Luk 12:55, Joh 3:8), the glowing or beelouded sky (Mat 16:2-3, Luk 12:54), the buyer gone to survey his piece of ground (Luk 14:18), or busy testing his new teams (Luk 14:19), the deeply-suggestive corn of wheat (Joh 12:24), the sifting of the same (Luk 22:31), the tenant counting up his measures (Luk 16:7), labourers needed for the plenteous harvest (Mat 9:37-38, Luk 10:2), the growing whiteness of the crops (Joh 4:35), the fated twain of field workers (Mat 24:40, Luk 17:36), and the beautiful picture of the fig-tree at the approach of summer putting forth leaves upon its tender branch (Mat 24:32, Luk 21:29).

But chiefly in the exquisite parables do we see that power of observation in the material world which makes Jesus so engaging as a child of nature, who lived much, and lived free, in the open air of Palestine. As we move with Him by the highways and the hedges, we descry in one field the servant ploughing or feeding cattle (Luk 17:7), in another the well-remembered spot where gleams of joy lit up the rustic’s eyes who happed upon hid treasure (Mat 13:44). Here we have the corn-lands green with the sprouting of the tiny blade (Mar 4:26-29), tangled betimes with the tares (Mat 13:25); there the rocky and the thorn-choked patches (Mar 4:5-7); and over all the hovering birds (Mar 4:4), ready to devour the precious seed. We see the labourers standing in the market-place for hire (Mat 20:3), the prosperous farmer critical about his barns (Luk 12:18), the shepherd searching the grassy plateau for his sheep (Mat 18:12). Men are working in the clumps of vines (Mat 21:28), from which the wine-press peeps (Mar 12:1), and where the watch-tower stands upon its bolder coign (Mar 12:1). See the garden where the tall mustard grows (Luk 13:19), and yonder the forlorn fig-tree (Luk 13:6) threatened with the axe. The whole world of nature, the varied scenes of toil, are laid amply under contribution, made the emblems and the witness of the highest things of the Spirit. (See art. Vine (Allegory of) for discourse upon the Vine and the Branches, Joh 15:1-8, where the Father is the Husbandman; cf. also art. Agriculture).

One parable must be specially noted—the story of the Wicked Husbandmen (Mat 21:33-43, Mar 12:1-9, Luk 20:9 ff.), which is an incisive review of God’s relations with His people. Endless pains had been taken (Mar 12:1) with the vineyard of the Kingdom, yet when messenger after messenger came seeking fruit in the Divine name, they had been sent empty away, and contumeliously treated—one beaten, another wounded, a third killed (Mar 12:2-5). Nowhere does Jesus put Himself more clearly in line with the prophets. As the gloomy night is gathering fast around His own head, He feels full affinity of fate with them. In the passage He carries, indeed, the history of Israel’s shameful conduct not only to the days of the Baptist, but even a little beyond the moment of utterance. We have insight into the marvellous composure of the heart of Jesus as He pictures His own case in the person of the one son, well beloved, who was cast out, bruised and bleeding, his body soon to be cold in death upon the highway (Mar 12:8). Thus, in tragic fashion, He broadens the charge against His opponents, with their complacent jealousy (Mar 12:7), by proving their conduct to be of a piece with Israel’s cruel treatment of speakers for God in the past. The note of severity and moral indignation is unmistakable, but it is blended with one of wistful sadness. Not that His own approaching death troubles Him; He fears not as He enters into the cloud, and is ready to give His life as covenant blood for the setting up of the Kingdom. But His countrymen’s wayward folly, and the terrible crisis at hand for the Jewish State, weigh heavy on His spirit. Their doom, He concludes, is written with God’s own finger on the wall, for those who had the eyes to see: ‘He will come, and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others’ (Mar 12:9).

George Murray.