Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard returns, what will he do to those tenants?”
When the Lord therefore of the vineyard cometh,.... In a way of providence, to call these husbandmen to an account; not only for the fruit they were to bring to him; but for their barbarity to his servants, the prophets, time after time; and especially, for the inhuman usage and murder of his own son, what will he do unto those husbandmen?
Verse 40. When the lord therefore, etc. Jesus then asked them a question about the proper way of dealing with those men. The design of asking them this question was that they might condemn themselves, and admit the justice of the punishment that was soon coming upon them.
When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh--This represents "the settling time," which, in the case of the Jewish ecclesiastics, was that judicial trial of the nation and its leaders which issued in the destruction of their whole state. what will he do unto those husbandmen?