Moses allowed planting other crops in the years before a vineyard ripened..

Monday, 6/4/18

Our Lord's story doesn't ring true. After all, why would the owner of the vineyard lease it to untried. irresponsible tenants? Why would the tenants behave so cruelly?

The answer to these questions lies in an unusual farming practice in ancient Israel.

The Law of Moses forbade the crowing of different kinds of crops in the same fields. It was avoiding something like vegetative adultery.

However there was one loophole in the rule against planting different kinds of crops. Since a newly planted vineyard could not bear grapes in its first four or five years, for those years farmers were permitted to grow other  kinds of vegetables during those years. Our Lord's listeners probably understood him to be talking about disputes between owners and tenants as to who got what was raised between the vines,