20:16a–b

He will come: The phrase He will come implies that the owner would come to his grape farm where the tenants were. In some languages it may be more natural to say, “He will go.” It may also be necessary in some languages to specify a location. For example:

He will go ⌊to his grape farm⌋

and kill those tenants: The parable probably implies that the owner would go to the vineyard with other men or servants. He would order those men to execute the tenant farmers. Here the word kill refers to a legal punishment. The owner would punish them with death because they had murdered an innocent person. Other ways to translate this are:

and have those tenants put to death
-or-
and execute those tenants

and will give the vineyard to others: The phrase give the vineyard to others indicates that the owner would choose different people to take care of his grape farm for him. It does not indicate that the owner would give the farm away. He would lease the farm to people who would be more faithful to him. Other ways to translate this are:

and lease the vineyard to others (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
and turn the vineyard over to other tenants (Good News Translation)

Paragraph 20:16c–19

20:16c

And when the people heard this: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as when the people heard this is more literally “hearing this.” The Berean Standard Bible supplies the subject the people to refer back to the people whom Jesus was speaking to in 20:9. If you need to supply a subject here, refer back to these people in a natural way in your language.

May such a thing never happen!: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as May such a thing never happen! expresses a strong desire or prayer that something would not happen. Some ways to translate it are:

May ⌊God⌋ never let this happen!
-or-
This must never happen! (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
May this never happen! (NET Bible)
-or-
That’s unthinkable! (God’s Word)

The text does not specify exactly what the people did not want to happen. However, they probably understood that the grape farmers represented their leaders, and the owner and his son represented God and his son Jesus. The people were horrified that the leaders might become guilty of killing God’s son. They were also horrified that God would have to punish the leaders and get other people to take care of his work.

If you must make some information explicit here, you can refer to the events in 20:16a–b. You can refer to them in either a specific or a general way. For example:

It should not happen ⌊that the farmers do such terrible things and are killed and replaced⌋!
-or-
May ⌊these terrible things⌋ never happen!

© 2009, 2010, 2013 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.