Mark 12 is the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It continues Jesus' teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem, and contains the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, Jesus' argument with the Pharisees and Herodians over paying taxes to Caesar, and the debate with the Sadducees about the nature of people who will be resurrected at the end of time. It also contains Jesus' Greatest Commandment, his discussion of the messiah's relationship to King David, condemnation of the teachers of the law, and his praise of a poor widow's offering.
In the context of Mark's chronology, these events, continuing from the challenge to Jesus' authority in Mark 11:27–33, take place during his third visit to the temple, traditionally identified with Holy Tuesday.Maclear, G. F., Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on Mark 11, accessed 1 July 2021
Text The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 44 verses.
Textual witnesses Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are: Codex Vaticanus (325–350; complete) Codex Sinaiticus (330–360; complete) Codex Bezae (~400; complete) Codex Alexandrinus (400–440; complete) Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (~450; extant verses 1–29)
Old Testament references Mark 12:36: Psalm 110:1
Parable of the wicked husbandmen Jesus, after his argument with the chief priests of the Sanhedrin over his authority in Mark 11:27–33, speaks to "them" ("the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders") in parables (εν παραβολαις, en parabolais, plural). While Matthew's Gospel records several parables here, including the parable of the two sons and the parable of the wedding feast,Maclear, G. F., Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on Mark 12, accessed 1 July 2021 Mark relates only one:
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. And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty.
And 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. And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.
Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.
What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others. And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? (1–11 KJV)
The scripture mentioned is a quotation from Psalm 118:22–23, the processional psalm for the three pilgrim festivals which also provided the source for the crowd's acclamation as Jesus entered Jerusalem, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The quote about the stone is from the Septuagint version of the Psalms, a version Jesus and Jews in Israel would probably not have used. Mark however, who clearly has the Septuagint as his Old Testament reference, may have simply used it for his audience, as they spoke Greek, or to clarify his sources, oral and/or written. For those who treat Mark as historically reliable, these predictions serve to demonstrate the power of Jesus' knowledge. Paul also refers to Jesus as a "stone" in Romans 9:33, but references this with quotes from Isaiah 8:14 and 28:16. Acts of the Apostles 4:11 records Peter as using the same Psalm to describe Jesus. 1 Peter references both Isaiah and the Psalm in 2:6–8, although most scholars, though not all, do not accept this letter as actually written by the Apostle Peter.
Anglican Bishop Tom Wright contrasts this parable with Jesus' first parable recorded in Mark, the parable of the sower.Mark 4:1-20) In that parable, "one lot of seed failed, then another, and another but at last there was a harvest", whereas in this parable, one slave is sent, then another, but when the final messenger comes, the vineyard owner's son, "he is ignominiously killed".Wright, T. (2001), Mark for Everyone, SPCK
Mark says that they ("the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders") "realized" that Jesus was speaking about them and wanted to arrest him, but they would not do so for fear of the crowd.: New Revised Standard Version The passage invites interpretation as an allegory:Tuckett, C. M., 57. Mark, in Barton, J. and Muddiman, J. (2001), The Oxford Bible Commentary , p. 910 the husbandmen are the priests and teachers, and perhaps the Judean authorities in general. The word could also be a metaphor for all of humanity. Many modern translations use the terms "tenants" or "tenant farmers" instead of "husbandmen". The vineyard's owner is God. A common interpretation of the servants is that of the prophets or all of God's proceeding messengers, while the gentiles, or Christians, are the "others" who will be given the vineyard. The vineyard is Israel or more abstractly the promise made to Abraham by God. The owner's son is Jesus. "Beloved" is what God has called Jesus in Mark 1 and 9 during his baptism and the Transfiguration.
Isaiah 5 uses similar language regarding God's vineyard. Workers working the estates of absentee landlords happened frequently in the Roman Empire, making the story relevant to the listeners of the time. Vineyards were the source of grapes and wine, a common symbol of good in the Gospels. There is Jesus turning water into wine in John 2 and the saying about new wineskins in Mark 2:22. Natural growth, like Jesus' parables of the Mustard Seed and the Seed Growing Secretly in Mark 4, was probably a naturally understood metaphor for Mark's audience, as the ancient world was largely an agricultural world.
This parable is also found in saying 65 of the Gospel of Thomas.The Gnostic Society Library, Gospel of Thomas, translated by Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer, accessed on 20 March 2023
Paying taxes to Caesar
"They" (the chief priests, scribes, and elders, or "the Jewish leaders": New Century Version) sent some Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus. They offer false praise and hope to entrap him by asking him whether one should pay the taxes to the Romans. These two groups were antagonists, and by showing them working together against Jesus, Mark shows the severity of the opposition to him. Mark has mentioned them working together before in Mark 3:6. The Herodians, supporters of Herod Antipas, would have been in Jerusalem with Herod during his trip there for the Passover. Protestant theologian Heinrich Meyer notes that the (agreuō, 'entrap') is a hunting term. Jesus asked them to show him a denarius, a Roman coin, and asks whose image and inscription are on it. The coin was marked with Caesar's image. Jesus then says "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" (17). Jesus thus avoids the trap, neither endorsing the Herodians and the Romans they supported, nor the Pharisees.
This same incident, with small differences, is also recorded in the Gospels of Matthew (22:15–22) and Luke (20:20–26). Mark's account has been described as "more concise and vivid" than Matthew's. Luke's Gospel makes clear that "They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor." Apparently, his interrogators anticipated that Jesus would denounce the tax. The charge of advocating non-payment of taxes was later leveled against Jesus before Pilate.
Giving God what is God's might be an admonishment to meet one's obligation to God as one must meet an obligation to the state. It could also be Jesus' way of saying that God, not Rome, controlled Israel, indeed the whole world, and thereby also satisfy the Pharisees. This passage is often used in arguments on the nature of the separation of church and state.
The same saying is found in the Gospel of Thomas as saying 100, with reference to "a gold coin" and the additional words "...and give me what is mine".
Some writers cite this phrase in support of tax resistance: see, for example, Ned Netterville, Darrell Anderson, and Timmothy Patton.
The resurrection and marriage
The opposition to Jesus now moves to the Sadducees, who deny the idea of the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees only accepted the five books of the Torah as divinely inspired. The Jewish Levirate law, or Yibbum,Deuteronomy 25:5 states that if a man dies and his wife has not had a son, his brother must marry her. The Sadducees quote an example of a woman who has had seven husbands in this manner: [if there were a resurrection], who would she be married to when they all are resurrected from the dead?
Jesus says that the Sadducees are "in error" on two grounds, because they do not understand "either the scriptures or God’s power".: Common English Bible George Maclear notes that Jesus deals with the latter point first, stating that after the resurrection of the dead, no one will be married, "...they will be like the angels in heaven". The Sadducees also denied the existence of angels and spirits.See Turning then to scriptural content about the dead rising, Jesus continues: have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am (emphasis added) the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly (or greatly) mistaken!" (verses 25–27) The story of the burning bush is found in Exodus 3, i.e. within the biblical texts acknowledged by the Sadducees. Maclear adds that Jesus' reply "embraces the whole area of their unbelief".Maclear, G. (1893), Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on Mark 12, accessed on 11 December 2024
The belief in the resurrection of the dead was largely a fairly recent innovation in ancient Jewish thought, and Jesus defends the belief against the Sadducees, who consider it to be a false innovation.Miller, 42 He quotes God's statement to Moses on Mount Sinai made in the present tense about the patriarchs to show that God states them to be still in existence after their death, and thus that the doctrine of resurrection is present in the scripture from the beginning. Jesus concludes that the Sadducees "greatly err". Meyer notes that the "short pithy words" of this assertion, (polu planasthe), do not need the additional words in the Textus Receptus, , humeis oun, "you therefore").Meyer, H. A. W. (1880), Meyer's NT Commentary on Mark 12, translated from the German sixth edition, accessed 3 April 2020
So far in Mark's gospel, Jesus has raised a dead girlMark 5:41-42: see Daughter of Jairus and has predicted his own death and resurrection, in 8:31 for instance, but has not discussed the nature of resurrection in depth. Jesus largely defends the belief here, perhaps indicating Mark's intended audience already knows it. Paul also describes bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, that it will be of a fundamentally different nature than people's current physical nature. Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas uses an argument for eternal life based on the fact that the non-living matter of dead food becomes the living matter of the body after a person has eaten it.Gospel of Thomas, Saying 11, accessed 5 December 2017 Philosophically the validity of Jesus' argument for the resurrection of the dead depends on the accuracy of the story of the burning bush, that is if God really did say that and meant it in that way existence is possible after death as God would never be wrong. The Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead.