11. So the owner sent another servant. The tenants also beat him up. They insulted him terribly and sent him away without a thing.
12. The owner sent a third servant. He was also beaten terribly and thrown out of the vineyard.
13. The owner then said to himself, “What am I going to do? I know what. I'll send my son, the one I love so much. They will surely respect him!”
14. When the tenants saw the owner's son, they said to one another, “Some day he will own the vineyard. Let's kill him! Then we can have it all for ourselves.”
15. So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.Jesus asked, “What do you think the owner of the vineyard will do?
16. I'll tell you what. He will come and kill those tenants and let someone else have his vineyard.”When the people heard this, they said, “This must never happen!”
17. But Jesus looked straight at them and said, “Then what do the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘The stone that the builders tossed aside is now the most important stone of all’?
18. Anyone who stumbles over this stone will get hurt, and anyone it falls on will be smashed to pieces.”
19. The chief priests and the teachers of the Law of Moses knew that Jesus was talking about them when he was telling this story. They wanted to arrest him at once, but they were afraid of the people.
20. Jesus' enemies kept watching him closely, because they wanted to hand him over to the Roman governor. So they sent some men who pretended to be good. But they were really spies trying to catch Jesus saying something wrong.
21. The spies said to him, “Teacher, we know that you teach the truth about what God wants people to do. And you treat everyone with the same respect, no matter who they are.
22. Tell us, should we pay taxes to the Emperor or not?”
23. Jesus knew that they were trying to trick him. So he told them,
24. “Show me a coin.” Then he asked, “Whose picture and name are on it?”“The Emperor's,” they answered.
25. Then he told them, “Give the Emperor what belongs to him and give God what belongs to God.”
26. Jesus' enemies could not catch him saying anything wrong there in front of the people. They were amazed at his answer and kept quiet.
27. The Sadducees did not believe that people would rise to life after death. So some of them came to Jesus
28. and said:Teacher, Moses wrote that if a married man dies and has no children, his brother should marry the widow. Their first son would then be thought of as the son of the dead brother.
29. There were once seven brothers. The first one married, but died without having any children.