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10Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars.

²¹Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock. How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?

¹⁰Go up through her vine-rows and destroy, but do not make a full end; strip away her branches, for they are not the Lord’s.

⁹Thus says the Lord of hosts: Glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel; like a grape-gatherer, pass your hand again over its branches.

¹⁰Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trampled down my portion, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.

15The word of the Lord came to me: ²O mortal, how does the wood of the vine surpass all other wood— the vine branch that is among the trees of the forest? ³Is wood taken from it to make anything? Does one take a peg from it on which to hang any object? ⁴It is put in the fire for fuel; when the fire has consumed both ends of it and the middle of it is charred, is it useful for anything? ⁵When it was whole it was used for nothing; how much less—when the fire has consumed it, and it is charred— can it ever be used for anything! ⁶Therefore thus says the Lord God: Like the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so I will give up the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ⁷I will set my face against them; although they escape from the fire, the fire shall still consume them; and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I set my face against them. ⁸And I will make the land desolate, because they have acted faithlessly, says the Lord God.

12Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. ²When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. ³But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. ⁵Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. ⁶He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ⁷But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ⁸So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. ⁹What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰Have you not read this scripture:

‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
¹¹this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?”

¹²When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.