Husbandman

A husbandman in the UPDV is a tiller of the ground or tender of vineyards — Israel's everyday agricultural worker, but also a recurring figure for those entrusted with what belongs to another. The word's first occurrence stays close to the soil; later passages bend it toward judgment, parable, and God himself.

The Worker Of The Soil

The first man named a husbandman is Noah after the flood: "And Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard" (Gen 9:20). The trade is ordinary labor, and the laborer's reward is named directly: "The husbandman who labors must be the first to partake of the fruits" (2Tim 2:6). Patience is built into the work — "Look, the husbandman waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and latter rain" (Jas 5:7) — and the household setting includes the yoke of oxen as the husbandman's familiar instrument (Jer 51:23).

When judgment falls on a land, the husbandman is among those summoned. In Amos's threat against Israel the call goes out indiscriminately: "they will call the husbandman to mourning, and a wailing for such as are skillful in lamentation" (Amos 5:16). And when Babylon is broken, Yahweh's hammer breaks every order in turn — "the shepherd and his flock... the husbandman and his yoke [of oxen]... governors and deputies" (Jer 51:23). The husbandman stands in the same line as shepherd and ruler.

Husbandmen In The Vineyard

The word takes on a moral weight when the husbandman is set over a vineyard that is not his own. In the parable in Mark 12, a man planted a vineyard, walled and equipped it, "and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country" (Mark 12:1). The husbandmen receive the slaves sent for the fruit with violence — beating one, wounding another, killing a third, and many more — until at last the owner sends his beloved son. "But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours" (Mark 12:7), and they did. The verdict is announced as a question: "What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard to others" (Mark 12:9).

The vineyard imagery the parable assumes is already laid out in the prophets. Isaiah sings of a vineyard in a fruitful hill (Isa 5:1), and the song's identification is plain: "For the vineyard of Yahweh of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant" (Isa 5:7). Jeremiah's complaint is similar — "Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness" (Jer 12:10).

God As Husbandman, His People As Husbandry

In the Johannine "true vine" saying the figure changes hands: God himself takes the position the parables had given to faithless tenants. "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman" (John 15:1). Paul names the related figure for the church: "For we are God's coworkers: you⁺ are God's husbandry, God's building" (1Cor 3:9). The same agricultural register that began with Noah breaking new ground ends with the people themselves as the field, and God as the one who works it.