<p>12:6<i> He had one other, a beloved son. He sent him last to them, saying: They will reverence my son</i>-It is noteworthy that the parable of Mk. 12:6 has Jesus describing Himself as both a servant- the last servant- and the only beloved son of the vineyard owner.</p><p>Lk. 20:13 adds &quot;It may be that...&quot;. The Greek&nbsp;<i>isos</i>&nbsp;is tantalizingly hard to understand. It could mean 'Perhaps'; or equally it could mean 'They will, surely'. Lk. 20:13 adds &ldquo;My beloved Son&rdquo;. Thus the joyful harvest song of Is. 5:1, the &quot;song of my beloved&rdquo;, becomes the tragedy of &quot;My beloved son&quot;.&nbsp;The invitation &quot;O inhabitants of Jerusalem&hellip; judge, I pray you, between me and my vineyard&quot; (Is. 5:3) is matched by the rhetorical question: &quot;What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do unto them?&quot; (Lk. 20:15). This too was addressed by the Lord to Jerusalem&rsquo;s inhabitants. We wonder of course how the Father could truly feel like this if He is omniscient. My suggestion is that He limits His omniscience in order to enter fully into our human experience; which means that His expressions of shock and disappointment are legitimate reflections of how He actually feels.</p><p>&ldquo;Surely they will reverence my Son&rdquo; is the thought imputed to Almighty God in the parable, as He sends His only Son to seek for spiritual response in Israel. The parable frames God as almost naive in believing that although Israel had killed the prophets, they would reverence the Word made flesh, and the speaking of God to them in Him. Yet of course God knew what would happen; but in order to express the extraordinary, unenterable extent of His hopefulness, He is framed in this way. Just as the Father thought that His people &ldquo;surely&rdquo; would reverence His Son, so He was &lsquo;certain&rsquo; that if His people went to Babylon in captivity, &ldquo;surely then shalt you be ashamed&hellip; for all your wickedness&rdquo; (Jer. 22:22). But the reality was that they grew to like the soft life of Babylon and refused to obey the command to return to God&rsquo;s land. Such was and is the hopefulness of God. The Father had the same attitude to Israel in Old Testament times: &ldquo;I thought that after she had done all this, she would return to me, but she did not&rdquo; (Jer. 3:7 NIV). The Lord Jesus reflected the Father&rsquo;s positive spirit in the way He framed the parable of the prodigal son to feature the Heavenly Father as running out to meet the returning son, falling on his neck and kissing him&hellip; in <i>exactly</i> the language of Gen. 33:4 about Esau doing this to Jacob. The connection can&rsquo;t be denied; but what was the Lord&rsquo;s point? Surely He was willing to see something positive in the otherwise fleshly Esau at that time, He as it were took a snapshot of Esau at that moment&hellip; and applied it to God Himself, in His extravagant grace towards an unworthy Jacob. This was how positive minded the Lord was in His reading of even the darkest characters.</p>