ome day reign over
them. The turning away by one man to his farm and by another to his
merchandize is in part an evidence of their engrossment in material
pursuits to the utter disregard of their sovereign's will; but it
signifies further an effort to deaden their troubled consciences by some
absorbing occupation; and possibly also a premeditated demonstration of
the fact that they placed their personal affairs above the call of their
king. The monarch executed a terrible retribution upon his rebellious
subjects. If the parable was intended to be an allegorical presentation
of actual events, it passes at this point from the story of the past to
that of the future, for the destruction of Jerusalem postdates by
several decades the death of Christ. Finding the guests who had some
claim on the royal invitation to be utterly unworthy, the king sent out
his servants again, and these gathered in from the highways and
cross-roads, from the byways and the lanes, all they could find,
irrespective of rank or station, whether rich or poor, good or bad; "and
the wedding was furnished with guests."

The great feast by which the Messianic reign was to be ushered in was a
favorite theme of jubilant exposition in both synagog and school; and
exultation ran high in the rabbinical dictum that none but the children
of Abraham would be among the blessed partakers. The king in the parable
is God; the son whose marriage was the occasion of the feast is Jesus,
the Son of God; the guests who were bidden early, yet who refused to
come when the feast was ready, are the covenant people who rejected
their Lord, the Christ; the later guests, who were brought in from the
streets and the roads, are the Gentile nations, to whom the gospel has
been carried since its rejection by the Jews; the marriage feast is
symbolical of the glorious consummation of the Messiah's mission.[1101]

All students of the subject must have noted the points of resemblance by
which this parable is related to that of the great supper;[1102] fewer
perhaps have considered the differences between the two. The earlier
story was told in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, probably in
some town in Perea; the later one was related within the temple, after
Pharisaic opposition to Christ had reached its height. The first is of
simpler plot and of gentler climax. The neglect of the invited guests in
the first story was accompanied by excuses in which some approach to
polite apolog