Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
He began to speak unto them in parables (hrcato autoiv en parabolaiv lalein). Mark's common idiom again. He does not mean that this was the beginning of Christ's use of parables (see Mark 4:2), but simply that his teaching on this occasion took the parabolic turn. "The circumstances called forth the parabolic mood, that of one whose heart is chilled, and whose spirit is saddened by a sense of loneliness, and who, retiring within himself, by a process of reflection, frames for his thoughts forms which half conceal, half reveal them" (Bruce). Mark does not give the Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32) nor that of the Marriage Feast of the King's Son (Matthew 22:1-14). He gives here the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen. Also in Matthew 21:33-46 and Luke 20:9-19. See discussion in Matthew. Matthew 21:33 calls the man "a householder" (oikodespothv).
A pit for the winepress (upolhnion). Only here in the N.T. Common in the LXX and in late Greek. Matthew had lhnon, winepress. This is the vessel or trough under the winepress on the hillside to catch the juice when the grapes were trodden. The Romans called it lacus (lake) and Wycliff dalf (lake), like delved. See on Matthew for details just alike.
Husbandmen (gewrgoiv). Workers in the ground, tillers of the soil (ergon, gh).
Other Robertson's Word Pictures (NT) entries containing Mark 12:1:
Luke 15:13
Luke 20:9
John 15:1
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