Psalms 147:20

³²For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and from the one end of the sky to the other, whether there has been anything as great as this thing is, or has been heard like it? ³³Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the middle of the fire, as you have heard, and live? ³⁴Or has God tried to go and take a nation for himself from among another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

¹Then what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the profit of circumcision? ²Much in every way! Because first of all, they were entrusted with the revelations of God.

¹²that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

⁷For what great nation is there that has a god so near to them as the LORD our God is whenever we call on him? ⁸What great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law which I set before you today?

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ¹⁰In the past, you were not a people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

⁸For you were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord. Walk as children of light,

¹Let me sing for my well beloved a song of my beloved about his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. ²He dug it up, gathered out its stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the middle of it, and also cut out a wine press in it. He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. ³“Now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard. ⁴What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Why, when I looked for it to yield grapes, did it yield wild grapes? ⁵Now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be eaten up. I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down. ⁶I will lay it a wasteland. It won’t be pruned or hoed, but it will grow briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.” ⁷For the vineyard of the LORD of Armies is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression, for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.

²⁷King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.”

¹⁶who in the generations gone by allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways.

³³“Hear another parable. There was a man who was a master of a household who planted a vineyard, set a hedge about it, dug a wine press in it, built a tower, leased it out to farmers, and went into another country. ³⁴When the season for the fruit came near, he sent his servants to the farmers to receive his fruit. ³⁵The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶Again, he sent other servants more than the first; and they treated them the same way. ³⁷But afterward he sent to them his son, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸But the farmers, when they saw the son, said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and seize his inheritance.’ ³⁹So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard, then killed him. ⁴⁰When therefore the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?”

⁴¹They told him, “He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will lease out the vineyard to other farmers who will give him the fruit in its season.”