The Lord of the Vineyard

One of the themes that we see in the allegory of Jacob 5 is that the Lord of the vineyard labors personally in the vineyard.  He is not an overseer that only gives commands for his servants to work; no, he is the first and the last person to exert his own physical energy for the benefit of the trees of the vineyard.  No one works harder in the vineyard than its master.  

The allegory starts out without any mention of servants; we see only the master of the vineyard who “pruned it, and digged about it, and nourished it” (v. 5).  When the servant is first mentioned in verse 7, the Lord of the vineyard still speaks of their work as a joint effort.  He tells the servant, “We will pluck off those main branches… and we will cast them into the fire.”  The master knows all of the details about what is going on in the vineyard and is intricately involved in everything that happens.  He knows where the trees are, which branches have been grafted from which trees, and what the condition of the roots and branches are.  With that knowledge of all that is happening to each of the trees in the vineyard he makes decisions about what must happen next.  When he needs to know something about the progress of the vineyard, he goes personally with his servant, “Come, let us go to the nethermost part of the vineyard, and behold” (v. 19, 38).  When something new needs to happen in the vineyard, he is there laboring with the servant: “Come, let us go down into the vineyard, that we may labor again in the vineyard” (v. 29).  When the Lord needs to know the quality of the fruit, he goes and tastes it himself: “And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard did taste of the fruit” (v. 31).  At a point when the master was concerned that all of his vineyard was bad, he listed off what he had done for the vineyard: “Have I slackened mine hand, that I have not nourished it? Nay, I have nourished it, and I have digged about it, and I have pruned it, and I have dunged it; and I have stretched forth mine hand almost all the day long” (v.47).  Toward the end the account, the text emphasizes again the Lord’s own involvement: “Wherefore, let us go and labor with our might this last time” (v. 62).  We read that “the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them” (v. 72).  Clearly this part of the allegory is representative of how the Lord will be intricately involved in our own lives.  He knows us personally, gave everything for us, and is vitally concerned with our success.  He has “graven [us] upon the palms of [his] hands” with marks of the suffering he committed for us, just as this lord in the allegory surely calloused his own hands as he was digging and pruning and laboring in the vineyard (Isaiah 49:16).  As the Savior said in our own dispensation, “I will go before your face.  I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts” (D&C 84:88).  No one is doing more for us to bring forth the fruit of our eternal life than the Lord.