John 15:1

I am the true vine We have here the same word for -true" as in John 1:9; John 6:32; Revelation 3:14. Christ is the true, the genuine, the ideal, the perfect Vine, as He is the perfect Light, the perfect Bread, and the perfect Witness (see on John 1:9). "The material creations of God are only inferior examples of that finer spiritual life and organism in which the creature is raised up to partake of the Divine nature" (Alford). Whether the allegory was suggested by anything external, vineyards, or the vine of the Temple visible in the moonlight, a vine creeping in at the window, the -fruit of the vine" (Matthew 26:29) on the table which they had just left, it is impossible to say. Of these the last is far the most probable, as referring to the Eucharist just instituted as a special means of union with Him and with one another. But the allegory may easily have been chosen for its own merits and its O.T. associations (Psalms 80:8-19; Isaiah 5:1-7; Jeremiah 2:21; &c.) without any suggestion from without. The vine was a national emblem under the Maccabees and appears on their coins.

the husbandman The Owner of the soil Who tends His Vine Himself and establishes the relation between the Vine and the branches. There is therefore a good deal of difference between the form of this allegory and the parable of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1) or that of the Fruitless Fig-tree (Luke 13:6). The word -husbandman" occurs nowhere else in the Gospels except of the wicked husbandmen in the parable of the Vineyard.