Grape

The grape stands among the chief of Israel's cultivated fruits — the first crop Scripture records Noah planting after the flood, the cluster the spies brought back from the land, and a fruit that does double-duty as food, drink, sacrificial heave-offering, and a standing figure for the covenant people themselves. The biblical material follows a natural arc from the planters and the planting-places to the year-by-year husbandry, the vintage and its products, and finally the prophetic and gospel uses of the vine and its grapes as figure.

The First Planters

Noah is the first vineyard-planter Scripture names: "Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard" (Gen 9:20). When Israel comes into the land, the grape is already established among the older nations: the Canaanites' "vineyards and olive trees, which you didn't plant" are inherited as a covenant gift (Deut 6:11; Jos 24:13), and the spies' first physical proof of the land's goodness is the cluster of grapes from the valley of Eshcol (Num 13:23) — the place itself is named in the wilderness itinerary (Num 32:9; Deut 1:24). The neighbor-nations also tend vineyards: Edom is asked passage on terms that name "field or vineyard" (Num 20:17), the Amorites the same (Num 21:22), and the vine of Sibmah in former-Amorite territory becomes proverbial for grape-renown — "the lords of the nations have broken down its choice branches, which reached even to Jazer" (Isa 16:8-9).

Vineyard Places

Place-names anchored to grape-growing form a small geography of their own. Abelcheramim — "plain of vineyards" — closes Jephthah's pursuit of the sons of Ammon (Judg 11:33). Solomon "had a vineyard at Baal-hamon" let out to keepers at a thousand shekels of silver per yield (Song 8:11). En-gedi's vineyards yield the cluster-of-henna-flowers simile (Song 1:14). Uzziah's husbandry stretched from "the lowland also, and in the plain" to "vinedressers in the mountains and in the fruitful fields; for he loved husbandry" (2 Chr 26:10). Jezreel is the site of Naboth's vineyard "close by the palace of Ahab" (1 Ki 21:1). Lebanon's wine-scent figures the people's restoration (Hos 14:7). Samaria's mountains are promised again to the planter (Jer 31:5). Shechem's men "gathered their vineyards, and trod [the grapes], and held a festival" (Judg 9:27). Shiloh's vineyards are the ambush-ground for the daughters' dances (Judg 21:20-21). Timnah's vineyards are where the young lion roars at Samson (Judg 14:5).

Cultivation and Harvest

The Torah sets the rhythm. "Six years you will sow your field, and six years you will prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruits" (Lev 25:3); the jubilee year suspends both: "you⁺ will not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself in it, nor gather [the grapes] in it of the undressed vines" (Lev 25:11). The covenant curses turn that rhythm against the unfaithful — "You will plant vineyards and dress them, but you will neither drink of the wine, nor gather [the grapes]; for the worm will eat them" (Deut 28:39). The lover in the Song goes down "to see whether the vine budded" (Song 6:11). Leviticus 26's blessing-promise sets harvest length itself as the sign of a kept covenant: "your⁺ threshing will reach to the vintage, and the vintage will reach to the sowing time" (Lev 26:5).

The vintage proper is loud — pressers shout and tread. Yahweh's wrath against the nations borrows the figure directly: "he will give a shout, as those who tread [the grapes], against all the inhabitants of the earth" (Jer 25:30). Failure of vintage is announced as a public silence: "no treader will tread out wine in the presses; I have made the [vintage] shout to cease" (Isa 16:10); "the vintage will fail, the ingathering will not come" (Isa 32:10). What the harvesters miss is the gleaner's portion: Gideon's diplomacy turns on it ("Isn't the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?", Judg 8:2), and Micah's lament inverts it ("as the grape gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat", Mic 7:1). The destroyer's stroke is described the same way: "your summer fruits and on your vintage the destroyer has fallen" (Jer 48:32); judgment on the earth comes "as the gleanings when the vintage is done" (Isa 24:13).

Grape Products: Wine, Raisins, Vinegar

The vintage feeds three streams. Wine, including "new wine," is the heave-offering and tithe: "the heave-offering of the grain, of the new wine, and of the oil" comes "to the chambers, where are the vessels of the sanctuary" (Neh 10:39; cf. Neh 13:5). Sirach holds wine itself as a created good — "Like living water is wine to man, If he drinks it in moderation. What life has a man who lacks new wine? It was created from the beginning for gladness" (Sir 31:27); "Joy of heart, gladness and delight, Is wine drunk at the [right] time and in sufficiency" (Sir 31:28); and the friendship-figure in Sirach 9 trades on the same vintage-curve: "New wine [is like a] new friend; And after it is old, then you will drink it" (Sir 9:10). Hosea names the abuse: "Whoring and wine and new wine take away the understanding" (Hos 4:11). Jesus' fresh-skins saying turns on the same product-property — "no man puts new wine into old wineskins" (Mark 2:22).

Dried grapes — raisins — travel as compact provision. Abigail's gift to David is "two hundred loaves, and two bottles of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five seahs of parched grain, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs" (1 Sam 25:18). The Egyptian slave found in the field is revived with "a piece of a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins" (1 Sam 30:12). Ziba meets David "with a couple of donkeys saddled, and on them two hundred loaves of bread, and a hundred clusters of raisins" (2 Sam 16:1). David's coronation provisions include "cakes of figs, and clusters of raisins, and wine, and oil" (1 Chr 12:40).

Vinegar — wine or strong drink soured — is the third stream. Boaz invites Ruth to "dip your morsel in the vinegar" at the harvest meal (Ruth 2:14). The proverb pairs it with smoke: "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, So is the sluggard to those who send him" (Prov 10:26). The Psalmist's lament names it as cruel drink: "in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink" (Ps 69:21), a verse the passion narrative takes up — "There was set there a vessel full of vinegar: so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop, and brought it to his mouth" (John 19:29).

Forbidden to the Nazirite

The grape is so thoroughly identified with the vine's whole produce that the Nazirite's vow excludes the entire plant: "he will separate himself from wine and strong drink; he will drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither will he drink any juice of grapes, nor eat fresh grapes or dried" (Num 6:3). Numbers presses the rule out to the limit: "All the days of his separation he will eat nothing that is made of the grapevine, from the kernels even to the husk" (Num 6:4).

Grape as Figure

Scripture's figurative use of the grape runs from fable to apocalypse. In Jotham's fable, the vine declines kingship by appeal to its proper office: "Should I leave my new wine, which cheers God and men, and go to wave to and fro over the trees?" (Judg 9:12-13). The Song of Moses brands apostasy as a bitter vintage: "their vine is of the vine of Sodom, And of the fields of Gomorrah: Their grapes are grapes of gall, Their clusters are bitter" (Deut 32:32). The household-blessing reverses the figure with a domestic image: "Your wife will be as a fruitful vine, In the innermost parts of your house" (Ps 128:3).

The prophets work the figure as covenant-allegory. Isaiah's song-of-the-vineyard sets the frame and decodes it in the same chapter: "Let me sing for my wellbeloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard. My wellbeloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill" (Isa 5:1) — and "the vineyard of Yahweh of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for justice, but, look, oppression; for righteousness, but, look, a cry" (Isa 5:7). Jeremiah works the same figure twice: as the planted-vine-turned-wild ("I had planted you a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then have you turned into the wild branches of a foreign vine to me?", Jer 2:21) and as the Yahweh-owned vineyard trampled by Israel's leaders ("Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness", Jer 12:10). Hosea adds the inverse: "Israel is a luxuriant vine, that puts forth his fruit: according to the abundance of his fruit he has multiplied his altars" (Hos 10:1) — a prosperity that becomes the grounds of judgment.

The vine-parables proper extend the figure. The Asaph psalm narrates the vine-out-of-Egypt: "You brought a vine out of Egypt: You drove out the nations, and planted it … Why have you broken down its walls, So that all those who pass by the way pluck it?" (Ps 80:8-14). Ezekiel takes it up three ways. The two-eagles parable plays the vine's loyalties off against each other: "It was planted in a good soil by many waters, that it might bring forth branches, and that it might bear fruit, that it might be a goodly vine. Say, Thus says the Sovereign Yahweh: Will it prosper? Will he not pull up its roots, and cut off its fruit, that it may wither" (Ezek 17:6-10). The lamentation-parable works the mother-as-vine: "Your mother was like a vine, in your blood, planted by the waters: it was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters … But it was plucked up in fury, it was cast down to the ground" (Ezek 19:10-14). And the vine-wood oracle reasons from craft to judgment: "what is the vine-tree more than any tree, the vine-branch which is among the trees of the forest? … Look, it is cast into the fire for fuel … so I will give the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Ezek 15:2-6).

The proverb of the sour grapes is cited only to be overturned. Ezekiel reports it — "What do you⁺ mean, that you⁺ use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the sons are set on edge?" (Ezek 18:2) — at the head of the chapter that breaks its hereditary logic.

In the Gospel the figure is made first-person: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman … I am the vine, you⁺ are the branches: He who stays in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit: for apart from me you⁺ can do nothing" (John 15:1-5). And the eschatological vintage closes the figure with the cluster-and-press: "Send forth your sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe … And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and there came out blood from the wine press" (Rev 14:18-20). The same agricultural arc that began with Noah's planting ends with the vintage of the earth gathered to the press of the wrath of God.