Lees

The lees are the sediment that settles at the bottom of a wine vessel. The umbrella collects four passages that pull this small piece of viticultural vocabulary in two directions — a positive image of well-aged wine kept long on the dregs, and a negative image of complacency or judgment that drinks the dregs to the last.

A Feast of Well-Refined Wine

Isaiah's eschatological banquet uses the lees as a mark of quality. Wine left long enough on its lees and then properly racked off becomes rich and full: "And in this mountain Yahweh of hosts will make to all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined" (Isa 25:6). The repeated phrase "wines on the lees well refined" treats the sediment positively — the wine has matured.

Moab Settled on His Lees

Jeremiah turns the same image into an indictment of complacency. Moab has never been disturbed and so has gone stagnant: "Moab has been at ease from his youth, and he has settled on his lees, and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither has he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remains in him, and his scent is not changed" (Jer 48:11). What looked like aged richness becomes an image of a nation that has never been tested or transferred — and is about to be.

Drinking the Dregs

The Psalter's cup of judgment in Yahweh's hand reaches the lees as the final draught: "For in the hand of Yahweh there is a cup, and the wine foams; It is an undiluted mixture, and he pours out of the same: Surely its dregs, all the wicked of the earth will drain them, and drink them" (Ps 75:8). The wicked drink down to the bottom — to the dregs — and miss none of the wrath.

Zephaniah pictures the same complacency Jeremiah named in Moab, now turning on Jerusalem itself: "I will search Jerusalem with lamps; and I will punish the men who are settled on their lees, who say in their heart, Yahweh will not do good, neither will he do evil" (Zeph 1:12). The men "settled on their lees" are those untroubled by the prospect of divine action — and they are exactly the targets of the search.