Vinegar

Vinegar in Scripture is a sour wine: the same fermented juice that names the Nazirite's restriction, sharpens a field-worker's noon meal, supplies a stock image for proverbial misfits, and finally meets the thirst of the crucified. The same liquid that refreshes Boaz's reapers turns up in the Psalmist's complaint and at the foot of the cross, so the word travels a short distance between hospitality and humiliation.

Wine Gone Sour

The legal definition is fixed by the Nazirite vow. Anyone consecrated for the period of his separation "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" (Nu 6:3). Vinegar is treated here as the soured byproduct of the same vine the Nazirite has renounced; the prohibition therefore extends from the fresh grape through the fermented wine to the wine that has gone past its prime. The vow does not distinguish between drinkable wine and table vinegar — both come from the vine, both are out of bounds.

A Reaper's Refreshment

In ordinary use, vinegar is a workman's food. At harvest in Bethlehem, Boaz calls Ruth to share the noon meal: "Come here, and eat of the bread, and dip your morsel in the vinegar" (Ru 2:14). The dipping bowl is one of the few glimpses Scripture gives of how the labourer actually ate in the field — sour liquid as a condiment for bread, alongside the parched grain Boaz then passes to her. The hospitality of the scene depends on the same liquid that the Nazirite must refuse.

Set Against the Grain

Two proverbs use vinegar as a stock image for things that grate. The first puts it in the mouth: "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, So is the sluggard to those who send him" (Pr 10:26). The sluggard is what the errand-runner tastes when his messenger never returns; the figure trades on the body's involuntary reaction to acid and smoke. The second proverb runs the same machinery in the other direction: "[As] vinegar on lye, and [as] smoke for the eyes, So is he who sings songs to a heavy heart" (Pr 25:20). Here vinegar's incompatibility is chemical — sour poured onto alkali, the two fizzing into froth — and the singer who tries to cheer a grieving friend is the same kind of mismatch. In both proverbs vinegar is the picture of a substance that does not belong where it has been put.

Drink in the Hour of Thirst

The Psalmist's complaint draws on the same culture of the dipping bowl, but turns hospitality into cruelty: "They gave me also gall for my food; And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink" (Ps 69:21). Vinegar here is what is offered when wine would be expected — a sour answer to honest thirst. The fourth Gospel picks up the language at the cross: "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" (Joh 19:29). The vessel is already standing ready; the soldiers reach for what is at hand. Read against Ps 69:21, the detail is not incidental — the workman's sour wine, the same liquid that Boaz served and that the Nazirite refused, becomes the last drink offered to the crucified.