Wine

Wine threads through the whole arc of scripture: a postdiluvian husbandman's first vineyard, the libation poured beside the burnt-offering, the song that Yahweh sings against his unfaithful vineyard, the cup raised at a Galilean wedding, the cup lifted on the night of the betrayal, and the cup of staggering pressed into the mouths of the nations. The same liquid stands at the heart of gladness and at the heart of judgment, and the texts hold both ends of the rope at once.

Noah's Vineyard

The first vineyard in scripture follows the flood. Noah, the husbandman, plants a vineyard, drinks of its wine, and is uncovered inside his tent (Gen 9:20-21). Ham sees and tells; Shem and Japheth walk backward to cover the nakedness; and when Noah awakes from his wine he speaks the curse on Canaan and the blessings on Shem and Japheth (Gen 9:22-27). Wine here is at once a gift of cultivated land and the occasion for shame and dynastic curse.

Lot's daughters work the same instrument in the opposite direction. They make their father drink wine on two successive nights so that the elder and then the younger can plow him without his knowing when she lay down or when she arose (Gen 19:32-35). The narrative does not editorialize; the wine is the means by which a father is unmade.

Wine in the Patriarchal Blessing

In the patriarchal blessings, wine moves from incident to inheritance. Isaac asks that "[the Speech of] God give you of the dew of heaven, And of the fatness of the earth, And plenty of grain and new wine" (Gen 27:28). Jacob's oracle on Judah is even denser with the imagery: "Binding his foal to the vine, And his donkey's colt to the choice vine; He has washed his garments in wine, And his vesture in the blood of grapes: His eyes will be red with wine, And his teeth white with milk" (Gen 49:11-12). Vine and wine are signs of the land doing what the land was meant to do.

The Drink-Offering

Wine has a proper place in Israel's altar. Beside the daily lamb a fourth of a hin of wine is poured "for a drink-offering" (Ex 29:40), and the same fourth-of-a-hin pour accompanies the meal-offering of fine flour as "an offering made by fire to Yahweh for a sweet savor" (Lev 23:13). Numbers fixes the proportions: a fourth of a hin with each lamb, a third with a ram, half with a bull (Num 15:5-10). The continual offering is doubled at evening, and "in the holy place you will pour out a drink-offering of strong drink to Yahweh" (Num 28:7). The new-moon and seventh-month liturgies repeat the same scaling — half a hin of wine for a bull, a third for a ram, a fourth for a lamb (Num 28:14) — and the festal calendar continues "their drink-offerings, according to their ordinance, for a sweet savor, an offering made by fire to Yahweh" (Num 29:6). After the exile, the temple's storerooms are stocked again with "the heave-offering of the grain, of the new wine, and of the oil" (Neh 10:39), and the betrayal of that storage by Eliashib is what fuels Nehemiah's anger over "the tithes of the grain, the new wine, and the oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites" (Neh 13:5).

Nazirite Abstention

Against the sanctuary pour stands the Nazirite vow. The vowed person "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); "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). The same boundary is laid on Samson's mother before his birth: "drink no wine nor strong drink, and don't eat any unclean thing... for the lad will be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death" (Judg 13:4-7).

The vow's profile shows up in unexpected places. When Eli mistakes Hannah's silent prayer for drunkenness — "How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you" — Hannah answers, "I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drank neither wine nor strong drink, but I poured out my soul before Yahweh" (1 Sam 1:14-15). The piety she names is the inverse of the wine Eli imputes.

Wine That Gladdens the Heart

Read in another register, wine is openly good. Ps 104:15 places it inside the litany of providential gifts: "And wine that makes glad the heart of common man, [And] oil to make his face to shine, And bread that strengthens common man's heart." The Preacher repeats it as direct charge: "Go your way, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works" (Eccl 9:7), and again, "A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes glad the life; and silver answers all things" (Eccl 10:19). The same wisdom assigns wine a medicinal use as well: "Give strong drink to him who is ready to perish, And wine to the bitter in soul: Let him drink, and forget his poverty, And remember his misery no more" (Pr 31:6-7).

Sirach on Wine

Sirach holds the gladness and the danger together more explicitly than any other book. "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. Joy of heart, gladness and delight, Is wine drunk at the [right] time and in sufficiency" (Sir 31:27-28). The same teacher warns: "Moreover, when at wine, exercise restraint, For wine has destroyed many. Like a furnace which tries the work of the blacksmith, So is wine in the quarrelling of scorners.... Headache, derision, and shame, Is wine drunk in strife and anger. Much wine is a snare to the fool, It diminishes strength and increases wounds. At a banquet of wine do not rebuke a friend, And do not grieve him in his merriment" (Sir 31:25-26, 29-31).

The banquet etiquette is its own art: "As a ruby signet in a work of gold, So is good music at a banquet of wine. A setting of gold with an emerald signet Is the melody of music at pleasant wine-drinking" (Sir 32:5-6); the memory of Josiah is "sweet in the palate like honey, And as music at a banquet of wine" (Sir 49:1). Wine takes its place in the catalog of necessities — "water and fire, and iron and salt, And flour of wheat, and milk and honey, The blood of the grape, oil and clothing" (Sir 39:26). And wine combined with another's wife is forbidden: "Do not taste with her husband; And do not turn away with him drinking. Or else you will incline your heart to her; And your blood will incline to destruction" (Sir 9:9). New wine, in another aphorism, is what friendship aspires to: "New wine [is like a] new friend; And after it is old, then you will drink it" (Sir 9:10).

Warnings Against Drunkenness

The proverbs and prophets press the other side of the ledger. "Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler; And whoever errs by it is not wise" (Pr 20:1). "Don't be among winebibbers, Among gluttonous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty; And drowsiness will clothe [a man] with rags" (Pr 23:20-21). The longer poem catalogs the symptoms: "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long at the wine; Those who go to seek out mixed wine. Don't look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly: At the last it bites like a serpent, And stings like an adder" — and ends with the addict's resolve, "When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again" (Pr 23:29-35). Lemuel's mother forbids it to rulers: "It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; Nor for princes to desire strong drink. Or else they will drink, and forget the law, And pervert the justice [due] to any who is afflicted" (Pr 31:4-5).

Isaiah turns the same warning into oracle. "Woe to those who rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; who tarry late into the night, until wine inflames them! And the harp and the lute, the tabret and the pipe, and wine, are [in] their feasts; but they do not regard the work of Yahweh" (Isa 5:11-12); "Woe to those who are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink" (Isa 5:22). Ephraim's "crown of pride" is the crown of "the drunkards of Ephraim... overcome with wine" (Isa 28:1), and the indictment names even the religious leadership: "the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment" (Isa 28:7). Hosea condenses it: "Whoring and wine and new wine take away the understanding" (Hos 4:11). Habakkuk turns the bottle on the one who pours: "Woe to him who gives his fellow man drink, mixing your strong wine, and make him drunk also, that you may look at their nakedness! You are filled with shame, and not glory: you also drink, and show your foreskin; the cup of Yahweh's right hand will come round to you" (Hab 2:15-16) — a transition that already binds drunkenness to the cup of divine wrath.

The Vineyard of Yahweh

The wine-bearing land becomes a figure for Israel itself. Isaiah's love-song begins, "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 then, in case the figure escaped its hearers, names the vineyard outright: "For 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 laments the same vineyard ruined by faithless 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).

The New Wine of the Restored Land

The prophets of restoration take the same vineyard and run it forward. Joel sees "the floors will be full of wheat, and the vats will overflow with new wine and oil" (Joel 2:24), and farther on: "the mountains will drop down sweet wine, and the hills will flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah will flow with waters; and a fountain will come forth from the house of Yahweh" (Joel 3:18). Amos pictures the same overflow: "the plowman will overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; and the mountains will drop sweet wine.... And I will bring back the captivity of my people Israel, and they will build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they will plant vineyards, and drink their wine" (Amos 9:13-14). The new wine is the sign that the land has been given back.

The Sign at Cana

The first sign Jesus does in the Fourth Gospel is over a wine shortage at a wedding. "And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: and Jesus also was invited, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus says to him, They have no wine" (John 2:1-3). The exchange that follows is brief — "Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour is not yet come" — and then Mary tells the servants, "Whatever he says to you⁺, do it" (John 2:4-5). Six purification jars, "containing about twenty or thirty gallons each," are filled with water (John 2:6-7). When the ruler of the feast tastes "the water now become wine," he calls the bridegroom and complains in praise: "Every man sets on first the good wine; and when [men] have drank freely, [then] that which is worse: you have kept the good wine until now" (John 2:9-10). The narrator's comment frames the whole: "This beginning of his signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed on him" (John 2:11).

The same Gospel includes the wineskins saying in the synoptic memory: "And no man puts new wine into old wineskins; else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perishes, and the skins: but [they put] new wine into fresh wineskins" (Mark 2:22).

The Last Supper Cup

On the night before his death, the cup returns. "And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it. And he said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you⁺, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:23-25). Luke's order separates the cup of distribution from the cup of the meal: "And he received a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: for I say to you⁺, I will not drink from now on of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God will come" (Luke 22:17-18). Paul receives the same tradition into the Corinthian assembly: "In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as you⁺ drink [it], in remembrance of me" (1 Cor 11:25).

Vinegar and the Cross

A subplot to the wine of the meal is the vinegar of the cross. The sluggard's proverbial figure is at first only an irritant — "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, So is the sluggard to those who send him" (Pr 10:26) — and at table, vinegar is what Boaz offers Ruth to dip her morsel in (Ruth 2:14). But the psalmist says of his enemies, "They gave me also gall for my food; And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink" (Ps 69:21), and the passion narrative converges on the same liquid: "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). The Nazirite's renunciation of "vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink" (Num 6:3) is the same liquid offered, in the end, to the one who would not drink the fruit of the vine again until the kingdom.

The Cup of God's Wrath

The figurative cup gathers the warnings of the prophets and runs out to the end. Isaiah summons Jerusalem from her stupor: "Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, that have drank at the hand of Yahweh the cup of his wrath; you have drank the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it" (Isa 51:17). Jeremiah is told to circulate the cup: "take this cup of the wine of wrath at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it" (Jer 25:15). The Apocalypse holds the same cup. Of the worshipper of the beast: "he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed undiluted in the cup of his anger" (Rev 14:10). Of the great city: "Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath" (Rev 16:19). And of the rider on the white horse: "out of his mouth proceeds a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations: and he will shepherd them with a rod of iron: and he treads the wine press of the fierceness of the wrath of the God of hosts" (Rev 19:15). The press that yields the gladness of Ps 104 yields, in the same scripture, the wine of the wrath of God.