Fruit of the Vine

A Biblical Spirituality of Wine

Mark G. Boyer

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781532617522, 9781498242257
• eBook ISBN: 9781498242240
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Fruit of the Vine: A Biblical Spirituality of Wine is designed to help the reader grow in spirituality through reflecting on biblical vineyard stores, wine making, and wine as a metaphor for life. A spirituality of wine--categorized as a spirit--connects the spirit in wine to the universal spirit all share. Wine appeals to all five senses. Its bouquet can be smelled; its complexity, often compared to fruit, can be tasted; its shades of red, designating its body, can be seen as it clings to or quickly runs down the inside of a glass. One can hear the pop as the cork leaves the bottle's neck and the gurgle of the wine leaving the bottle as it is poured into a glass. Wine is a major sign of transformation in the process of growth from blossom, sunlight, and water to grapes, which are in turn broken apart, integrated into a whole, and fermented into alcohol. While the wine is aged, it undergoes even more transformation. People are transformed when they share this already multiple-times-transformed beverage. The vineyard and all it produces can reveal the divine if a person but opens his or her eyes to see.

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Biblical Vineyard Stories

Song of the Vineyard

Scripture: “My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.” (Isa 5:1b)

Reflection: The HB (OT) prophet Isaiah presents the epitome of vineyard stories. Bibles usually label Isaiah’s tale as the song of the vineyard. It reveals what went into creating, maintaining, and harvesting a vineyard. “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard,” begins Isaiah’s story (Isa 5:1a).

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, and he saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! (Isaiah 5:1b–7)

Literal Level: Roberts states that “the poem operates on several different levels and participates in several different genres. On the literal level, it is a song about a man’s vineyard. . . . ”1 As the HB (OT) Book of Genesis states, “Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard” (Gen 9:20).

Love Song: Roberts also states that vineyard “is a standard metaphor for one’s ‘beloved’ in Israelite love poetry” and “the song was probably heard metaphorically as a love song . . . of unrequited love.”2 Nowhere is this more evident than in the HB (OT) erotic love poem known as the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. Ryken states, “Fertile vines produced luscious grapes, pleasing to the taste and, when fermented, intoxicating. It is not surprising, considering the general use of agricultural images for sexuality, that the vine is frequently employed in [this] most sensual of all biblical poems. . . . ”3 Vineyard serves as a metaphor for a woman’s body. The unnamed woman states that her brothers made her keeper of the vineyards, but her own vineyard she has not kept (Song 1:6), that is, she has not remained a virgin or chaste. She compares her beloved to precious aromatic scents which she puts between her breasts, that is, a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards (Song 1:14). She declares her beloved to be fruit sweet to her taste (Song 2:3). He acknowledges that the vines are in blossom and give forth fragrance (Song 2:13), and he concludes, declaring: “Catch us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyards—for our vineyards are in blossom” (Song 2:15). The little foxes in the song—a reference to the dangers of their lovemaking—also echo the story of Samson in the HB (OT) Book of Judges. Samson catches three hundred foxes, ties their tails together in pairs, places a lit torch between each pair of tails, and sets them loose to burn the vineyards of the Philistines (Judg 15:4–5), known as the vineyards of Timnah (Judg 14:5).

The vineyard serves as a setting for passionate lovemaking. The woman goes to the orchard to see whether the vines have budded (Song 6:11) and to meet the man. He, too, invites her to “go out early to the vineyards, and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened” for there he will give her his love (Song 7:12). He hopes that her breasts be like clusters of the vine (Song 7:7, 8b) and that her kisses be like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth (Song 7:9). At the end of the poem the man declares that his vineyard, the woman, is better than Solomon’s vineyard, whose fruit was worth much silver. His vineyard, his lover, belongs to him (Song 8:12). Similarly, Psalm 128, states that the wife of a man who fears the LORD will be like a fruitful vine within his house (Ps 128:3a).

Image of Israel: “Israel was a land of vineyards,” states Ryken.4 “ . . . [I]t is not surprising that the vine and the vineyard, so characteristic of this country’s agricultural fertility, serve as a potent image for the land itself.”5 Referring to the land of Judah, the prophet Ezekiel tells the princes of Judah in Babylonian captivity that their “mother was like a vine in a vineyard transplanted by the water, fruitful and full of branches from abundant water” (Ezek 19:10).

“The parable [song, allegory] of the vineyard . . . describes Israel as God’s vineyard,” states Ryken.6 The prophet Hosea states this unequivocally: “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit” (Hos 10:1). “It is God’s not only because God loves it, but because he painstakingly prepared the land and planted it. He also carefully protected it. In this way the parable describes God’s election of Israel as a nation (Deut 7:7–11) and his providential care of it.”7 The psalmist states this when he addresses God singing, “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filed the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches; it sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River” (Ps 80:8–11). Likewise, one of Ezekiel’s allegories begins with a seed, representing Zedekiah, who was set up as king of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The seed

sprouted and became a vine spreading out, but low; its branches turned toward him, its roots remained where it stood. So it became a vine; it brought forth branches, put forth foliage. And see! This vine stretched out its roots toward him; it shot out its branches toward him, so that he might water it. From the bed where it was planted it was transplanted to good soil by abundant waters, so that it might produce branches and bear fruit and become a noble vine. (Ezek 17:6, 7b–8)

Isaiah’s Friend: Roberts notes that “Isaiah sings his love song about his friend’s vineyard on behalf of his friend.”8 He adds, “Isaiah sings his love song for his friend, trying to convince the audience by the extended vineyard metaphor that it was through no fault of his friend that his friend’s beloved did not reciprocate his love.”9 He continues:

Isaiah’s friend chose a fertile spur of hill country as the location for his vineyard. He did the necessary work of preparing the ground by digging it up to rid it of weeds and by removing the large stones that would impede growth. He planted the prepared vineyard with choice vine stock, built a tower within it to protect it from animal and human depredations, and hued out a wine vat in anticipation of the harvest. Then he waited for the well-tended vineyard to produce an abundance of grapes, but all it produced were sour, unripe, diseased berries.10

Suddenly in the prophet’s love song “the friend himself speaks through Isaiah in the first person,” states Roberts.11 “Now, speaking as his friend, he invites [the audience] to judge between him and his ‘vineyard.’ Such judgment is still within the realm of a love song about unrequited love,” states Roberts.12 Isaiah’s friend asks two rhetorical questions about what else could he do and was not his expectation reasonable. The same idea is expressed by God through the prophet Jeremiah: “ . . . I planted you [, Israel,] as a choice vine, from the purest stock. How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?” (Jer 2:21)

Destruction of the Vineyard: From this vineyard Isaiah’s friend expected a good harvest. When he does not get it, according to Roberts, “He threatens to remove the hedge and wall around the vineyard so that the animals may graze and trample the unfruitful vineyard. He will no longer...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Biblical Vineyard Stories
• Chapter 2: Picking Grapes
• Chapter 3: Processing Grapes
• Chapter 4: Types of Wine
• Chapter 5: Storage of Wine
• Chapter 6: Measuring and Tasting Wine
• Chapter 7: Wine with Food
• Chapter 8: Effects of Wine
• Chapter 9: No Wine-Drinking
• Chapter 10: Offering
• Chapter 11: Metaphor for Life
• Chapter 12: Metaphor for Abundance
• Chapter 13: Metaphor for Poverty
• Chapter 14: Metaphor for Wrath
• Chapter 15: Metaphor for Blood
• Other Books by Mark G. Boyer
• Bibliography