The Vine & the Vineyard

Now Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.

The image's first appearance in Scripture — and it ends badly within two verses. The vine enters the Bible already carrying trouble.

He ties his donkey to the vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He washes his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.

Jacob's blessing ties a vine to Judah, the tribe the King comes from. Nothing is explained; the picture is simply set down beside the promise.

Throughout the days of Solomon, Judah and Israel dwelt securely from Dan to Beersheba, each man under his own vine and his own fig tree.

Every man under his vine: the standing picture of covenant peace, quiet and settled. Micah and Zechariah both say it again.

But their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; their clusters are bitter.

The first bad vine, in the Song of Moses — and the measure every prophet after him will use.

You uprooted a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and transplanted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered by its shade, and the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the Sea, and its shoots toward the River. Why have You broken down its walls, so that all who pass by pick its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and the creatures of the field feed upon it.

The Exodus retold as a transplanting. God clears the ground, carries the vine out of Egypt, plants it — and then the hedges come down and anything passing helps itself.

I will sing for my beloved a song of his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour!

The Song of the Vineyard. Count the operations before a single grape is expected: fenced, cleared of stones, planted with the best vine, a tower built, a winepress cut.

In that day: “Sing about a fruitful vineyard. I, the LORD, am its keeper; I water it continually. I guard it night and day so no one can disturb it;

The counter-song, in the same book, deliberately answering chapter 5: the same vineyard, and this time God says He keeps it night and day and will not let it go.

I had planted you like a choice vine from the very best seed. How could you turn yourself before Me into a rotten, wild vine?

Not neglect — degeneration. The stock planted was the best there was; what grew is something else entirely.

Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard; they have trampled My plot of ground. They have turned My pleasant field into a desolate wasteland.

The charge moves onto the men in charge. It is the shepherds who have trampled the vineyard, and this is where Matthew 21 will pick the thread up.

“Son of man, how does the wood of the vine surpass any other branch among the trees in the forest? Can wood be taken from it to make something useful? Or can one make from it a peg on which to hang utensils? No, it is cast into the fire for fuel. The fire devours both ends, and the middle is charred. Can it be useful for anything? Even when it was whole, it could not be made useful. How much less can it ever be useful when the fire has consumed it and charred it!

The hardest of them. Vine wood is not building timber — you cannot even make a peg out of it. Without fruit the plant is worth less than any tree in the forest, and is fit only for burning.

He took some of the seed of the land and planted it in fertile soil; he placed it by abundant waters and set it out like a willow. It sprouted and became a spreading vine, low in height, with branches turned toward him; yet its roots remained where it stood. So it became a vine and yielded branches and sent out shoots.

A transplanted vine used as political parable — and the chapter interprets itself a few verses later as Zedekiah's broken treaty. The image can carry current affairs as easily as theology.

Israel was a luxuriant vine, yielding fruit for himself. The more his fruit increased, the more he increased the altars. The better his land produced, the better he made the sacred pillars.

The one complaint that is not about barrenness. Israel prospered — and spent the prosperity on altars to other gods.

I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom.”

The image in His own hand at the table — 'this fruit of the vine' — hours before He says the sentence the whole chain has been running toward.

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the keeper of the vineyard. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes to make it even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. I am the vine and you are the branches. The one who remains in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire, and burned.

The reversal, and the page's centre — worked out in its own section below. The vine is no longer a nation; it is a Person. The Father is still the husbandman and fruit is still what He is after. What changes is where fruit comes from. Note the badge is absent here on purpose: 'true' signals a contrast, but John never names the vine He is being contrasted with. That identification is the church's, not the text's.

Still another angel, with authority over the fire, came from the altar and called out in a loud voice to the angel with the sharp sickle, “Swing your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the vine of the earth, because its grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and the blood that flowed from it rose as high as the bridles of the horses for a distance of 1,600 stadia.

The image's terminus: a vintage gathered from a vine that was never His, and a winepress that is now the winepress of the wrath of God.