English 
Chinese 
Dutch 
Arabic 
Spanish 
Portuguese 
Russian 
French 
Italian 
German 
Japanese Grapes carry two meanings in the Bible, blessing and judgment, and the same fruit holds both. The spies’ great cluster showed the richness of the promised land, and the fruit of the vine became the cup of the Lord’s Supper. Wild grapes, sour grapes and the trodden winepress picture sin and God’s wrath.
How many times are grapes mentioned in the Bible?
The King James Bible says “grapes” 37 times and “grape” 8 times, 45 in all, and only three of them are in the New Testament. “Cluster” and “clusters” come 12 times, and “wine” 231 times. The word “grapes” first appears in a dream, although Noah had planted a vineyard long before (Genesis 9:20). Pharaoh’s butler, in prison with Joseph, dreamed of a vine with three branches whose “clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes”, and he pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup (Genesis 40:10–11).
Why did the spies carry a cluster of grapes?
When Moses sent twelve men to search out the promised land, they came to a valley and “cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff” (Numbers 13:23). The place was named for it: “The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes” (Numbers 13:24), and eshkol is the Hebrew word for a cluster. They came back to the camp and said, “surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it” (Numbers 13:27).
So the first great cluster in the Bible is a promise you can hold. God had said the land was good, and here was the proof, too heavy for one man to carry. Then came the sorrow of the story. Most of the spies said, “We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we” (Numbers 13:31), and the people wanted to go back to Egypt (Numbers 14:4). Only Joshua and Caleb of all the spies “lived still” when the rest had died (Numbers 14:38). The grapes were real, and the people would not trust the God who gave them.
Are grapes a symbol of God’s blessing?
Yes, again and again. When Jacob blesses Judah, he pictures vines so plentiful that a man ties his donkey to the choice vine and “washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes” (Genesis 49:11). Moses’ song remembers God feeding his people until “thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape” (Deuteronomy 32:14). Amos sees a harvest so rich that “the treader of grapes” catches up with the man sowing the next crop (Amos 9:13). Even over a ruined vine, God looks for the good that is left. Isaiah pictures a cluster with new wine still in it, and someone saying, “Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it”, and God says he will do the same “for my servants’ sakes” (Isaiah 65:8).
That blessing was meant to be shared. The law left the gleanings of every vineyard to the poor and the stranger, and an Israelite walking through a neighbour’s vineyard could “eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel” (Deuteronomy 23:24). A hungry neighbour could eat, and the harvest still belonged to the family who had worked for it.
What are wild grapes and sour grapes in the Bible?
Wild grapes are the fruit God did not want. In Isaiah’s song of the vineyard, the owner does everything for his vines, “and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes” (Isaiah 5:2). Isaiah explains that the vineyard is Israel and the bad fruit is oppression (Isaiah 5:7). Micah grieves that “The good man is perished out of the earth”, and he feels like a gleaner after the harvest: “there is no cluster to eat” (Micah 7:1–2). And Jesus uses grapes to test false prophets (Matthew 7:15): “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Matthew 7:16).
Sour grapes come from a proverb Ezekiel heard among the exiles: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Ezekiel 18:2). It was a way of saying that their suffering was their parents’ fault. God would not let them keep saying it. “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). Jeremiah gives the same word: “every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge” (Jeremiah 31:30). We answer for our own fruit, and God judges each of us for our own life.
What are the “grapes of wrath” in the Bible?
The words “grapes of wrath” are not in the King James Bible. They come from Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” John Steinbeck took the title of his 1939 novel from the same hymn. The picture behind the line is in Scripture. In Revelation an angel cries, “Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.” The angel “gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God”, and the winepress is trodden “without the city” (Revelation 14:18–20). Joel had seen the same harvest: “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great” (Joel 3:13).
Isaiah sees someone coming from Edom with red garments, and asks, “Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?” The answer comes: “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me” (Isaiah 63:2–3). In Isaiah it is God coming in judgment, and Revelation gives the treading of “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” to the rider whose name “is called The Word of God” (Revelation 19:13, 15).
The early Church also heard something else in Isaiah’s red garments. Cyprian, who became bishop of Carthage around the year 248, read them as the Lord’s passion: “just as the drinking of wine cannot be attained to unless the bunch of grapes be first trodden and pressed, so neither could we drink the blood of Christ unless Christ had first been trampled upon and pressed”. The one who treads the winepress of judgment was himself pressed for us.
Why were Nazirites not allowed to eat grapes?
A Nazirite was a man or woman who made a vow “to separate themselves unto the LORD” (Numbers 6:2) for a set number of days, and the vow touched the whole vine. “He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink… neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried. All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk” (Numbers 6:3–4). Grapes were among the good gifts of the land, and the Nazirite was set apart even from them until “the days of his separation are fulfilled” (Numbers 6:13).
Is wine good or bad in the Bible?
Scripture praises “wine that maketh glad the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15) and also warns that “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging” (Proverbs 20:1) and “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). At Cana Jesus made the best wine of the feast out of water, the first of his signs (John 2:10–11).
What do grapes and wine mean at the Lord’s Supper?
At his last supper with his disciples, he took the cup and said, “Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:27–29). The fruit of the vine became the cup of the new covenant. The Didache, from the late first or early second century, gives the first Christians’ thanksgiving over that cup: “We thank you, our Father, for the holy vine of David Your servant, which You made known to us through Jesus Your Servant”.
Cyprian saw one more thing in the cup. Wine is “pressed from many grapes and clusters and collected together”, he wrote, and so it shows “our flock linked together by the mingling of a united multitude”. The grapes lose their separate skins to become one wine.
Churches name what happens at the Supper in their own words. The Catholic Church teaches that the bread and wine, “by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ’s Body and Blood”, and it still gives thanks for them as gifts of the Creator, “fruit of the earth” and “of the vine” (Catechism, paragraph 1333). Luther’s Small Catechism calls the sacrament “the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink”. The Baptist Faith and Message calls the Supper “a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming”. Wherever we receive it, the cup in our hands began as many grapes on many vines.
Does dreaming of grapes mean anything in the Bible?
One man in the Bible did dream of grapes: Pharaoh’s butler. Before he heard the dream, Joseph said, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” (Genesis 40:8). God gave that dream its meaning for one man at one moment, and Scripture offers no key for reading ours. When a dream stays with us, we can bring it in prayer to the God to whom, as Joseph said, interpretations belong.
The cluster of Eshcol was a promise, and the cup of the Supper is a promise kept. Between them stand all our wild and sour grapes, and the God who still walks through his vineyard looking for good fruit. The prophets saw where his harvest ends: “the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt” (Amos 9:13).
Leave a Reply