Wine

Wine in Scripture is the fermented juice of the grape, a staple crop of the ancient Near East that the Bible treats both as a mark of abundance and as a power that can enslave.

The Hebrew vocabulary distinguishes what English flattens: yayin is wine generally, tirosh is new or fresh wine, and shekar is strong drink, the pair appearing together in the law's description of abstention (Numbers 6:3). The text says wine belongs with grain and oil as the basic produce of the land, so that drought on "the grain, on the new wine, on the oil" is a covenant curse (Haggai 1:11). Plenty of wine, by contrast, is pictured as divine generosity: "Yahweh of Armies will make all peoples a feast of choice meat, a feast of choice wines" on the mountain (Isaiah 25:6), the thirsty are invited to "buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Isaiah 55:1), and "new wine" makes the young women flourish alongside grain for the young men (Zechariah 9:17).

The same book speaks of wine as danger. Isaiah 56:12 puts on the lips of heedless leaders the resolve, "I will get wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow will be as today," and Ephesians 5:18 sets drunkenness, "in which is dissipation," over against being filled with the Spirit. In Revelation 14:8 wine becomes a figure for the intoxicating influence of Babylon, "the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality." Alongside all this, the text also honors abstention: Luke 1:15 says of John that "he will drink no wine nor strong drink," the standard language of Nazirite consecration (Numbers 6:3), so that refusing wine can itself signify dedication. One way to read the whole pattern is that Scripture treats wine as a good that is morally neutral in itself and morally revealing in its use.

At the last supper Jesus takes a cup — historically, the Passover cup, which held wine — and speaks over it of covenant blood: "this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" (Matthew 26:28; compare Mark 14:24 and Luke 22:20, "this cup is the new covenant in my blood"). John 6:56 adds the language of eating flesh and drinking blood as the mark of abiding in Christ, which some traditions read eucharistically and others do not. Christian traditions differ sharply here. In Catholic and Orthodox teaching the bread and cup are understood to become truly the body and blood of Christ, described in Latin theology as transubstantiation and in Eastern usage as a mystery; Lutheran teaching affirms a real bodily presence "in, with, and under" the elements; Reformed teaching speaks of a genuine spiritual feeding through the sign; Baptist and many free-church traditions read the supper as memorial and symbol, and many such congregations use unfermented juice. Separately, Wesleyan, Adventist and other temperance-rooted traditions hold that total abstinence from alcohol is the fitting norm for believers, while Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed bodies generally retain wine at the table and allow moderate use.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.