Vineyard

A vineyard was not planted lightly. First, stone terraces had to be built on a hillside — each one by hand, course by course, to hold the thin rocky soil in place and catch rainwater. Then the young vines were planted, staked, and trained. For the first few years they produced nothing. Every winter, the dead and unproductive branches had to be cut back so the remaining wood would bear fruit the following summer. At harvest time, workers picked the heavy clusters of grapes and carried them to a winepress — a vat cut directly into the rock — where they trampled the grapes with bare feet, the juice running down into a lower collecting pool. A vineyard was years of work before it gave a return, and every year's harvest depended on that winter pruning.

God used this long investment to describe his relationship with Israel. In Isaiah 5:1–7 he sang the parable of a man who built a vineyard on a fertile hill, cleared it of stones, planted the best vines, built a watchtower and a winepress — and waited for good grapes. The vineyard produced wild, sour ones. The vineyard is Israel, God says plainly, and he expected justice. Jesus took the same image in Mark 12:1–12: the vineyard owner sends servants for the harvest and they are beaten and killed; finally he sends his own son. In John 15:1 Jesus says 'I am the true vine' — he replaces Israel as the vine; disciples are branches that must remain in him or be cut off. Revelation 14:19–20 ends the age with the great winepress of God's wrath.