Grapes and vineyards 1

From the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey to the lesson in a vineyard Jesus gave on the night of his arrest (John 15:1-8), grapes and the wine made from them are some of the most common and beautiful illustrations in the Bible. In Isaiah 5, the prophet uses a rare parable (there are fewer than a dozen parables in the entire Old Testament) of a walled vineyard. When Jesus speaks of a vineyard as a teaching tool, every Jewish listener would have immediately remembered Isaiah’s parable.