Chapter 1: Scripture — What the Bible Says About Wine

Overview

The question this study asks — did Jesus drink alcoholic wine, and is wine as a substance sinful? — belongs first to Scripture. Before we ask what Jesus did, or what the early church practiced, or what modern denominations teach, we ask what the biblical text itself says.

This chapter aims to present the whole counsel of Scripture on wine (Acts 20:27) — including every passage the prohibitionist and abstentionist voices lean on, not only the passages that fit the study’s own conclusion. Where two readings of a text are plausible, both are named. Where a verse is a classic prohibitionist proof-text, the verse appears; the prohibitionist exegesis of it is examined in Chapter 4.5 (the best of the prohibitionist case) and answered in Chapter 5 (synthesis). Here in Chapter 1, the goal is honest exposure to the biblical text.

Scripture speaks of wine often. The Hebrew Bible mentions it in more than two hundred verses; the New Testament, in roughly forty. What emerges from a full reading is not a single verdict but a pattern of distinctions: wine as gift, wine at feast, wine in worship — set alongside a persistent, sober warning against drunkenness. The Bible does not treat wine and drunkenness as one moral question. It treats them as two.

This chapter walks through the biblical evidence in seven categories of evidence, framed by a vocabulary orientation (§1) and a closing summary (§9). The King James Version is primary; where a comparison translation clarifies, it is noted. Every block quote is verbatim from the KJV. To God be the glory for the whole of what he has spoken.

1. Vocabulary orientation

The biblical languages distinguish several words that English translations often flatten to “wine”. Before reading the passages, it helps to hold the vocabulary in view.

Hebrew

yayin (יַיִן) — the ordinary word for wine, appearing about 140 times in the Old Testament. It is the wine at Melchizedek’s blessing (Gen 14:18), the wine of Psalm 104’s provision, the wine that gladdens the heart, and — in Proverbs — the wine that mocks and bites like a serpent when misused.
tirosh (תִּירוֹשׁ) — sometimes translated “new wine” or “must”, appearing about 38 times. Most often it names the fresh yield of the vintage, seen in the tithe passages and the harvest blessings. Whether tirosh always means unfermented juice or whether it can name young fermented wine is a live question in the lexicons; the LXX renders it sometimes as oinos, sometimes as gleukos, depending on context.
shekar (שֵׁכָר) — “strong drink”, appearing about 23 times. Often paired with yayin: “wine and strong drink”. The LXX borrows the Hebrew directly, giving Greek sikera. Etymologically related to Akkadian šikaru (barley beer), shekar likely names fermented beverages made from grain, date, honey, or fruit other than grapes — the ancient world’s “strong drink” beyond ordinary wine.

Greek

oinos (οἶνος) — the ordinary word for wine in the New Testament and the LXX. Used at Cana (John 2), at the Last Supper narratives (as “the fruit of the vine” — γέννημα τῆς ἀμπέλου, a Passover cup formula), and in the Pauline warnings (Eph 5:18; 1 Tim 5:23).
gleukos (γλεῦκος) — appears only once in the New Testament, at Acts 2:13, where the crowd accuses the apostles at Pentecost of being “full of new wine”. The accusation is not that the apostles have squeezed grapes; it is that they appear intoxicated. This one occurrence is decisive for the substance-question, as this chapter will show.
sikera (σίκερα) — the LXX loan of shekar; appears in Luke 1:15 in the announcement of John the Baptist (“shall drink neither wine nor strong drink”).

How the LXX bridges

The Septuagint’s translation choices are informative. It routinely renders yayin as oinos, and shekar as sikera. But tirosh moves between oinos and gleukos depending on context — a translation practice that undermines any hard vocabulary rule that “new wine equals grape juice, old wine equals fermented drink”. The ancient translators did not draw that line. Their choices tracked context, not substance category.

2. Wine as gift and blessing

Scripture’s most sustained voice on wine treats it as a divine gift.

He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart. — Psalm 104:14-15

Psalm 104 sets wine alongside bread and oil as one of the three staple gifts of God’s provision. The line is not incidental. The Hebrew here is yayin, the ordinary wine-word; the two-wine reading of blessing texts like this one is presented at its strongest in Chapter 4.5 and answered in Chapter 5.

The Deuteronomic law confirms the same:

And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household. — Deuteronomy 14:26

The tithe passage explicitly authorizes the Israelite to spend tithe silver on yayin and shekar — wine and strong drink — as part of feasting before the Lord. Both words appear. The instruction is not incidental permission; it is positive religious use.

The prophetic vision extends the same gift into the eschaton:

And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. — Isaiah 25:6

“Wines on the lees” (Hebrew shemarim) names aged wine that has settled on its sediment — the language of storage and fermentation. The messianic feast is a feast of wine, not of juice.

Other blessings pattern the same way. Jacob’s blessing on Judah pictures him “washing his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes” (Gen 49:11). Zechariah’s oracle of restoration promises that “corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine [tirosh] the maids” (Zech 9:17). Amos’s vision of the restored land is a land where “the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine [asis], and all the hills shall melt” (Amos 9:13). Nehemiah, on the day the Law is read to the returning exiles, instructs them:

Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength. — Nehemiah 8:10

“The sweet” (Hebrew mamtaqqim) is a general term, but the associated joy is the joy of a covenant feast, and the same passage’s wider context names wine and oil and grain as the standard staples.

Even ritual worship uses wine. The daily continual offering in the wilderness required a wine libation:

And the drink offering thereof shall be the fourth part of an hin for the one lamb: in the holy place shalt thou cause the strong wine to be poured unto the LORD for a drink offering. — Numbers 28:7

Shekar — the very “strong drink” that the prophets warn against when it fuels drunkenness — is here poured out to the LORD as part of the tabernacle’s daily service. The substance is not the sin.

3. Wine at feast and covenant

Wine’s second biblical setting is the feast — from Melchizedek’s blessing of Abram to the Last Supper of Jesus.

The first named wine in Scripture is priestly:

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth. — Genesis 14:18-19

The passage’s placement is theologically loaded. Bread and wine appear together, blessed by a priest of the Most High, before Abram receives his covenantal promise. The New Testament will read Melchizedek as a type of Christ (Heb 7); the elements he offers — bread and wine — become the elements of the Christian eucharist. The line runs from Genesis 14 through Psalm 110 to Hebrews 5-7, and into every Christian communion cup.

The wedding at Cana is Jesus’s first miracle in the Fourth Gospel:

And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. — John 2:3

Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. — John 2:7-10

The master of the feast’s remark is the interpretive key to the miracle. His logic is customary and pragmatic: at a wedding, hosts serve the good wine first, when guests can still taste discriminatingly; the inferior wine comes later, when the guests are past careful judgment. That the master’s judgment about this wine — the wine Jesus has just made — turns on that logic tells us what kind of wine has been produced. Grape juice would not be the punchline. The master is astonished that the host has reversed the ordinary practice — kept the good wine until now. His remark presupposes fermented wine on both sides of the comparison.

The Last Supper narratives all name wine’s presence obliquely. The Synoptic accounts avoid the word oinos directly, using the Passover-liturgical phrase “fruit of the vine” (γέννημα τῆς ἀμπέλου):

And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, 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

Mark 14:23-25 gives the same tradition; Luke 22:17-20 gives it with the “cup after supper” division; 1 Corinthians 11:25-26 preserves the earliest textual witness. In every case the substance is “the fruit of the vine” — the Passover liturgical formula. That the Passover cups were of fermented wine, not unfermented juice, is the unanimous witness of the rabbinic tradition (Mishnah Pesachim 10 requires four cups; the rabbis debate the mix ratio with water, not whether wine or juice). Whatever else one says about the eucharistic cup, it began as wine.

4. Warnings — drunkenness, not substance

Scripture’s warnings against wine misuse are among the strongest and most repeated moral instructions in either testament. The point to notice is what they warn against: not wine itself, but the loss of self-command that its abuse produces.

4.1 The Wisdom tradition

The Wisdom literature’s flagship passage:

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. — Proverbs 20:1

The saying is diagnostic: wine and strong drink can deceive. But the parallel of the second half tells us where the moral weight falls — on the one deceived, not on the wine. Whether the Hebrew lets (mocker) is best read as “wine mocks anyone who drinks it” or as “wine mocks the one whom it deceives” is the interpretive question that separates the prohibitionist and moderationist readings; Chapter 4.5 examines the strongest form of the categorical reading.

The most extended Wisdom warning is Proverbs 23:

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again. — Proverbs 23:29-35

The passage’s warning is directed at those who tarry long at the wine and go to seek mixed wine — the shape of habitual excess. But verse 31 — “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red” — is a classic prohibitionist proof-text: taken as a direct command, it forbids even the look upon wine, and would seem to forbid Jesus’s own act at Cana of producing red wine for a wedding. Chapter 4.5 treats this argument at its strongest. Here we simply note that the passage is real, present, and canonical; every reading of Jesus and wine must answer to it.

Additional wisdom warnings extend the same tone:

For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence. — Proverbs 4:17

He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich. — Proverbs 21:17

Both associate wine with a habit-shape that shapes the person — the “wine of violence” is a Hebrew idiom for what violent men drink, and Proverbs 21:17’s pairing of pleasure-love with poverty diagnoses the appetite that seeks wine to excess.

4.2 The prophetic voice

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! — Isaiah 5:11

Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: — Isaiah 5:22

Isaiah’s twin woes — one against the early-drinker, one against the man who prides himself on his drinking capacity — target the habit and its inversion of judgment. Isaiah 28 sharpens the prophetic voice by naming the drunkards not as pagans or foreigners but as Ephraim’s own leadership:

Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! — Isaiah 28:1

But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. — Isaiah 28:7

The Isaiah 28:7 passage is particularly weighty. The people wronged by wine are not tavern-dwellers; they are the priest and prophet — those whose vocation was precisely to render judgment sober. This passage is a key prohibitionist proof-text (if wine can ruin priests and prophets, and all Christians are priests, all should abstain) and Chapter 4.5 treats its extension at strength.

Hosea:

Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart. — Hosea 4:11

This passage is the single most important verse against the two-wine theory’s core claim. Hosea pairs yayin (ordinary wine) and tirosh (new wine) in the same warning, as substances that both take away the heart. The two-wine theory requires tirosh to name unfermented juice; Hosea 4:11 pairs tirosh with yayin as substances that intoxicate. The vocabulary distinction the theory needs is not drawn in the Hebrew text. Two-wine advocates do not concede the verse: Bacchiocchi has a prepared defense — the triad names spiritual apostasy rather than literal intoxication, and tirosh elsewhere names the raw vintage yield — which is given at its fullest, in his own words, in Chapter 4.5 §2 and answered in Chapter 5.

Habakkuk:

Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people. — Habakkuk 2:5

Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! — Habakkuk 2:15

Habakkuk 2:15 is the classic anti-serving proof-text: some prohibitionist readings understand it as forbidding any Christian host from serving alcohol to another. The verse’s actual grammar targets the host who makes his neighbour drunken for a further, exploitative purpose — “that thou mayest look on their nakedness”. But the extended reading — that the risk of causing drunkenness is enough to forbid the offering — is a serious pastoral argument and Chapter 4.5 examines it.

Amos and Micah:

That drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. — Amos 6:6

If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be the prophet of this people. — Micah 2:11

Amos’s “wine in bowls” — bowls being sacrificial vessels of the temple — describes the elite of Samaria drinking with the appetite of pagan idolatry. Micah’s line is more diagnostic still: the people prefer prophets who promise wine to prophets who tell them the truth. Both passages diagnose a covenantal disorder in which wine has become the symbol of an appetite over conscience.

4.3 The New Testament witness

The New Testament sharpens the same warning:

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; — Ephesians 5:18

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. — Romans 13:13

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. — Galatians 5:19-21

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. — 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. — 1 Corinthians 5:11

For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: — 1 Peter 4:3

But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; — Matthew 24:48-49

Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. — 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. — 1 Peter 5:8

The NT list is longer than most modern readers realize. Drunkards are named among the works of the flesh (Gal 5:21) and among those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10). Wine’s excess is one of the marks of a life left behind in conversion (1 Pet 4:3). The evil servant who mistreats his fellows also eats and drinks “with the drunken” (Matt 24:49). Sobriety — spiritual and physical — is repeatedly commanded (1 Thess 5:6-8; 1 Pet 5:8). The New Testament does not soften the Old Testament’s warning; it universalizes it.

4.4 The extreme cases

Two passages are worth naming for the sheer weight they lend to the biblical seriousness about drunkenness.

The Torah’s death penalty for the persistently drunken son:

Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. — Deuteronomy 21:19-20

The passage is set in the framework of parental authority (the son will not obey his parents’ voice), but among the specific charges is drunkard. A capital penalty (v. 21) attaches to the composite portrait. Whether the passage was ever actually invoked in Israel is debated; the canonical presence of the death-penalty-for-drunkard argument is used by some prohibitionist voices to argue that God’s assessment of drunkenness is severe enough to make any drinking morally reckless. Chapter 4.5 treats that reading at strength.

And an unexpected side-passage — the one where not drinking is defended against a false accusation:

And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD. Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial: for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto. — 1 Samuel 1:15-16

Eli the priest, watching Hannah pray silently at the sanctuary, mistakes her earnest supplication for drunkenness (v. 14). Hannah’s rebuttal is instructive: she names her abstention as evidence that she is not drunk. The passage shows that at the tabernacle, drunkenness was expected to be identifiable — the exception rather than the rule — and that religious devotion required sobriety even in the moment of individual prayer.

4.5 Reading the warnings together

The pattern is consistent across the canon: the moral weight is on drunkenness and its downstream effects — violence, sexual dissolution, pride, poverty, mistrust — not on wine as a substance. Ephesians 5:18 is the crisp form: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” The apostle contrasts drunkenness with Spirit-filling, not wine with juice. But the moderationist reading of that pattern is not the only reading of the biblical vocabulary. The prohibitionist voice hears the same warnings and infers a different discipline: given the substance’s power to deceive (Prov 20:1), to make even priests err (Isa 28:7), and to accompany a life of covenantal disorder (Amos 6:6), the safer and more honest response is abstention. Chapter 4.5 gives that voice its fullest hearing.

5. Abstention as vocation, not universal ban

Scripture recognizes several patterns in which particular persons or groups abstain from wine. In every case, the abstention is either a vocational calling, a temporary vow, or a rule for a specific duty — never a universal moral norm.

The Nazirite (Numbers 6)

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the LORD: He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried. — Numbers 6:2-3

The Nazirite vow is temporary and voluntary; the abstention is total (even from grape products of any kind) precisely because it is a marker of separation. The Nazirite is set apart for a time; when the vow ends, the person returns to ordinary life — including ordinary wine. Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist stand in the Nazirite line; but the vow is never presented as the standard against which ordinary Israelites are judged.

The priests on duty (Leviticus 10; Ezekiel 44:21)

Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations: And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; — Leviticus 10:9-10

The restriction is task-specific: when Aaron and his sons enter the tabernacle for priestly service. The reason is discernment (“that ye may put difference”) — the priest must not compromise judgment while officiating. The restriction is repeated in Ezekiel’s temple vision for the priests entering the inner court:

Neither shall any priest drink wine, when they enter into the inner court. — Ezekiel 44:21

The IFB and Wesleyan Holiness traditions extend this text: since the New Testament calls all believers “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9), they argue, Ezekiel’s ban on priestly drinking applies to every Christian. Chapter 4.5 gives that reading its fullest hearing. What the biblical text itself specifies is: priests, on duty, in the sanctuary. Off-duty, priests drank wine like other Israelites — the wine libation of the daily continual burnt offering (Num 28:7) was of shekar, poured out by those same priests in their tabernacle service.

Kings during judgment (Proverbs 31:4-5)

The wisdom collection preserved as King Lemuel’s mother’s instruction speaks a parallel word to rulers:

It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted. — Proverbs 31:4-5

The prohibition is task-specific: the king, in the seat of judgment, must not have his discernment compromised by wine. Like Leviticus 10’s priestly ban, this is a vocational discipline for the moment of judgment, not a universal Christian rule. The passage’s own next line — treated in section 7 below — extends the permission to drink to those whose distress is opposite the king’s: the perishing and the heavy-hearted may drink (v. 6-7). Prohibition and permission stand together in the same wisdom text, distinguished by who and when rather than by what.

The Rechabites (Jeremiah 35)

But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever. — Jeremiah 35:6

The Rechabite passage is treated by IFB and temperance-tradition voices as evidence that God commends universal abstention. The reading needs close attention. God commends the Rechabites — but the substance of the commendation is their obedience to their ancestral father Jonadab, not the specific content of the abstention. God did not command the Rechabites to abstain from wine. Their ancestor did; they honored his instruction; God holds up their filial fidelity as a rebuke to Israel’s covenantal faithlessness with respect to God’s own instruction. The passage does not universalize the Rechabite rule. If anything, it presupposes that ordinary Israel drinks wine — that is why the Rechabites’ abstention is remarkable. The extended reading — that the Rechabite pattern is the pattern all Christians should adopt — is the strongest form of the IFB argument on this text, and Chapter 4.5 treats it seriously.

Daniel’s court refusal (Daniel 1)

Daniel and his companions refuse “the king’s meat” and “the wine which he drank” (Dan 1:5, 8). The text names the concern as defilement, likely cultic. Daniel’s refusal is a specific covenantal witness within Babylon, not a general rule against wine — later in the book Daniel is troubled and mourns “no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth” (Dan 10:3), which reads as a temporary fast, not a permanent abstention.

John the Baptist (Luke 1:15)

For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. — Luke 1:15

John is described in Nazirite terms from the womb — the second Samson, the second Samuel. His abstention is his prophetic vocation, marking him as set apart. Jesus makes the contrast explicit in Matthew 11:18-19, which we will examine in Chapter 2: “John came neither eating nor drinking … The Son of man came eating and drinking.” The two are set side by side, not the abstainer commended against the drinker; the point is that the crowd rejected both.

The pattern across the canon is stable: abstention is honored where it marks a vocational calling. It is never universalized.

6. “New wine” — what does the phrase mean?

The two-wine theory examined in Chapter 4 hangs on a specific vocabulary claim: that Scripture distinguishes fermented wine (censured) from unfermented “new wine” (approved). The claim can be tested against the passages themselves.

Acts 2:13 — the decisive occurrence

Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. — Acts 2:13

The Greek is gleukos — the ordinary word later two-wine theorists translate “grape juice”. But the accusation’s whole force is that the apostles appear intoxicated. If gleukos named an unfermented beverage, the accusation would be empty; the crowd could hardly mock apostles for being “full of grape juice”. Peter’s rebuttal answers the accusation on its own terms: “Seeing it is but the third hour of the day” (Acts 2:15) — that is, too early in the day to be drunk. He does not correct the vocabulary; he corrects the timing. Gleukos here can only mean a fermented drink of some kind — perhaps young or freshly-fermented wine, but wine, not juice.

Chrysostom, four centuries later, will make this argument explicit in his fourth homily on Acts. His logic is exactly the crowd’s: if gleukos were not intoxicating, the accusation would land nowhere.

The wineskins parable (Matt 9:17 / Mark 2:22 / Luke 5:37-39)

Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved. — Matthew 9:17

The parable’s mechanics presuppose active fermentation. New wine — neos oinos, wine racked into skins after the violent primary fermentation in vats, still working through its gentler secondary fermentation — continues to give off gas; fresh leather stretches to accommodate it, while old skins, already stretched rigid, split. This is a fact about fermenting grape juice, not about static beverages. The parable works only because the wine is fermenting.

Luke 5:39 adds a comment sometimes read as slighting new wine — “No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.” The distinction is between young and aged fermented wine, not between fermented and unfermented. Both are oinos.

Isaiah 65:8

Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine [tirosh] is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all. — Isaiah 65:8

Tirosh here plainly names the pre-vintage juice still in the cluster. This is one clear case where the Hebrew word does refer to unfermented substance — but the context tells us so. Tirosh appears as ordinary staple produce (Hos 2:8; Joel 2:24) and, in the same prophet, as an intoxicant: “whoredom and wine [yayin] and new wine [tirosh] take away the heart” (Hos 4:11). Tirosh does not resolve to a fixed category; context does the work.

The two-wine theory’s core claim — that biblical vocabulary already draws the fermented-vs-unfermented moral line — is not supported by the biblical usage. The vocabulary is looser than the theory requires.

7. Ambiguous and pastoral passages

Some New Testament passages complicate any clean picture. They are neither positive-blessing texts nor drunkenness-warning texts; they sit in the pastoral space between.

Officer qualifications (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1-2)

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; — 1 Timothy 3:2-3

Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre; — 1 Timothy 3:8

For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre; — Titus 1:7

The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; — Titus 2:3

Four related verses use two phrases: officers “not given to wine” (μὴ πάροινον — in usage, “not a drunken brawler”; the contested reading is treated in Chapter 4.5 §12 and Chapter 5), and deacons and aged women “not given to much wine” (μὴ οἴνῳ πολλῷ προσέχοντας / δεδουλωμένας). The two phrases together fill in each other: the concern is habitual excess. The bishop is not a paroinos (a wine-fighter, a bar-drunk); the deacon and the aged woman are not “given to much wine”. Some strict-abstention readings understand the bishop’s phrase categorically (“not partaking of wine at all”); the parallel with “not given to much wine” for deacons and aged women — five verses apart in the same letter — makes the moderationist reading the more natural one. Chapter 4.5 treats the categorical reading at strength.

Pastoral advice to Timothy (1 Tim 5:23)

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities. — 1 Timothy 5:23

The command reads oddly if Paul thinks wine morally suspect. Paul urges Timothy — a young minister he calls “my son in the faith” — to switch from water to a little wine for a medical reason. The instruction is minor in absolute terms and pastoral in tone. But its existence tells us Paul does not consider wine categorically off-limits; he prescribes it, in moderation, for a specific pastoral purpose.

Two Old Testament passages preserve the same pastoral pattern of medicinal or comforting use. The second half of the Lemuel wisdom collection permits wine to those whose distress is opposite the king’s:

Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more. — Proverbs 31:6-7

And the Good Samaritan parable preserves wine’s ordinary use as a medical substance:

And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. — Luke 10:34

Jesus’s parable presupposes that a faithful traveler carrying oil and wine as ordinary provisions would use both, without moral question, to treat wounds. The parable does not teach a wine-doctrine, but the incidental detail is telling: wine at the traveler’s side is not a moral problem.

The “appearance of evil” argument (1 Thess 5:22)

Abstain from all appearance of evil. — 1 Thessalonians 5:22

Prohibitionist voices in the temperance tradition and in modern Independent Fundamental Baptist teaching read this verse as a universal command to abstain from anything that appears evil in the eyes of others — including drinking wine, since some observers will always take drinking as evidence of intemperance. Chapter 4.5 gives this argument its fullest hearing. Two observations belong here in Chapter 1. First, the verse’s own context (1 Thess 5:15-22) is a list of general spiritual disciplines — hold fast the good, prove all things — and reads more naturally as an instruction to avoid actual evil than as a rule to avoid whatever might be perceived as such. Second, the Greek eidos pantos ponērou is variously translated (“every form of evil” in most modern versions; “all appearance of evil” in the KJV); the reading of the verse as governing appearances rather than substance is a translation-and-exegesis matter, not a straightforward reading.

The weaker-brother argument (Romans 14)

It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. — Romans 14:21

Paul’s teaching in Romans 14 (and paralleled at 1 Corinthians 8-10) works out the substance-conscience dynamic. His conclusion is neither that meat is forbidden nor that wine is forbidden; it is that the strong brother, whose conscience is free, may voluntarily abstain out of love for a weaker brother whose conscience is not free. The passage presupposes that eating meat and drinking wine are both intrinsically permitted; the pastoral judgment about when to exercise that liberty is what Paul teaches.

This passage will figure again in Chapter 5’s synthesis. It is the closest Scripture comes to authorizing a voluntary practice of abstention for pastoral reasons — a practice that many modern Christian communities have taken up, formally in some denominations, informally in many others.

8. Narrative episodes — the honest picture

Scripture’s narrative record includes several episodes where wine is central to human failure. They are worth noting, because they neither soften nor romanticize.

Noah, after the flood: “And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent” (Gen 9:21). The narrative does not condemn wine in itself; it recounts Noah’s disgrace and Ham’s dishonoring of his father.

Lot and his daughters (Gen 19:32-36): the daughters intoxicate their father to conceive by him. The passage is a bleak inversion of the Genesis 14 meal — wine here is a tool of concealment and shame.

Nabal, the churl who insults David: “for he was very drunken: wherefore she told him nothing, less or more, until the morning light” (1 Sam 25:36). Nabal’s drunkenness makes him a target for prophetic judgment; the story does not tell against wine per se.

Belshazzar, the Babylonian king: “they drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone” (Dan 5:4). The drunken feast profanes the temple vessels; the writing on the wall follows.

These narratives are honest reporting. They do not moralize a categorical prohibition; they recount the human cost of drunkenness and the shape of covenantal shame. They belong with the Wisdom warnings, not with the blessings.

9. What Scripture says clearly, and what it leaves open

Reading Scripture’s wine passages together, several conclusions are secure:

Clear:

Wine as a substance is a gift, appearing in the Psalmist’s list of divine provision alongside bread and oil (Ps 104:14-15).
Wine is used in Israelite worship — explicitly in the daily libation (Num 28:7) and the tithe feast (Deut 14:26); by implication at the covenant meal (Ex 24:11); and, by Second Temple times, at every Passover (m. Pesachim 10:1).
Drunkenness is universally condemned — in the Wisdom literature, in the prophets, and in the New Testament epistles.
Abstention is honored as a vocation — the Nazirite, the priest on duty, John the Baptist. It is never made a universal rule.
The “fruit of the vine” at the Last Supper is wine — the ordinary Passover cup, unanimously fermented in both rabbinic and biblical evidence.

Ambiguous or contested:

The precise vocabulary boundary between yayin and tirosh, between oinos and gleukos. The two-wine theory’s claim that these words consistently distinguish fermented from unfermented substance is not supportable from the biblical usage itself (Hos 4:11 pairs them as substances that both take away the heart), but tirosh does at Isaiah 65:8 clearly name pre-vintage juice — vocabulary alone does not settle the fermentation question.
The exact meaning of “not given to wine” (1 Tim 3:3, Titus 1:7) and “not given to much wine” (1 Tim 3:8, Titus 2:3). The best reading holds them together as forbidding habitual excess, not moderate use — but pastoral churches have read them more strictly, and the text does not close the door on that reading.
The reach of “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red” (Prov 23:31). Read as diagnostic metonymy for prolonged and covetous drinking, the verse fits the pattern of the Wisdom warnings. Read as a direct command, it forbids even the sight of red wine — and would seem to challenge Jesus’s provision of red wine at Cana. Chapter 4.5 gives that reading at strength.
The reach of Habakkuk 2:15 (“Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink”). Read within its own grammar as targeting exploitative hosts who make guests drunken for further purposes, the verse warns against a specific act. Read broadly, it warns any host against serving alcohol. Both readings are defended in the modern literature.
The reach of 1 Thessalonians 5:22 (“Abstain from all appearance of evil”). The prohibitionist reading treats this as a warrant for universal abstention on the grounds of what wine drinking might appear to others. The moderationist reading takes the verse to warn against actual forms of evil, not perceptions.
The universalization of the Nazirite / Rechabite / priestly-abstention patterns. Each is set aside in its own text as a vocation for particular persons or offices. Whether the pattern is a universal Christian rule — as some IFB and Wesleyan Holiness voices argue — is a live interpretive question that Chapter 4.5 addresses.
The Romans 14 substance/conscience dynamic. Scripture opens the door to voluntary abstention out of love for a weaker brother; it does not tell us how far that dynamic should reach in any specific culture or moment.

The chapter has aimed to present the whole counsel of Scripture on wine — the passages that support the moderationist reading and the passages that support the prohibitionist reading, together, without stacking the deck. The interpretation of the difficult passages — how the prohibitionist voice hears them at its strongest — is the work of Chapter 4.5. The response is the work of Chapter 5.

The next chapter turns to what Jesus himself did and taught — the Christocentric priority in the SCAR framework. Scripture, read whole, permits wine and forbids drunkenness; that reading will be tested against Jesus’s own life and words.