Bible Review

Francis Brown, Samuel Driver and Charles Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), p. 153.

Large quantities of charred grape seeds were found in Stratum XIV (10th century B.C.E.) at Tell Michal. See Shmuel Moshkovitz, “Iron Age Stratigraphy and Architecture (Strata XIV-XII),” in Excavations at Tel Michal, Israel, ed. Ze’ev Herzog, George Rapp, Jr., and Ora Negbi (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 1989), p. 64.

Indeed, raisins are still used today for trail mix.

Jeremiah’s divine vintner draws a contrast by way of disappointing results. While he planted soreq from “true seed,” he got “strange” or “foreign” gephen (Jeremiah 2:21). The people, as cultivated soreq, are lamented or admonished for “turning into foreign vine.”

Jeff Cox, From Vines to Wines (Pownal, VT: Garden Way, 1985), p. 77.

Timber was largely imported from Syria and Phoenicia; by Iron II the forests were denuded. Unnecessary in Israel’s dry, hot summers, this cost was likely avoided by the farmer.

Psalm 80:9. See also verse 11, where hills are again mentioned with vines.

White, Roman Farming, p. 225. See Ezekiel 19:10, where a vine is transplanted.

Columella, de Re Rustica, 28, 32.

Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, II, 1.1–4, and de Causis Plantarum, I, 16.