Wine-Press, Wine-Fat
• 1 min. read • grade level: 8
Ancient winepress located at “The Garden Tomb” near the Damascus Gate.
These are said to be “trodden,” which signifies that the grapes were placed in a receptacle, and were trodden on by the feet, a pipe conveying the juice into a vessel at the side. Places have been found which apparently were used for this purpose: they are hewn out of a rock with a shallow channel by which the juice could escape (Judg. 6:1111And there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. (Judges 6:11); Neh. 13:1515In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine presses on the sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath day: and I testified against them in the day wherein they sold victuals. (Nehemiah 13:15); Job 24:1111Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst. (Job 24:11); Isa. 5:22And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. (Isaiah 5:2); Isa. 63:22Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat? (Isaiah 63:2); Mark 12:11And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. (Mark 12:1); &c). In Egypt the grapes were also pressed in a bag by its being twisted tighter and tighter.
Symbolically the vine-press is used as a figure of the execution of God’s judgments: the people, as grapes, are placed in the press, and there crushed: “and blood came out of the winepress, even unto horses’ bridles, by the space of 1600 furlongs”—about the extent of Palestine (Rev. 14:19-2019And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs. (Revelation 14:19‑20); Rev. 19:1515And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. (Revelation 19:15)).