Joy, Sorrow, and Wine
by J. Hamilton
It shouldn’t seem odd that the old man went on a drunk. His life’s work finished; the old world wiped out like it never existed; the new world a scraggly landscape of bushy, young trees, the oldest living creature being Noah himself — and then his vines produced grapes.
Post-apocalyptic literature never touches the one historical apocalypse, perhaps because it lacks villains or monsters. The world presented to Noah coming out of the ark appeared sunny, empty, and promising. The greatest social problem for the growing population was the tendency of groups to split off and “light out for the territory” as Huck Finn said he would do.
Noah’s vineyard began as a patch of ground that required clearing, a working of the soil to improve its quality. Then he placed vine cuttings the right distance apart and built the trellises for the vines, and that was merely the first year. Three years later, after much pruning and discarding of the early grapes, he made his first usable grape harvest. But even then the grapes had to be squeezed and the juice placed in a situation to allow for fermentation.
Noah must have carried the vine cuttings from the old world on the other side of the flood, and while laboring in the sun among the trellised young vines, he must have looked forward to new wine in the new world, but he probably didn’t anticipate becoming falling-down drunk — the first mention of such a condition in human history. But then it is the first mention of wine, and wine and drunkenness too often go together.
He labored in his vineyard against the background of a world that had perished — and Noah had just survived, saving only his life, his children’s lives, and the flora and fauna necessary to reanimate the world. According to the record, he lived 600 years before the flood came, and 300 after leaving the ark, but nothing of his new life is written except becoming a husbandman and getting drunk. The best years of his life had been lived before the great people and civilization he knew had perished and been obliterated by torrents of water. He beheld a strange new world before his eyes — scrubby, young — altered incomprehensibly by a tilted axis that created seasons and zones of hot and cold, an ice age. Clear sky overhead revealed an unsuspected universe with sun, moon, and stars nakedly visible before his eyes. His life’s work had ended when he abandoned the enormous boat.
A kind of disorientation, a grasping for well-remembered pleasures from the old world should be accepted as normal under the circumstances.
Oh, he must have made the comparisons in his mind’s eye between the pleasures of the old world and the temporary pleasure of new wine, red in the cup in this raw, new planet. The wine lay before him, and the world of his long life no longer existed. He must have yearned for it, flesh and spirit, before he turned the first spade of soil and planted the first cutting more than four years before, and now he could possess it.
I assume the vines Noah planted were of higher quality than those we can master today, and I assume the wine was of better quality than even Orson Welles was wont to drink. He took the first drink, and the magic of the vine did its work. A gift from God, he might have exclaimed in his early joy from the taste and effect — a response in anticipation of the psalmist’s joyful proclamation of God’s benevolence when grouping wine along with other of man’s necessities:
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
Noah didn’t know when to stop. One drink led to another, until his clothes became disordered and fell from him. He passed out naked in his tent, and Ham’s reporting of the event created a scandal. Shem and Japeth covered their father and hid his shame. There is more to the story, but this is enough for our purposes.
Not a great beginning for the story of wine in the Bible. And the last mention, which uses wine as a metaphor, is even grimmer:
And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. —Revelation 17:1-2
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication . . . –Revelation 18:2-3
I suppose the metaphor refers to the reckless intoxicating effect overindulging in wine has on a person, with fornication being the tenor of the metaphor and wine being the vehicle. Whatever lessons readers may learn from the first and last mentions of wine in the Bible, one element stands clear — both portray wine or the effect of wine with great prejudice.
In between lies a varied representation. The liquid in the wine cup can be pictured as threatening, associated with immorality and loss of motor skills (one can’t stand up without falling down). One such is an often-quoted passage from Proverbs:
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. —Proverbs 23:31-33
In other passages, it appears as something to be desired — a pleasant way to transform the mind and the emotions, a solace for the melancholy, a tonic for the dismal you:
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. –Ecclesiastes 9:7
Such is the description of wine in the Bible. In the rest of the texts it occupies a kind of wavering place, because wine is everywhere and is pictured in every possible manner — the cause of foolishness or sorrow, or the cause of joy and celebration of happiness. And no one can avoid Christ’s creation of gallons and gallons of excellent wine at the wedding feast of Cana, and the Pharisees’ identification of him as a winebibber.
I’ll take my stand with Noah. Like him, with the best of intentions, I will take the red wine in the cup, knowing from experience it increases the joy and enhances the delight of any appropriate occasion (and I think many occasions call for wine). If the drink pleases as it must have pleased Noah, and I go beyond prudence, I will eventually wake up, dress, take two aspirin, drink a glass of water, and look forward to the next occasion.
The mosaic over the kitchen stove in my house celebrates Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. My wife and I enjoy the mosaic for its inspiration. I offer it to you as a final gloss for all those who would somewhat join with Noah in celebration of this new world:
“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
O, Wilderness were a Paradise now!”
