Norma Franklin: Naboth’s Vineyard and Ancient Wine Consumption

Norma Franklin, “The Story of Naboth’s Vineyard and the Ancient Winery in Jezreel” (5.13.17), thetorah.com. Accessed 3.4.26.

Evidence from Assyrian texts show that at the same time that Naboth is pictured as tending his grapes (Omride period), Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria is described as having provided 10,000 wineskins at an inaugural party at his new palace in Calah, where he wined and dined 70,000 guests. Although we don’t have textual evidence of quite such lavish entertaining in ancient Israel, wine also flowed freely at the Israelite capital, Samaria. Archaeologists have recovered over one hundred wine dockets (receipts for taxes paid in wine), in the form of ostraca (inscribed pottery sherds), that testify to wine having been brought in to the capital.

Furthermore, between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C.E., wine was also listed among basic military supplies. Jezreel in the Iron Age was a military center, probably the main mustering station for Ahab’s chariot force, and he would have used his own vineyard to provision the army.

Strangely, the biblical narrative relates that Ahab wished to purchase the vineyard in order to turn it into a vegetable garden but this makes no sense when we know the importance of viticulture at that time and likely points to it having been a later addition to the narrative.