DANIEL 1:8

Q: Did Daniel reject wine due to kosher food regulations spelled out in Leviticus 19:23?

We can't go at all by current Jewish practices regarding wine consumption since the Levitical laws were greatly expanded and re-interpreted throughout the ages. For example, kosher wine, according to some schools of thought, must be made in a factory where no Gentile looks on the wine until it is bottled. Instead, we must try to determine what the Jews during Daniel's time thought about the regulations, and that is not easy.

The first thing to note about the command in Leviticus 19:23 is that it is not placed with the other kosher food regulations in Leviticus. This is probably because it is, strictly speaking, not a kosher regulation at all, but a rule involving a first fruit offering instead. As such, it was to be practiced by the Jews when they entered the Promised Land for the first time and planted their first crops. The first good crop (usually not until the fourth year after planting) was to be given to God to thank him for leading them there. This sort of thanks offering would be totally inappropriate for Jews being led into exile.

Even if the prohibition of drinking wine from the first few years' crop did carry over into the Exile, two commentaries I consulted noted that the Babylonians at that time had an identical regulation in which the first three years' grape crop could not be used. Thus, Daniel would have had no problem drinking any Babylonian wine.

The third major question is whether the fruit trees in Leviticus 19:23 refer to grape vines at all. I did a fairly extensive examination of all the passages in the Old Testament where tree, fruit, grape, wine or vine occurs. In the vast majority of these passages vines and trees are distinguished from one another by being listed separately (for example, Haggai 2:19, Amos 4:9, Psalm 105:33, Isaiah 36:16, etc.). In two stories especially, Judges 9:8-15 and Ezekiel 15:1-8 (where “vine tree” is better translated “wood of the vine”), the meaning in each passage revolves around the crucial differences between a tree and a vine.

The only place where a grape vine might possibly be called a fruit tree is in Nehemiah 10:35-37. Some translations of verse 37 read “and to bring the first of our dough, and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil, to the priests...” With this punctuation, it implies that both olive oil and wine come from tree fruit. However, there was no punctuation in the original, and others translate it as “and to bring the first of our dough, and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine, and the oil to the priests...” This understanding clearly separates the fruit of the vine from the fruit of trees.

Even if Nehemiah 10:35-37 does imply that grape vines are fruit trees (and thus fall under the regulation of Leviticus 19:23), it only shows that this was the new understanding in Nehemiah's time (many decades after the events in Daniel 1).

The final argument involves the events in Daniel 10:3, years after Daniel's initial entry into the Babylonian court. In that verse, Daniel again vows that no wine will touch his lips, the implication being that he had been drinking wine up to that time. Putting these two verses together, we can conclude that in both cases Daniel was entering into a time of voluntary fasting, such as practiced at Lent, for a particular reason. It therefore has nothing to do with any dietary restrictions spelled out in Leviticus.