A grape is the ripe fruit of the grapevine, and in the Bible it stands for one of the great staples of the land. Israelites ate grapes fresh, dried them into raisins for travel and storage, and pressed them for juice and wine. A land heavy with grapes was a land at peace and under blessing; a vine stripped of them was a picture of ruin or judgment.
Grapes run through Israel's laws and everyday life:
the returning scouts carry back grapes from the valley of Eshcol (Numbers 13:23)
gleaning laws leave the fallen grapes for the poor and the traveler (Leviticus 25:5;Deuteronomy 23:24)
a person under a Nazirite vow gives up grapes in every form (Numbers 6:3)
The grape also became a favorite picture in poetry and prophecy. Isaiah sings of a vineyard planted to yield good grapes that produced only worthless fruit (Isaiah 5:2, 5:4). Hosea remembers finding Israel "like grapes in the wilderness," a rare early delight (Hosea 9:10). The song of Moses warns that a corrupt people yields "grapes of gall," fruit that looks sweet but is really poison (Deuteronomy 32:32). Through all of this the word never changes its meaning: it is always the literal grape, borne by the vine (גֶּפֶן) and pressed into service as an image.
Names the whole bunch hanging together on the branch, not a single berry. The scouts cut down one cluster so heavy it was carried on a pole between two men, and the valley was named for it.Num 13:24Sng 7:8
Reaches beyond the vine to any hanging bunch, such as a cluster of fragrant henna blossoms.Sng 1:14
Stands for the choice or surviving remnant, the good still found in the whole gathering: a blessing preserved in the bunch, or no bunch left at all when the faithful have vanished.Isa 65:8Mic 7:1
בֹּסֶרthe sour, unripe green grape, as against the ripe fruit this word names
The ordinary word for grapes as food and produce: the ripe fruit gathered in clusters and eaten fresh.Num 13:23Gen 40:10Gen 40:11
The grape as the source of wine, where the phrase "blood of the grape" stands for the drink pressed from it.Deu 32:14Gen 49:11
Appears in law and in warning about a vineyard's yield, from what a passerby may eat to the failed or bad harvest of a judged people.Deu 23:24Isa 5:2Jer 8:13
Both
Both name the fruit of the grapevine; the difference is ripeness, one word for the sour early fruit and the other for the ripe grape.Isa 18:5Num 13:23
Names the grape while it is still green and sour, not yet fit to eat. This sourness is the whole point of the proverb that eating it sets the teeth on edge.Jer 31:29Jer 31:30Ezk 18:2
Marks the fruit at the stage just before harvest, when the blossom has fallen and the grape is forming but has not yet ripened.Isa 18:5
It is the edible fruit itself, eaten fresh or dried and gathered in at harvest, so it falls under laws about who may pick it and who must abstain.Num 6:3Deu 23:24Lev 25:5
It is the fruit that gets crushed for its juice, which is why it stands behind images of wine and of blood.Gen 40:11Deu 32:14Amo 9:13
Because it is a finished product it can be judged good or worthless, which makes it a standing picture of whether a people produced what God looked for.Isa 5:2Isa 5:4Deu 32:32
It can be counted and carried as bulk produce, big enough to be hauled on a pole or brought to market by the load.Num 13:23Neh 13:15
Both
Both belong to the grapevine and mark a point in its yearly cycle, so people go out to the vineyard on purpose to see whether each has arrived yet.Sng 7:12Num 13:20
Both stand in for the vineyard's promise, so their appearing signals coming plenty and their loss signals ruin.Sng 2:15Jer 8:13
Names the vine at the moment it first opens into blossom, before there is any fruit at all, so its whole point is that the season has just turned.Sng 2:13Sng 7:12
It is something smelled and looked at rather than eaten: the opening vine gives off fragrance, and nowhere is it gathered, dried, or pressed.Sng 2:13
It marks the vine at its most fragile, the stage that has to be guarded because it can be ruined before it ever bears anything.Sng 2:15
enav in the other biblical languages
σταφυλήGreek“grapes”the ordinary New Testament word for ripe grapes, the direct counterpart of this Hebrew term
Hebrew poetry calls wine the blood of the grape, letting the crushed fruit stand for the drink it yields.Gen 49:11Deu 32:14
The grape serves as a figure for Israel itself, the sweet fruit God once delighted to find and the bitter fruit a corrupt people came to bear.Hos 9:10Deu 32:32
Grapes belong to Israel's everyday land law, left ungathered in the sabbath year and free for a passerby to eat but not to carry off.Lev 25:5Deu 23:24
Both
Both name the fruit of the vine as the good crop a healthy vine is expected to yield, so that wild or missing grapes mark failure and the true grape marks what a sound source produces.Isa 5:2Mat 7:16
In the New Testament the grape becomes the harvest of the earth gathered fully ripe and thrown into the winepress of God's wrath, the ripe fruit standing for a world ready to be judged.Rev 14:18
What scholars say about enav
The standard lexica (HALOT, BDB, DCH) treat ענב as a single, well-attested common noun for the grape, the ripe fruit of the cultivated vine, most often appearing in the plural for grapes collectively. It is a widespread Semitic term with cognates across the family (for example Arabic ʿinab), and its sense is not in dispute. In the Hebrew Bible it is regularly distinguished from the vine (גפן), the cluster (אשׁכול), and the unripe or sour grape (בסר), and the Septuagint most often renders it with σταφυλή.