What Does Genesis 49:11 Mean?

"Binding his foal to The vine and his Donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes." The imagery of Judah's blessing continues with the extraordinary abundance of the royal figure described in verse 10: a land so fertile with vineyards that an animal can be tied to a vine without concern for the vine being damaged, and wine so plentiful that garments are washed in it. The hyperbolic imagery of wine-abundance speaks to the superabundance of blessing associated with Judah's land and ruler.

"Binding his foal to the vine": in ordinary conditions, one would not tie an animal to a cultivated vine (the animal would eat or damage it). The image presupposes vines so numerous and strong that the destruction of one by a tied animal is no loss. The abundance is so complete that the usual protections around vineyards are unnecessary. This is the imagery of a land flowing with such agricultural richness that the ordinary scarcities that drive human economic anxiety are simply absent.

"He has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes": the most extreme form of the wine-abundance imagery: wine used as laundry water. The "blood of grapes" (dam anavim) is the poetic synonym for wine that connects the vine's fruit to the language of living blood: the vine produces something with the vitality and color of blood. The garment-washing in wine is the image of a figure bathed in the fruit of the vine: a messianic figure associated with the vine's products who is so surrounded by abundance that even his garments are colored by it.