A Jeroboam

And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valor: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph.

-- I Kings 11: 28 (KJV)

If you run into a jeroboam at a New Year's Eve party, it won't be an Israelite king but rather a wine bottle (used mostly for champagne) holding three liters, roughly four-fifths of a gallon. These jeroboams bring much joy, unlike their namesake, who "made Israel to sin" (I Kings 14: 16).

How and when Jeroboam lent his name to the container is unknown, though the fact that he was "mighty" and inspired sin must have had something to do with it. The biblical story is of little help, being fragmentary, obscure, and contradictory. In simplified form, it goes something like this: after having achieved a position in King Solomon's government, the ingrate Jeroboam mounted an unsuccessful coup. He then fled to Egypt, where he remained until Solomon's death and the succession of his son Rehoboam. When Rehoboam insulted the northern Israelite tribes (promising to chastise them with "scorpions"), they seceded from the unified kingdom and chose Jeroboam as their leader.

Bad move. Jeroboam proved insufficiently attentive to God's laws as set forth in the Torah, in particular to Yahweh's designation of Jerusalem (in Judah, the southern kingdom) as his sole legitimate shrine. Jeroboam not only built new sanctuaries in the north, at Dan and Bethel, but revived the now-repudiated practice of setting up idols of Yahweh -- golden calves, no less.

While Jeroboam was sinful, the Bible never accuses him of drunkenness, so the modern history of his name doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In any case, the term had come into use before 1816, when Sir Walter Scott recorded it in The Black Dwarf, and it inspired bottle-makers to turn to other biblical figures to name even mightier vessels.

Here is a complete list of wine-bottle names, and their capacities according to modern reckoning:

• Bottle: 75 centiliters (about 25 ounces).


• Magnum: two bottles, or 1.5 liters.


• Jeroboam: four bottles, or 3 liters.


• Rehoboam: six bottles, or 4.5 liters.


• Methuselah: eight bottles, or 6 liters; named after the longest-lived man in Genesis [see Methuselah].


• Salmanazar: twelve bottles, or 9 liters; named after Salmanazar V (or Shalmanezer), the Assyrian king who, according to II Kings 17–18, conquered Samaria before his death in 722 B.C.


• Balthazar: sixteen bottles, or 12 liters; named after the king of Babylon (sixth century B.C.) who appears in the book of Daniel as a great partier who "drank wine before the thousand" [see feet of clay, p. 152].


• Nebuchadnezzar: twenty bottles, or 15 liters; named after the Babylonian king (early sixth century B.C.) who toppled Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple of Solomon.
  

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!