The Greek word hupolēnion in MRK 12:1 refers to the wine trough/vat.
Description and usage
The wine press was a place for pressing out the juice of grapes for the making of wine (see Wine), vinegar, and grape honey. Ancient wine presses consisted of large treading floors on which the grapes were trampled in order to extract the juice. Depending on the topography, a wine press floor could be larger and shallower than the one depicted in the illustration below. Beneath the wine press floor was placed (or cut out of the rock) a trough or vat into which flowed the grape juice that had just been pressed out.
Translation
The Hebrew word gath usually indicates the treading floor or the entire installation, while yeqev is the collecting vat.
A descriptive equivalent of “wine press” may be “place where the juice of grapes was squeezed out” or “… pressed out” (similarly Parole de Vie [PV] in MRK 12:1). The Spanish common language translation (SPCL) has “place where wine is made” (JDG 6:11). For “wine trough,” translators may use a descriptive phrase, such as “place where the juice of the grapes was collected.”
The Hebrew word purah may refer to a measure of pressed juice or the act of pressing out the juice in a wine press. In ISA 63:3 most translations render it “wine press.” For the first line of this verse the New Jewish Publication Society Version (NJPSV) is more accurate with “I trod out a vintage alone.” Good models are GNT “I have trampled the nations like grapes” and CEV “I alone stomped the grapes!”
The Greek word lēnos means a depression, hole, trough, or pit. The operation of pressing grapes involved more than one such depression; there was one (in the land of Israel it was a flat surface) in which the grapes were placed and tread, and one or more into which the juice flowed. Lēnos can refer to either of these, and it will usually be sufficient to render it something like “pit to crush the grapes in” (CEV; MAT 21:33).
Lēnos is the word used in MAT 21:33. In the parallel passage in MRK 12:1 a different Greek word is used (hupolēnion), a word that means a pit which lies below the lēnos, that is, a “collection pit” into which the juice flowed from the upper surface where the grapes were crushed. translations render both words the same, usually “wine press” or its equivalent. Some translations (Traduction œcuménique de la Bible [TOB], NJB, NRSV, New International Version [NIV], New American Standard Bible [NASB]) use a different word or expression in Mark; for example, NASB has “vat under the wine press.”