Time of Harvest

As we look back to the Old Testament, we see that from the time the children of Israel crossed over the river Jordan into the land of Canaan, they ceased being nomads. Settling into towns and villages, they became both a pastoral and an agricultural people. This dramatic change from wandering in the wilderness for 40 years after their escape from slavery in Egypt to a more permanent lifestyle added many new customs and practices to the Israelite culture.

Before the Israelites arrived around 1300 BC, the Canaanites had occupied and cultivated Canaan with its plains, terraced hills, and rich fertile land for about a thousand years. So naturally the new occupants adapted the Canaanites' agricultural practices into their own lives. The Israelites became adept at growing grain and cultivating vineyards and olive orchards. Stony plateaus and hills adjacent to the villages became good grazing land for flocks and herds. These lands remained common property to the Israelites.

Agriculture literally and figuratively became the economic and Biblical backbone of Israel. Farming had an enormously strong influence on daily life, social behavior, religion, and the law. And although individuals, royalty, and priests owned land, the Israelites believed that ultimately the land belonged to God. So, not only did the Israelites plow, sow, and reap, but in doing so, each one entered into a relationship with God, who in turn guaranteed an abundance of whatever was essential to daily life. Religion was an integral part of the Israelites' agricultural life. No wonder the Bible is replete with analogies to planting, sowing, reaping, shepherds, sheep, and other rural examples.

The Israelites in Canaan developed a sixfold division of seasons, with one or two months to each season. The best source for this division of the agricultural seasons is a tenth-century BC calendar, discovered in 1908, at the site of the ancient Biblical town of Gezer and so was called the Gezer Calendar. According to The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, this calendar may have been written as a school exercise in which the months are closely related to the seasons. It reads almost like a kind of doggerel verse:

The Israelite religious year also revolved around the cultivation of crops. Major feasts and festivals had both agricultural and religious significance. Fasting occurred at the beginning of the sowing or planting. Everyone in the family worked at this time of unending toil. Sometimes stony and hilly land and unpredictable rain made farming difficult. A poor crop brought much sorrow. On the other hand, a good harvest brought so much joy that celebrating harvest time with lively festivals became the tradition.

Every male Israelite had to attend three great festivals (Berenice Shotwell, Getting Better Acquainted with Your Bible, p. 59). The Feast of Unleavened Bread followed the day after the religious celebration of Passover. This Feast Day commemorated the Israelites' hasty departure from Egypt, that day when they could not stay long enough to bake the day's bread. Now in the land of Canaan, the Israelites celebrated this feast and Passover together and happily opened the season for reaping grain. This usually occurred during March or April.

The second annual festival, the Feast of Weeks, occurred the 50th day from the first day of Passover. This one-day festival, sometimes called the Feast of Harvest, because it celebrated the closing of the reaping season, came in May or June. This festival was also referred to as the Day of First Fruits—the day the first produce of the harvest was presented. The New Testament refers to this festival as the Day of Pentecost (see Acts 2:1). The Greek term for the Festival of Weeks is Pentecost (pentekoste, meaning 50th).

And since the gift of the Holy Ghost came on this day, 50 days after Jesus' resurrection, Christians reinterpreted the Festival of Weeks to commemorate the completion of Jesus' mission on earth.

The third festival, the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles, sometimes called the Feast of Ingathering, was a joyous autumn event during September or October, which marked the harvesting of the fruit of the land—grapes, figs, and olives.

All the festivals included feasting, singing, dancing, and processions. The people gave great thanks to God, and, as well, gift offering and solemn prayers played a large part in the celebrations. These events strongly unified the tribes, strenghtened religious ties, and greatly underpinned the people's faith in God's goodness.

These festivals also show that the Israelites deeply felt the antithesis between the sowing and reaping seasons. For instance, the Psalmist sang, "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him" (Ps. 126:5, 6).

Centuries later, Jesus brought a fresh perspective to this old dualistic concept of the laborious and difficult period of sowing and growing crops and the festivity of reaping abundance. Jesus lifted his listeners' thoughts to a spiritual sense of God's immediate goodness and love. When Jesus preached in Samaria, a region well known for its golden grain, he may have been looking around at their fields when he said, "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together" (John 4:35, 36).

The Samaritans knew well that four months spanned the time between sowing and reaping. But the Jews had a dream of the Golden Age, an age to come when God would reign supreme, a dream when sowing and reaping, planting and harvesting, would follow so closely on the heels of each other that the days of waiting would be at an end.

Essentially, Jesus was telling his listeners that they had reached the end of the waiting time. He had shown them that God's goodness and love, i.e., the kingdom of heaven (the harvest) is a possibility. Both the sower and the reaper can rejoice at the same time! What encouragement for the individual whose life was like the sower of seed—the present may look barren and difficult, but he can reap an immediate harvest of joy by understanding that all the goodness of eternal life is already a present fact.

This hymn, adapted from a 19th-century poem, weaves together this inspiring imagery of the sower and the reaper, which echoes the Israelites' festivals and Jesus' promise.