VI: The Prophets' Visions

Sickle and Grain Harvest

the gathering of the faithful at season's end

Root
Joel 3:13 · maggal (H4038)
Old Testament chain
  1. Ps 126:5-6
  2. Isa 17:5
  3. Isa 27:12
  4. Hos 6:11
  5. Mic 4:12
  6. Jer 51:33
  7. Joel 3:13
  8. Rev 14:15-16
New Testament
Rev 14:14-19; Rev 14:15-16; Matt 13:24-30, 39

"Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe" (Joel 3:13) stands behind the scene. The prophets use harvest both ways: Babylon "is like a threshingfloor, it is time to thresh her" (Jer 51:33), while Yahuah also promises Judah a harvest of return and that Israel shall be "gathered one by one" (Hos 6:11; Isa 27:12). In Revelation the sickle signals that the season of patience has ended. In the grain harvest the faithful are received, the wheat separated at the proper time, as in the parable where the tares are gathered first (Matt 13:30). No secret removal precedes this; wheat and tares grow together until one open harvest at the end of the age.

From The Courtroom of Heaven, pp. 221, 231–232