HARVEST. 



283 



ers in the field of Boaz, "unto the end of barley 

 harvest, and of wheat harvest;" of his generosity in 

 having some of the grain purposely let fall for her; 

 of her own beating out of the barley she had gath- 

 ered; of the picture we have of the customs and life 

 far back there about the town of Bethlehem ("Behold, 

 he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing floor") ; 

 and of all the rest of that poetic Hebrew pastoral. 

 The harvest in Bible times was an important season 

 of the year, and frequent references are made to it as 

 designating the time of some occurrence. The reaping 

 was, of course, all done in the original way, by grasp- 

 ing a handful of the grain and cutting it off with a 

 sickle. David describes the process indirectly, by com- 

 paring the wicked to grass which has withered before 

 it is grown, "wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, 

 nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom." Frequent 

 mention is made also of the threshing floor, where the 

 grain was winnowed in Nature's own method, by the 

 fanning and sifting of the driving winds. It was one 

 of the kindly precepts in the Mosaic law that "thou 

 shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither 

 shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest," but they 

 were to be left "for the poor and for the sojourner." 

 One of the finest of the parables is that of the sower; 

 and the harvest, by a figure, is made the end of the 

 world. 



The harvest is thus always associated in our minds 

 with the pursuits of peace and quiet country life. It 

 is a prophecy which men still hold dear that some day, 

 in "that good time coming," the nations "shall beat 



