Agriculture and Rainfall
Agriculture and Rainfall
Their livestock consisted mostly of sheep and goats, which roamed in huge mixed flocks over the hills and the steppe. The goats supplied milk and the black hair of which Bedouin tents were made, while the sheep gave milk, meat and wool. Because Palestinian shepherds kept their sheep more for wool than for mutton, however, quite an intimate relationship grew up between them over the years. The shepherd would lead his sheep, not drive them. He would know them individually, and call them by name, while they for their part would know his voice and follow him. It seemed only natural that God should reveal himself as the “Shepherd of Israel” who “gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young” (Ps. 80:1; Isa. 40:11), and indeed that the godly Israelite should be able to affirm:
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters. (Ps. 23:1–2)
The Lord Jesus developed the metaphor further, calling himself “the Good Shepherd” and affirming that he would both lay down his life for the sheep and go out into the desert in search of only one that was lost (John 10:1–18; Luke 15:3–7).
Though many Israelite farmers kept livestock, even more cultivated the soil. The three main products of Palestine are bracketed together in many biblical passages. Before they entered the land, this was the reward which they were promised for their obedience:
The LORD your God … will bless … the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil. (Deut. 7:13)
When they had taken possession of it, they proved God’s faithfulness in giving “wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart” (Ps. 104:15). But when they rebelled against him he withheld these blessings—through famine or pestilence or locusts—until they repented and he could say to them:
I am sending you grain, new wine and oil, enough to satisfy you fully. (Joel 2:19; cf. Deut. 7:13; Ps. 104:15; Hos. 2:8).
The grain from which their bread came was mostly wheat and barley, while the wine came from the extensive vineyards, and the oil (principally for cooking) from the olive yards. Olive trees are particularly hardy, being able to survive in shallow soil and to withstand long periods of drought.
Other fruits of ancient Israel were pomegranates, and especially figs, so that the sweetest Israelite dream of peace and security in the Messianic kingdom was:
Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. (Mic. 4:4)
For a good harvest the land was entirely dependent upon rain. The Israelite knew that there was no greater blessing of God. It was “the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them” who gave “rain from heaven and crops in their seasons,” thus bearing witness to his own faithfulness. And so great is his grace to all humankind, Jesus emphasized, that “he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Acts 14:15–17; Matt. 5:45).
Generally speaking, the Palestinian rainy seasons are predictable. The summer extends from May/June to September/October, and during these five months rain is virtually unknown, so that Samuel’s prayer for rain during wheat harvest was a request for a miracle. Indeed, “snow in summer or rain in harvest” is as out of place as “honor … for a fool” (1 Sam. 12:16–18; Prov. 26:1). During this dry season there is only the dew to bring moisture, and the morning mist. But both dissipate speedily when the sun rises, and their disappearance is used as a picture of idolatrous Israel when the judgment of God falls:
They will be like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. (Hos. 13:3)
From about mid-October, however, the rain clouds begin to form, and when the rain finally comes, often accompanied by thunder, there is nothing to do but run for shelter. Denis Baly describes the scene:
Jesus quoted it as a well-known occurrence that a badly built house might collapse during the rainy season (Matt. 7:27) and, indeed, it is only when one has seen a storm sweeping in from the Mediterranean across the Palestinian hills or the torrents pouring down the precipitous slopes into the lake of Galilee that one knows quite what a concentrated fury is contained in those words, “and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house.”
The beginning of the rainy season was usually termed “the early rains,” and, far from being regarded as destructive, they were looked upon as beneficial, indeed indispensable. Without them plowing was impossible, for the sunbaked earth was hard as iron (Deut. 28:23). But once the rains had started and begun to soften the soil, especially if their arrival was late, the farmer must brave the weather and get on with his plowing if he was to be able to sow his fields in time for harvest. Jesus used this as a picture of Christian courage and perseverance:
No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:62)
If the “early rains” at the start of the rainy season (from November) were essential to plowing, the “latter rains” at its end (in March and April) were essential to reaping. Without them the corn would remain thin and desiccated; it was the rain which swelled and matured the grain for the harvest. And when the fields were finally “ripe for harvest,” the laborers would put in their sickles (John 4:35; Joel 3:13). The corn would then be tied into sheaves and carted by donkeys or camels to the threshing floor, a flat, hardened surface at the top of a local hillock. There it would first be threshed by animal hooves or a sledge (cf. Isa. 41:15) and afterwards winnowed. Tossed into the air with a pitchfork, the precious golden grain would fall to the earth to be garnered, while the wind would blow the chaff away. This separation of wheat from chaff became a common image for the divine judgment (for example, Ps. 1:4; Luke 3:17).
So “the early and the latter rain,” sometimes called the “autumn rain and the spring rain,” were a necessary prelude to a good harvest. God had himself linked the rain and the harvest together and promised them to his obedient people:
Wise farmers knew this and waited for “the valuable crop” of the earth, being patient over it until it receives “the autumn and spring rains” (Jas. 5:7). Consequently, when the rains were given, they were full of thanksgiving to God for his mercy. No more poetic account of his harvest blessings occurs in Scripture than in Psalm 65. Notice the reference both to the early rains which water the hard ground, “leveling its ridges, softening it with showers,” and to the “crown” of the year some eight months later when “the valleys are mantled with grain”:
You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.
You drench its furrows
and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers
and bless its crops.
You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.
The grasslands of the desert overflow;
the hills are clothed with gladness.
The meadows are covered with flocks
and the valleys are mantled with grain;
they shout for joy and sing. (Ps. 65:9–13)