A Trained Professional IX: Down On the Farm

The Bible was written primarily by men that were living lives based in an agrarian culture/society. Farmers, crops and the like.  They were growers of many plants and harvesters of many more. The Israelites society revolved mostly around an economy based solely on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. They were breeders of livestock and masters of animal husbandry. They raised animals for meat, fiber, milk, or other products. Some of the tasks dealing with farming included day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Although many shepherds and flocks started out as nomadic this eventually led to more stationary domestication on small parcels of land that would eventually give way to farms.

Although the word ‘farm’ is not in the Bible, the word ἀγρός / agros is found many places. The word agros, from which we get the words agrarian and agriculture, is in-fact a field or pasture, specifically a field or pasture that can bear a crop. For all intents and purposes…it is a farm. The concept of a farm as we understand them today weren’t very common in Israel in Bible times. In Bible history, the Jewish people are introduced to us at a period when they were largely engaged in agrarian pursuits just prior to the scattering of the Diaspora after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70AD.

Husbandry, the Biblical term for agriculture, or farming, was an esteemed biblcal art in which God instructed the husbandman (2 Chronicles 26:10; Isaiah 28:26). The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary reminds us that when the Hebrews became a nation and occupied Canaan…

The agriculture learned in Egypt made them a self-subsisting nation, independent of eternal supplies, and so less open to external corrupting influences. Agriculture was the basis of the Mosaic economy; it checked the tendency to the roving habits of nomad tribes, gave each man a stake in the soil by the law of inalienable inheritances, and made numerous offspring profitable as to the culture of the land. God claimed the lordship of the soil (Leviticus 25-26) so that each held by the divine nature to the tithe a quiet rent to the theocratic landlord, also subject to the sabbatical year.

The frequent biblical allusions by Jesus to farmers, fields and their products indicate how familiar He was with the agricultural pursuits of His time. Many farming methods then employed still prevail in Israel. There were three lprominent branches of agriculture which the farmer participated in.

The Growing of Grain. Among the agricultural operations associated with this fruit of the field, and frequently mentioned in the Bible, we have (Matthew 13:3), plowing, sowing, reaping, threshing and winnowing. As to the farmers implements we have the plough, the yoke, the cart, the sickle, the sieve, the fan, the shovel, the hand-mill or stones.

The Tending of Vineyards. As grapes, olives and figs served an important part in the diet of the Bible, great care was bestowed upon the vineyards — a task well-adapted to the farmer’s routine as most of the attention a vineyard required could be given when his other crop demanded no time (Numbers 18:30; Isaiah 5:1-6).

The Raising of Flocks. The Jewish people reckoned flocks as a necessary part of wealth. They were important as a source of food and clothing/skins. (Matthew 18:13; John 10:12) The account of the wealth of both Job and King Hezekiah reveals their interest in the pursuit of farming.

Leviticus 26:4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit.

In Scripture there is a cornucopia of metaphors taken from the earth, things growing out of it, and the cultivation of it. There is enough to write a book on it and some people have. I just don’t have the time to plow into it all (see what I did there?). The reader of this blog post though can pursue this with the aid of the internet or even an old fashioned concordance using agricultural metaphors and words. I will leave off mentioning only a few here and some side notes to their spiritual significance where it is warranted.

The seed is used to signify the engrafted Word of God (1 Peter 1:23). The ministry of the sun’s heat, rain and dew illustrate divine influences in the spiritual germination of the Word as seed (Isaiah 44:3; John 6:63). Roots, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit likewise carry a spiritual significance (Deuteronomy 29:18; Job 13:25; 15:33; 19:28; Isaiah 5:24; Matthew 3:8; John 15:1-3; Jude 12). The faith of the mustard seed is deemed enough to move a mountain.

Plants symbolize the church and the believer (Isaiah 5:7; Matthew 15:13). Trees are often used by way of similitude (Isaiah 11:1; 41:19; Jeremiah 11:19). Thorns sometimes represent wicked and mischievous men, and the efforts of Satan to buffet us (Numbers 33:55; Hosea 2:6; 2 Corinthians 12:7). Olives were used to describe the great dignity God invested His chosen people with (Jeremiah 11:16; Zechariah 4:3,11,12; Romans 11:17). The vineyards, in metaphor and Parable, are suggestive of the people of God, and of what He expects from His own people. Wine signifies divine grace and also wrath (Judges 8:2, Psalm 104:2). The gentiles are grafted into salvation promised to the Jews (Romans 11:11-31).

Plowing is a fitting symbol of affliction, repentance and diligence due to its backbreaking nature. (Psalm 129:3; Isaiah 28:24-26; Jeremiah 4:3; Luke 9:62). Harvests are employed to describe the reward of good works and also evil deeds "(Psalm 126:5, 6; Hosea 6: 11; John 4:35, 38; Galatians 6:7-9). Chaff and stubble denote false doctrine and the destruction of the wicked (Amos 9:9, Obadiah 18; Matthew 3:12,  Luke 22:31; 1 Corinthians 3:12). The separation of wheat from the chaff or wheat from the tares is symbolic of dividing believers from nonbelievers, truth from falsehood. Grinding of grain, like its winnowing, is also used symbolically (Exodus 11:5; Job 31:10; Isaiah 47:2). Yokes which the oxen wore are made to illustrate both satanic bondage and full allegiance Christ (Matthew 11:29; 2 Corinthians 6:14). The list is enormous.

If you’re that interested in pursuing this one further I recommend that you open your bible in a field and begin reading it in earnest. The allusions to farming, farmers and flocks are as numerous in the bible as stalks of grain in an unharvested field.