Agriculture
Scripture treats the working of the soil as the first human vocation. The man is set in a planted garden to dress and keep it (Gen 2:8, Gen 2:15), and after the curse the same labor continues outside Eden, now under thorns, sweat, and a ground that resists the worker (Gen 3:17, Gen 3:18, Gen 3:19, Gen 3:23). From that point forward Scripture measures Israel's life, its laws, its sins, and its hopes by the rhythms of seedtime and harvest, plowing and threshing, vineyard and winepress.
Soil, Curse, and Toil
Vegetation is part of the original good creation: grass, seeded herbs, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind (Gen 1:11). The man is given to "dress" and "keep" the garden, and Yahweh himself plants it (Gen 2:8, Gen 2:15). At the center of that garden stand the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:9). After the disobedience the ground is cursed, thorns and thistles spring up, and the man eats bread by sweat (Gen 3:17, Gen 3:18, Gen 3:19, Gen 3:23). He is then sent out lest he take of the tree of life and live forever (Gen 3:22). Lamech names Noah in hope of relief from "our work and the toil of our hands, [which comes] because of the ground which [the Speech of] Yahweh has cursed" (Gen 5:29). Cain, the first farmer named after Eden, is sentenced to a ground that "will not yield its strength" to him any longer (Gen 4:12), an early instance of barrenness as judgment.
After the flood the divine word reinstalls the agricultural calendar by promise: "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease" (Gen 8:22). Noah himself becomes the first post-flood husbandman and plants a vineyard (Gen 9:20).
Patriarchs, Tillers, and Keepers
The earliest division of labor is two-fold: "Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground" (Gen 4:2). Isaac sows in Gerar and reaps a hundredfold under blessing (Gen 26:12). Joseph's dream is set in a harvest field, with sheaves bowing to his sheaf (Gen 37:7), and his administration of Egypt is summarized by storing grain "as the sand of the sea" (Gen 41:47, Gen 41:49). Jacob's sons mourn their father at the threshing-floor of Atad (Gen 50:10).
Israel's national life carries the same vocabulary forward. Elisha is called from behind twelve yoke of oxen, plowing (1 Ki 19:19). Job's herds are taken while "the oxen were plowing, and the donkeys pasturing beside them" (Job 1:14). Even kingship is bound to the soil: David appoints stewards over field tillage, vineyards, wine-cellars, olive trees, oil-cellars, herds, camels, donkeys, and flocks (1 Ch 27:26-31). Uzziah "had much cattle… husbandmen and vinedressers in the mountains and in the fruitful fields; for he loved husbandry" (2 Ch 26:10). Zechariah pictures a future humbled prophet who insists, "I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground" (Zec 13:5).
Yahweh as Source of Increase
Israel's farming theology is uncompromising: the increase of the field belongs to Yahweh. Rain in season, the former and the latter, comes from him (Jer 5:24), and Hosea's indictment is that "she did not know that I gave her the grain, and the new wine, and the oil" (Hos 2:8). The Mosaic blessings tie obedient covenant life to land that yields its increase and trees that yield their fruit (Lev 26:4); the curses reverse it — "your⁺ strength will be spent in vain; for your⁺ land will not yield its increase" (Lev 26:20). Deuteronomy threatens shut heavens and unfruitful ground for apostasy (Deu 11:17), and tithes "all the increase of your seed" (Deu 14:22) and the joy of the harvest feast (Deu 16:15) belong to Yahweh.
The Psalmist generalizes the same theology: "You visit the earth, and water it, You greatly enrich it… You provide them grain, when you have so prepared the earth" (Ps 65:9); "The earth has yielded its increase: God, even our own God, will bless us" (Ps 67:6); abundance of grain on the mountaintops is his gift (Ps 72:16); the rain that falls on mown grass and waters the earth is his (Ps 72:6). Even Solomon's catalog of works — gardens, parks, fruit-trees of every kind, and irrigation pools (Ec 2:5) — is bracketed by the verdict that all of it is vanity apart from God.
Sirach folds the same conviction into proverb: "He who tills his land raises high his heap" (Sir 20:28), and "Grace and beauty charm your eye, but better than both are the products of the field" (Sir 40:22).
Wisdom, Skill, and Diligence
Farming requires more than muscle. Isaiah turns plowing, sowing, and threshing into a parable of divine instruction: the farmer does not plow forever, scatters fitches and cumin and wheat and barley each in its place, and threshes each crop with its own instrument, "for his God instructs him aright, [and] teaches him" (Isa 28:24, Isa 28:25, Isa 28:26, Isa 28:27, Isa 28:28). Solomon adds the diligence side: "He who tills his land will have plenty of bread; but he who follows after vanities is void of understanding" (Pro 12:11); "He who gathers in summer is a wise son; [but] he who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame" (Pro 10:5). The good wife of Pro 31:16 "considers a field, and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard." The shepherd-farmer is told to "be diligent to know the state of your flocks" (Pro 27:23-27), with the promise that the herbs of the mountains, the lambs, and the goats' milk will then provide for his household.
Sirach contrasts the scholar with the man who holds the plow and the ox-goad, "whose discourse is with bullocks," whose anxiety is "to have sufficient fodder" (Sir 38:25, Sir 38:26) — not to disparage him, but to mark what skilled cultivation actually demands.
Ecclesiastes warns against waiting for perfect conditions: "He who observes the wind will not sow; and he who regards the clouds will not reap" (Ec 11:4), and grants that "the advantage of a land is for everyone. There is a king to [protect] the cultivated field" (Ec 5:9). 1 Sam 13:19-21 records the political weight of farm tools: under Philistine hegemony every Israelite must go down to a Philistine smith to sharpen "his plowshare, and his coulter, and his ax, and his mattock."
Operations, Tools, and Crops
The catalogue runs through the full work-year. Plowing is the slow opening of the soil — Job 1:14, 1 Ki 19:19, Lu 9:62 ("No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God"), Lu 17:7, 1 Co 9:10. Harrowing the valleys is set as a wild-ox task in Job 39:10. Solomon makes parks and orchards with irrigation in Ec 2:5; Egypt is contrasted with Canaan as a place "where you sowed your seed, and watered it with your foot, as a garden of herbs" (Deu 11:10), and the redeemed are "like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail" (Isa 58:11).
Sowing is the figure for hope and hazard alike: Isa 32:20 blesses those "who sow beside all waters"; Hos 8:7 warns those who "sow the wind" that they will reap the whirlwind. Reaping is governed by mercy in the law — the corners of the field are not to be reaped, and the gleanings are left for the poor and the sojourner (Lev 19:9, Lev 19:10, Lev 23:10, Lev 23:22, Deu 24:19, Deu 24:21). Boaz's field is the great narrative working-out of that command, with Ruth gleaning from the beginning of barley harvest to the end of wheat harvest (Rut 1:22, Rut 2:2, Rut 2:8, Rut 2:23). Other reaping passages range from Lev 25:5 (the sabbath year forbids reaping the volunteer growth) to 2 Sa 21:9 (the Gibeonite execution timed to "the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest"), Pro 26:1, Isa 17:5, and Ec 11:4.
Sickles appear from law (Deu 16:9, the count of seven weeks "from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain") to apocalypse (Mar 4:29, Joe 3:13, Jer 50:16, Rev 14:14, where the sickle is in the hand of one "like a son of man"). Pruning-hooks are beaten into spears in Joe 3:10 and used for cutting away spreading branches in Isa 18:5. Pruning itself is required of the vine every six years (Lev 25:3), withheld as judgment in Isa 5:6, and made the figure of discipleship in Jn 15:2: "every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes it away: and every [branch] that bears fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit."
Threshing is done with a staff for fitches and a rod for cumin (Isa 28:27), with oxen treading out the corn (1 Co 9:9, "you will not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn"), or by a sledge — Ornan and Gideon both thresh wheat (1 Ch 21:20, Jdg 6:11). Wheat itself is winnowed in Lu 3:17, where the messianic figure has "his fan in his hand, thoroughly to cleanse his threshing-floor, and to gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire." Threshing floors are the open public space where Boaz winnows (Rut 3:2), where Uzzah falls (2 Sa 6:6), where the angel of destruction halts (2 Sa 24:16), and which Solomon buys to build the temple (2 Ch 3:1). Winnowing Rut 3:2; mowing Ps 72:6, Ps 129:7, Am 7:1.
Barns stand for stored increase: Pro 3:10 "so your barns will be filled with corn, and your vats will overflow with new wine"; Hag 2:19 asks if "the seed [is] yet in the barn"; the rich fool of Lu 12:18 vows to pull his barns down and build greater. Of the ravens it is said, "they do not sow, neither reap; which have no store-chamber nor barn; and God feeds them" (Lu 12:24). Winepresses Deu 15:14, 2 Ki 6:27, Pro 3:10, Isa 63:3, Hag 2:16, Jdg 6:11.
Wheat as a staple anchors many transactions and figures: Solomon supplies it to Hiram (1 Ki 5:11), Artaxerxes provides a hundred cors of it for the temple (Ezra 7:22), and it is named with milk, the fat of lambs, and the blood of the grape in the song of Moses (Deu 32:14). The Egyptian wheat and spelt survived the hail because they had not yet grown (Exo 9:32). And the singular grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die before bearing much fruit (Jn 12:24).
Other crops in the canon: barley (Exo 9:31, Num 5:15, Rut 1:22, 2 Ki 4:42, Job 31:40, Eze 4:9, Joe 1:11, Rev 6:6), grain in general (Mar 4:28, Num 18:27, Jos 5:11, Jer 31:12, Hos 14:7), grapes and vineyards (Exo 22:5, Exo 23:11, Lev 19:10, Lev 25:3, Deu 20:6, Deu 22:9, Deu 23:24, Deu 24:21, 1 Ki 21:2, Mar 12:2, Lu 20:16), figs (Num 13:23, Num 20:5, 1 Sa 25:18, 2 Ki 20:7), pomegranates (Num 13:23, Num 20:5, 1 Sa 14:2, 1 Ki 7:20, 2 Ch 3:16, S of S 4:13), olives and oliveyards (Jos 24:13, 1 Sa 8:14, 2 Ki 5:26, Neh 5:11, Neh 9:25), apples (Pro 25:11, S of S 2:5), spelt and beans and lentils and millet (Eze 4:9), and the embroidered pomegranates of priestly garments and temple capitals (Exo 28:33, Exo 39:24, 1 Ki 7:20, 2 Ch 3:16). Gardens proper appear in Eden (Gen 2:8), in Ahab's lust for Naboth's vineyard "for a garden of herbs" (1 Ki 21:2), in Solomon's pleasure-grounds (Ec 2:5), in S of S 5:1, and in restoration imagery (Isa 51:3, Isa 58:11, Jer 31:12).
Pests, Blasting, and Barrenness
Failure is just as carefully named as success. Locusts, caterpillars, palmer-worms, cankerworms, and grasshoppers appear together in 1 Ki 8:37, where Solomon prays the temple-prayer for relief; in the Egyptian plague of Exo 10:4; in the curse of Deu 28:38 ("you will carry much seed out into the field, and will gather little in; for the locust will consume it"); in the rolling fourfold devastation of Joel — "that which the palmer-worm has left has the locust eaten; and that which the locust has left has the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm has left has the caterpillar eaten" (Joe 1:4) — and in the promise that Yahweh will "restore to you⁺ the years that the locust has eaten" (Joe 2:25). Amos shows blasting and mildew, fig and olive consumed by the palmer-worm, as a discipline meant to recall Israel (Am 4:9). Psalm 78:46 and Ps 105:34, Ps 105:35 ascribe the same locust/caterpillar judgment directly to God's act in Egypt. Pro 30:27 notes that the locusts "have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands." Lev 11:22 lists them as edible. Jer 51:23, Jer 51:27, Nah 3:17, Isa 33:4, Isa 40:22, Num 13:33, Ec 12:5, and Jdg 6:5 all use the same imagery to weigh hostile multitudes or dwarf inhabitants of the earth.
Blasting and mildew are listed among covenant curses (Deu 28:22, 1 Ki 8:37, Hag 2:17). Barrenness itself becomes a covenant signal: the cursed ground of Cain (Gen 4:12), Lev 26:20, Deu 11:17, Hos 8:7, Hag 1:6 ("you⁺ have sown much, and bring in little"), Hag 2:16, Hab 3:17, Joe 1:11, Isa 5:10 ("ten acres of vineyard will yield one bath, and a homer of seed will yield [but] an ephah"). The flax and barley of Egypt are struck because the barley was already in the ear (Exo 9:31).
Jeremiah condenses the diagnosis into a single agricultural command: "Break up your⁺ fallow ground, and don't sow among thorns" (Jer 4:3); the cynics of Israel say "the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the sons are set on edge" (Jer 31:29, Eze 18:2), and Yahweh promises to break that proverb. Hosea adds the corollary: "You⁺ have plowed wickedness, you⁺ have reaped iniquity; you⁺ have eaten the fruit of lies; for you trusted in your way" (Hos 10:13).
Law: Sabbath of the Land, Jubilee, Landmarks
The Mosaic legislation is at every point an agricultural code. Six years of sowing the field and pruning the vineyard are followed by a sabbath rest for the land (Lev 25:3, Lev 25:5, Exo 23:10, Exo 23:11). "In the seventh year will be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to Yahweh: you will neither sow your field, nor prune your vineyard" (Lev 25:4). The release runs on the same seventh-year clock (Deu 15:1, Deu 31:10, Jer 34:14).
Layered above the seven-year cycle is the Jubilee: every fiftieth year liberty is proclaimed throughout the land, every man returns to his possession, and every family to its clan (Lev 25:10). Sales of land are pro-rated against the years remaining until Jubilee, and unredeemed property reverts to the original family in that year (Lev 25:28, Lev 27:17, Num 36:4); Ezekiel's "year of liberty" works the same way for grants from a prince's inheritance (Eze 46:17).
The corners of the field and the gleanings of vineyard and harvest are reserved for the poor and the sojourner (Lev 19:9, Lev 19:10, Lev 23:10, Lev 23:22, Deu 24:19, Deu 24:21). Newly planted fruit-trees are "uncircumcised" for three years before their fruit may be eaten (Lev 19:23). The vineyard cannot be sown with two kinds of seed (Deu 22:9), nor the wholly new vineyard's planter required to fight in the army before he has eaten of it (Deu 20:6). Even a besieging army may not destroy fruit-trees: "you may eat of them, and you will not cut them down… only the trees of which you know that they are not trees for food, you will destroy" (Deu 20:19, Deu 20:20). A man passing through a fellow Israelite's vineyard may eat his fill but not carry any away (Deu 23:24). Restitution is owed when one's beast eats out another's field or vineyard (Exo 22:5). Liberality is owed to the freed slave from "your flock, and out of your threshing-floor, and out of your wine press" (Deu 15:14). Nehemiah enforces these provisions when he stops Sabbath winepress-treading and grain-bringing on a working day (Neh 13:15) and demands restoration of fields, vineyards, oliveyards, and houses to debtors (Neh 5:11). Tithe goes from the threshing-floor (Num 18:27, Deu 14:22).
The boundary stones of these allotments are themselves sacred. "You will not remove your fellow man's landmark, which they of old time have set" (Deu 19:14); to do so is cursed (Deu 27:17). Job's complaint against the wicked includes "they move the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed them" (Job 24:2), and Solomon repeats the prohibition: "Don't remove the ancient landmark, which your fathers have set" (Pro 22:28, Pro 23:10). Hosea renders the verdict: "The princes of Judah are like those who remove the landmark: I will pour out my wrath on them like water" (Hos 5:10).
The Vineyard of Yahweh
The vineyard becomes Israel's defining moral picture. Isaiah's love-song begins, "Let me sing for my wellbeloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard. My wellbeloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill" (Isa 5:1), where the husbandman dug, gathered out the stones, planted the choicest vine, and built a tower and a winepress, "and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes" (Isa 5:2). The disclosure follows: "the vineyard of Yahweh of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for justice, but, look, oppression; for righteousness, but, look, a cry" (Isa 5:7). The judgment is a vineyard left unpruned and unhoed, given over to briers and drought (Isa 5:6, Isa 5:10).
Jeremiah picks up the same image when "many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness" (Jer 12:10). Hosea: "Israel is a luxuriant vine, that puts forth his fruit: according to the abundance of his fruit he has multiplied his altars" (Hos 10:1) — fruitful in the wrong direction. The husbandmen-of-the-vineyard parable in Mar 12:2 and Lu 20:16 lands the same indictment in Jesus' mouth: "He will come and destroy these husbandmen, and will give the vineyard to others." And the song of Moses had already warned that some grapes are "grapes of gall… clusters [that] are bitter" (Deu 32:32).
Sowing, Reaping, and the Test of Fruit
The agricultural vocabulary becomes the standard figurative register for moral and eschatological realities. The principle is absolute: "Don't be deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap" (Gal 6:7); "for he who sows to his own flesh will of the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap eternal life" (Gal 6:8); "and let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we will reap, if we do not faint" (Gal 6:9). Paul restates it in alms-giving: "He who sows sparingly will reap also sparingly; and he who sows bountifully will reap also bountifully" (2 Co 9:6); God "supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, will supply and multiply your⁺ seed for sowing, and increase the fruits of your⁺ righteousness" (2 Co 9:10).
The Old Testament had already worked the same furrow. Job: "those who plow iniquity, and sow trouble, reap the same" (Job 4:8). Hosea: "they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind" (Hos 8:7), against which stands the call, "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap according to kindness; break up your⁺ fallow ground; for it is time to seek Yahweh, until he comes and rains righteousness on you⁺" (Hos 10:12). Solomon: "He who sows iniquity will reap calamity" (Pro 22:8); "a perverse man scatters abroad strife" (Pro 16:28); the wicked "sows discord" (Pro 6:14). The promise to the righteous: "He who sows righteousness [has] a sure reward" (Pro 11:18). And the Psalmist's pilgrim song: "Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. He who goes forth and weeps, bearing seed for sowing, will doubtless come again with joy, bringing his sheaves [with him]" (Ps 126:5, Ps 126:6). Sirach gives the same in proverb form: "Do not knowingly plow against a brother; or else you will reap it sevenfold" (Sir 7:3). Jeremiah weighs the apostate field: "they have sown wheat, and have reaped thorns; they have tired themselves out, and profit nothing" (Jer 12:13). Isaiah's moral planter who hedges and morning-sows finds "the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow" (Isa 17:11).
The test is the fruit. Jesus puts it sharply: "For each tree is known by its own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush do they gather grapes" (Lu 6:44). The fig tree given three years to bear fruit and refusing must be cut down — "why does it also cumber the ground?" (Lu 13:7). The Father is glorified when disciples bear much fruit (Jn 15:8). Paul seeks the fruit "that increases to your⁺ account" (Php 4:17). Sirach: "According to the cultivation of a tree so is its yield, [so] the thought of a man according to his nature" (Sir 27:6). Hebrews pictures ground that "bears thorns and thistles" as "disapproved and near to a curse; whose end is to be burned" (Heb 6:8).
Spiritual Sowing and the Harvest of Souls
Sowing language carries directly into mission. "The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the workers are few: pray⁺ therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth workers into his harvest" (Lu 10:2). At the well in Samaria Jesus tells his disciples, "Lift up your⁺ eyes, and look at the fields, that they are white to harvest. Already he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life; that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together" (Jn 4:35, Jn 4:36). Mar 4:29 is then a kingdom claim: "but when the fruit is [ready to] deliver, right away he puts forth the sickle, because the harvest has come." The earth bears fruit "of herself; first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear" (Mar 4:28). The grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die in order to bear much fruit (Jn 12:24). The sower scatters; some seed is trodden down; some takes root (Lu 8:5).
The end of the age is staged the same way. The husbandmen of the vineyard who refuse to render fruit will be destroyed and the vineyard given to others (Mar 12:2, Lu 20:16). The rich man with a too-full ground who builds bigger barns is called fool (Lu 12:16, Lu 12:18). The servant who has been plowing or shepherding is not entitled to recline before his master (Lu 17:7). The disciple's hand on the plow does not look back (Lu 9:62). And one mustard seed, "the least of all the seeds that are on the earth" (Mar 4:31), grows in the kingdom till "the birds of the heaven lodged in its branches" (Lu 13:19) — a standing image of the contrast between the seed and the harvest.
Joel, Jeremiah, and Hosea look at Babylon, Judah, and the nations the same way: "for thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing-floor at the time when it is trodden; yet a little while, and the time of harvest will come for her" (Jer 51:33). "Also, O Judah, there is a harvest appointed for you" (Hos 6:11). "Put⁺ in the sickle; for the harvest is ripe: come, tread⁺; for the wine press is full" (Joe 3:12, Joe 3:13). Revelation finishes: "another angel came out from the temple, crying with a great voice to him who sat on the cloud, Send forth your sickle, and reap: for the hour to reap has come; for the harvest of the earth is ripe" (Rev 14:15, Rev 14:14). The angels themselves are reapers, sent "to gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven" (Mar 13:27). Revelation watches a horseman with scales and hears "a measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius" (Rev 6:6).
Bearing Fruit in Christ
The whole agricultural register is finally re-cast around Christ and the Spirit. The disciple is "as a tree planted by streams of water: its fruit it yields in season, and its leaf does not wither" (Ps 1:3); the righteous are "planted in the house of Yahweh… they will still bring forth fruit in old age" (Ps 92:13, Ps 92:14). The vine and its branches require the husbandman's pruning: "every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes it away: and every [branch] that bears fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit" (Jn 15:2); "I am the vine, you⁺ are the branches: He who stays in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit: for apart from me you⁺ can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). Disciples are appointed to "go and bear fruit, and [that] your⁺ fruit should stay" (Jn 15:16).
Paul names the produce: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control" (Gal 5:22, Gal 5:23) over against "the works of the flesh" (Gal 5:19, Gal 5:20, Gal 5:21). "The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth" (Eph 5:9). Believers are to be "filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ" (Php 1:11), "bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God" (Col 1:10), and were made dead to the law "that we might bring forth fruit to God" (Rom 7:4); "being made free from sin and being made slaves to God, you⁺ have your⁺ fruit to sanctification, and the end eternal life" (Rom 6:22). Tribulation works "steadfastness; and steadfastness, validation; and validation, hope" (Rom 5:3, Rom 5:4); chastening "yields peaceful fruit to those who have been exercised by it" (Heb 12:11). 2 Pet 1:5-7 supplies a graded crop — virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, love. James adds: "the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits" (Jas 3:17). The graces named in 2 Co 6:6 and 2 Co 8:7 belong to the same harvest. James anchors patience itself in the husbandman's wait "for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and latter rain" (Jas 5:7); "the husbandman who labors must be the first to partake of the fruits" (2 Ti 2:6). Diognetus puts the paradox aphoristically of those who suffer for the sake of the gospel: "Do you not see that the more they are punished, the more others multiply?" (Gr 7:8).
Unfruitfulness has its own register. The fig tree of Lu 13:6 is "a certain man['s] fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it, and found none." The unprofitable servant of Lu 19:20 keeps his mina laid up in a napkin. Wisdom, on the other hand, "is a tree of life to those who lay hold on her" (Pro 3:18); "the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life" (Pro 11:30). Sirach warns of the mother whose "children will not spread out their roots, and her branches will bear no fruit" (Sir 23:25). Daniel sees a great tree whose "leaves were fair, and its fruit much, and in it was food for all" (Dan 4:12) — the kingdom whose stump Yahweh leaves in the earth.
The eschatological tree closes the loop with Eden. Ezekiel sees "every tree for food, whose leaf will not wither, neither will its fruit fail: it will bring forth new fruit every month" (Eze 47:7, Eze 47:12). Revelation sets in the New Jerusalem "a tree of life that bears fruit twelve [times per year], every month yielding its fruit: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations" (Rev 22:2); to the one who overcomes is given "to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God" (Rev 2:7). The tree from which Adam was barred is given back. The whole agricultural cycle — sown ground, watered, pruned, threshed, gleaned, stored — is, in Scripture, the standing diagram of how God works with the world; and the harvest the whole canon points toward is one in which every fruitful tree is finally planted by the river that does not run dry.