Fan

The fan is the winnowing implement used to toss threshed grain into the wind so that the chaff blows away and the heavy kernels fall back to the floor. The tool appears once in Isaiah as part of an agricultural picture and twice in Jeremiah as a metaphor for divine judgment.

The Winnowing Tool

In Isaiah's vision of restoration the working animals share in the abundance: "the oxen likewise and the young donkeys that till the ground will eat savory fodder, which has been winnowed with the shovel and with the fork" (Isa 30:24). The tools named are paired — the shovel for tossing the grain and the fork for handling it — and the verse is the one direct description of the implement at work.

Yahweh as Winnower

In Jeremiah the same image is turned on the people. Yahweh declares of his own people: "And I have winnowed them with a fan in the gates of the land; I have bereaved [them] of children, I have destroyed my people; they didn't return from their ways" (Jer 15:7). The fan is now in Yahweh's hand, the gates of the land are the threshing floors, and the result is judgment rather than harvest. The image is used a second time against Babylon: "And I will send to Babylon strangers, that will winnow her; and they will empty her land: for in the day of trouble they will be against her round about" (Jer 51:2). Foreign nations become the winnowers; Babylon becomes the heap of grain blown away.