Garner

A garner in UPDV usage is a storehouse for grain — the holding-place for the wheat once it has been threshed and winnowed. The word carries through both the agricultural and the eschatological imagery built on it.

In the prosperity-prayer of Psalm 144 the full garner is the visible token of a settled and blessed land: "[That] our garners are full, affording all manner of store, [And] our sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields" (Ps 144:13). Isaiah's restoration oracle turns the verb form on the harvested grain itself: "but those who have garnered it will eat it, and praise Yahweh; and those who have gathered it will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary" (Is 62:9).

The reverse picture — the granaries emptied — fronts Joel's locust oracle: "The seeds rot under their clods; the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the grain is withered" (Joel 1:17).

The Baptist's Threshing-Floor Saying

The same image carries the threshing-floor saying of John the Baptist in both Matthew and Luke. Of the one coming after him: "whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire" (Mt 2:7); the parallel reads, "whose fan is 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" (Lu 3:17). The garner stands for what is kept; the chaff for what is burned.