Seasons

The seasons of the year are presented in Scripture as a divinely instituted cycle of created time. They are fixed at creation, guaranteed at the close of the flood, regulated by the heavenly lights, and held under the hand that "changes the times and the seasons" (Dan 2:21). The season-pair summer-and-winter, the seedtime-and-harvest cycle behind spring, and the calendrical division of the year into appointed times all run through the canon as an ordered framework of natural and sacred time.

Seasons Established at Creation

The seasons appear in the fourth-day creation order as one of the time-services assigned to the lights of the firmament. "And [the Speech of] God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years" (Gen 1:14). The luminaries are commissioned at origin to mark a fourfold cycle of signs, seasons, days, and years, so the seasonal calendar stands at creation as a luminary-served division of time.

The Psalter restates the same arrangement at the calendar level. "He appointed the moon for seasons: The sun knows his going down" (Ps 104:19). The moon is fastened to the season-scale and the sun to the day-scale, so the year's set-times are exhibited as the work of an appointed two-luminary calendar rather than as a bare natural cycle.

The Post-Flood Pledge of Summer and Winter

At the close of the flood the seasons are caught up into a permanence-pledge: "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). The summer-and-winter alternation, together with the seedtime-and-harvest cycle and the cold-and-heat pair, is underwritten to run without break for as long as the earth stands. Asaph confesses the same making at the creator-register: "You have set all the borders of the earth: You have made summer and winter" (Ps 74:17). The two-season structure is lodged alongside the fixing of the earth's borders as part of one creative ordering.

The covenantal stability of this cycle is pressed in Jeremiah as the measure of Yahweh's word: "Thus says Yahweh: If you⁺ can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, so that there will not be day and night in their season" (Jer 33:20). The seasonal in their season clause is treated as a covenant with the day and the night, so the regularity of seasonal time is itself a sworn arrangement.

Spring: Winter Past, Seedtime, Renewed Pasture

Spring is named at the threshold of seasonal change in the Song of Songs. "For, look, the winter is past; The rain is over and gone" (Song 2:11). The cold-and-rainy season is announced as departed, opening the spring-portrait that follows.

The agricultural face of spring stands in Proverbs as the early-cut and second-growth window of flock-tending. "The hay is carried, and the tender grass shows itself, And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in" (Prov 27:25). The first-cut hay, the tender new grass for the flocks, and the mountain-herb ingathering form a single seasonal portrait of the renewed year. Behind this lies the seedtime-member of Gen 8:22, the spring-side of the perennial sowing-and-reaping cycle the post-flood word underwrites.

Summer: The Working Season and the Hot Half of the Year

Summer is the named hot-half of the season-pair throughout the canon. The Genesis pledge and the Asaph creator-confession both fix it as a divinely-made counterpart to winter (Gen 8:22; Ps 74:17). It is the abundant working window of the ant in the wisdom-summons: "Provides her bread in the summer, And gathers her food in the harvest" (Prov 6:8). The same season is defined by the absence of certain weather: "As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, So honor is not seemly for a fool" (Prov 26:1). The fittingness simile turns on the dry-and-hot character of the season, where snow does not belong.

In the eschatological vision of Zechariah, summer's normal water-failure is the very background against which the temple-city's perennial outflow is named: "And it will come to pass in that day, that living waters will go out from Jerusalem... in summer and in winter it will be" (Zech 14:8). The living-waters are exhibited as flowing through both halves of the year, including the dry season in which ordinary streams in the land normally fail.

Winter: The Cold and Rainy Half

Winter is named directly as the cold-and-rainy companion of summer at Gen 8:22 and Ps 74:17, and again at Zech 14:8 as the wet-half partner of the perennial flow. Its diagnostic weather is the rain of Song 2:11, registered there as departed at the moment of spring's announcement.

In the New Testament, winter functions as a seasonal marker. John fixes the time of year at the feast of dedication: "Then came the feast of the dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter" (John 10:22). The bare note accounts for the covered location that follows. In the Pastoral correspondence the season sets the deadline of a travel-charge: "Be diligent to come before winter" (2 Tim 4:21). The pre-winter framing presses Timothy's arrival within a narrow seasonal window, before the season closes the route.

Seasons Distinguished by the Lord's Knowledge

The sage of Sirach plants the calendar question at the level of the day and answers it at the level of the Lord's own knowledge. "Why is one day distinguished from another, When the light of every day in the year is from the sun?" (Sir 33:7). The puzzle is fastened at the day-distinction register: the sun's light is uniform across the year, so the day-difference cannot be drawn from the source of light. The answer follows: "By the knowledge of the Lord they were distinguished, And he varied seasons and feasts" (Sir 33:8). The Lord himself is named as the agent of seasonal and festal differentiation, so the variegation of the calendar is exhibited as the Lord's own act on otherwise uniform sun-lit time. The verdict closes by partition: "Some of them he exalted and hallowed, And some of them he made ordinary days" (Sir 33:9). The days are divided into a sacred tier and an ordinary tier under the Lord's discrimination.

The same sage names the moon as the instrument of the seasonal partition the Psalter likewise plants at Ps 104:19. "And also the moon he made for its due season, To rule over periods for an everlasting sign" (Sir 43:6). The moon is exhibited as season-purposed and period-governing within the everlasting-sign order. And David is credited with the perfection-grade ordering of the festival-cycle's appointed times: "He gave comeliness to the feasts, And set in order the seasons to perfection" (Sir 47:10). The seasons here are the appointed-times of the festival-calendar, set in order by the David-bearer to perfection alongside the beautification of the feasts.

Times and Seasons Under God's Hand

Daniel sets the seasons under the active alteration of the divine counterparty. "And he changes the times and the seasons; he removes kings, and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who have understanding" (Dan 2:21). The pair times-and-seasons is exhibited as one half of the temporal-frame the Most High actively alters, so the natural cycles stand under the same hand that removes and sets up kings.

The same vocabulary returns in the New Testament parable of the vineyard: "And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a slave, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruits of the vineyard" (Mark 12:2). The owner's sending is fastened to the appointed season for receiving the fruits, so the seasonal ordering of the vineyard underwrites the timing of the demand.

Paul takes up the same paired terms when he writes to the Thessalonian congregation about the day of the Lord. "But concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you⁺ have no need that anything be written to you⁺" (1 Thess 5:1). The times-and-seasons pair stands here at the eschatological register: the readers are presumed already to know the framework, and the apostle moves directly to the day's character without rehearsing the calendar that frames it.