Spring

Spring is treated in scripture along three lines: as a season whose annual return belongs to the post-flood permanence-pledge, as a kind of water (with one notice of hot springs), and as a figure for a moral source that has been spoiled.

The Promised Annual Return

The seasonal cycle is fastened at the close of the flood narrative as a divinely guaranteed sequence: "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). Spring belongs here as the seedtime member of the sowing-and-reaping pair, underwritten to continue as long as the earth stands.

The Spring Portrait — Pasture and Bloom

The sage's flock-tending instruction names spring at the point where the first hay is taken off, the new growth shows, and the high country yields its herbs: "The hay is carried, and the tender grass shows itself, And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in" (Pr 27:25). The early-cut hay, the second-growth pasture, and the gathered mountain-herbs together register the season for the household that lives by its flocks.

The Song's beloved opens her spring-portrait at the threshold-moment when the prior cold-and-rainy season is registered as departed: "For, look, the winter is past; The rain is over and gone" (So 2:11). The marks of the new season are then enumerated in turn — "The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing [of birds] has come, And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land; The fig tree ripens her green figs, And the vines are in blossom; They give forth their fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away" (So 2:12-13). Flowers, birdsong, the turtledove's return, ripening figs, and blossoming vines are stacked as the positive-side signs that follow the negative-side declaration that winter and rain are gone.

Hot Springs

A single notice of hot springs appears in the Edomite genealogy: "And these are the sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah; this is Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness, as he fed the donkeys of Zibeon his father" (Gen 36:24). The discovery is incidental to herding and is recorded as a discovery in the wilderness, with no further development.

The Corrupted Spring

A spring that has been spoiled is used twice as a figure for a moral source whose output no longer matches what such a source ought to give. The proverb runs: "[As] a troubled fountain, and a corrupted spring, [So is] a righteous man who gives way before the wicked" (Pr 25:26). The yielding of a just man before wickedness is read as the same kind of failure as the corruption of a water source on which others depend.

The image returns in James as a rhetorical question against the double-tongued: "Does the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet [water] and bitter?" (Jas 3:11). One opening is not expected to yield both kinds of water, and the question carries its own answer.