Jeremiah 51:33

51:33 For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says,

‘Fair Babylon ¹  will be like a threshing floor

which has been trampled flat for harvest.

The time for her to be cut down and harvested

will come very soon.’ ² 

Joel 3:13

3:13 Rush forth with ³  the sickle, for the harvest is ripe!

Come, stomp the grapes, ⁴  for the winepress is full!

The vats overflow.

Indeed, their evil is great! ⁵ 

Micah 4:12

4:12 But they do not know what the Lord is planning;

they do not understand his strategy.

He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed ⁶  at the threshing floor.

Revelation 14:15

14:15 Then ⁷  another angel came out of the temple, shouting in a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud, “Use ⁸  your sickle and start to reap, ⁹  because the time to reap has come, since the earth’s harvest is ripe!”

[51:33]  ¹ sn Heb “Daughter Babylon.” See the study note at 50:42 for explanation.

[51:33]  ² tn Heb “Daughter Babylon will be [or is; there is no verb and the tense has to be supplied from the context] like a threshing floor at the time one tramples it. Yet a little while and the time of the harvest will come for her.” It is generally agreed that there are two figures here: one of leveling the threshing floor and stamping it into a smooth, hard surface and the other of the harvest where the grain is cut, taken to the threshing floor, and threshed by trampling the sheaves of grain to loosen the grain from the straw, and finally winnowed by throwing the mixture into the air (cf., e.g., J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 760). The translation has sought to convey those ideas as clearly as possible without digressing too far from the literal.

[3:13]  ³ tn Heb “send.”

[3:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “go down” or “tread.” The Hebrew term רְדוּ (rÿdu) may be from יָרַד (yarad, “to go down”) or from רָדָה (radah, “have dominion,” here in the sense of “to tread”). If it means “go down,” the reference would be to entering the vat to squash the grapes. If it means “tread,” the verb would refer specifically to the action of those who walk over the grapes to press out their juice. The phrase “the grapes” is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[3:13]  ⁵ sn The immediacy of judgment upon wickedness is likened to the urgency required for a harvest that has reached its pinnacle of development. When the harvest is completely ripe, there can be no delay by the reapers in gathering the harvest. In a similar way, Joel envisions a time when human wickedness will reach such a heightened degree that there can be no further stay of divine judgment (cf. the “fullness of time” language in Gal 4:4).

[4:12]  ⁶ tn The words “to be threshed” are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the Lord is planning to enable “Daughter Zion” to “thresh” her enemies.

[14:15]  ⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the vision.

[14:15]  ⁸ tn Grk “Send out.”

[14:15]  ⁹ tn The aorist θέρισον (qerison) has been translated ingressively.