Four months til harvest...

[visionary]

At the end of the chapter 3 of John’s Gospel Yeshua left Jerusalem after the first Passover. He started on His journey toward Galilee (John 4:3). His route necessitated traveling through Samaria. Upon His arrival at Jacob’s well, being weary from his journey, Yeshua talked to a Samaritan woman while His disciples went into the village to fetch food. No other people were around to hear this (John 4:6–26). The disciples returned with food. Yeshua then gave them some spiritual teaching about what true food actually represented. This little comment by Yeshua might resolve the problem regarding the time and length of Yeshua’s ministry.

“Say ye not, ‘There are yet four months and then cometh the harvest?’ behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white [ripe] already for harvest”

 

[visionary]

Since Yeshua was speaking within a context of sowing and reaping, we can take a look at the two harvests each year. There is a spring harvest of barley and winter wheat and the fall harvest of all vegetables, fruit, and all grains including wheat. Farmers reaped the spring harvest between Passover and Pentecost (from late March to early June). In fact they do not start the harvest until after the Wave Sheaf, First Fruit Feasts. So there is significance in the phrase “four months unto the harvest.” Yeshua could easily be point to the fall harvest. This would allow the phrase four months to harvest to make reasonable sense. Yeshua must have either gave this illustration to the disciples some 8 or 9 months after John’s first Passover or about 4 months after the beginning of the regular grain harvest which started about late March.

 

[visionary]

Of course, we can just think that Yeshua was not spring boarding off what was happening around them in regards to the actual harvest times. In fact, it can be stated that Yeshua was simply stating a well-known proverb about some four month interval of time from sowing to harvest, and that no chronological significance is to be interpreted from this reference to harvest.

 

[visionary]

I do not think that Yeshua’s statement was 8 or 9 months after John’s first Passover because in verse 45 (given shortly after He returned to Galilee) his Galilean acquaintances recalled the signs He had recently accomplished at John’s first Passover. These were Galileans who had gone to the FEAST “for they also went unto the FEAST.” Anyone should recognize that this refers to the first Passover mentioned by John which happened about six or seven weeks before. If this is not the case, then the words of John’s Gospel are incomprehensible. To say that the Galileans were referring to an unmentioned feast of Pentecost, or an unnamed feast of Tabernacles (or even the feasts of Dedication or Purim) is stretching the matter beyond reasonable belief. Truly, the Galileans must have been talking about the previous feast of Passover during which they had seen Yeshua perform certain miracles and that Passover had occurred no more than 40 or 50 days before. This means that Yeshua's statement (made at Jacob’s Well, about a week before He met the Galileans in Nazareth) was not uttered in the months of December or January, and not 8 or 9 months after John’s first Passover. Clearly, Yeshua stated His remark in late May or early June. Yeshua also stated that this time was during the regular grain harvest.

John 4:35 Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields for they are white [ripe] already for harvest.

There is only one time you can be standing in a ripe harvest and talk about a coming harvest in four months. That means you are in the midst of the spring harvest talking about the fall harvest.

 

[visionary]

There is also a second reason why they could be standing in a harvest field white [ripe] and no harvesters. The answer is simple if one remembers the agricultural legislation that Moses imposed on Jews and Samaritans living in the Holy land. There were agricultural rules that both groups observed in the 1st century. Yeshua made His statement in the midst of what is known as a Sabbatical Year. No sowing or reaping are permitted, from the Tishri [New Year] Feast of Trumpets to the Feast of Trumpets nest year. Yeshua made this statement near the end of the second Hebrew month or the start of the third (late May or early June). When a person counts forward four more months, the month of Tishri is reached. This is the month in which all Sabbatical Years ended and people could legally begin to harvest once again. Yeshua is really just reminding the disciples of this fact. That year was a Sabbatical Year. No one could commence any harvesting (even though one were in the midst of the harvest season for grain) until the Sabbatical Year was over. This is the reason why Yeshua said it was still “four months” to the period of harvest.

 

[visionary]

Here is another clue. Yeshua said something that only makes sense in a Sabbatical year.

John 4:37 And herein is this saying true, ‘One soweth and another reapeth.’ I send you to reap that which ye bestowed no labor.

During Sabbatical Years no one could labor on the land. No sowing, plowing, pruning or harvesting were permitted. So Yeshua's statement about " no labor" regarding the harvest is indicative of the fact that that year was sabbatical.

 

[visionary]

Since Yeshua gave His illustrations in John 4:35–38 at the time the fields were already white for harvest, He strongly implies that no one was in the fields doing any reaping. If all the fields were then ripe for harvest, this is a powerful suggestion that none of the fields were being harvested by the people. And any farmer will tell you, that just as soon as the grain is ripe they will be out in the field harvesting. So it takes strong conviction of faith, for the people not to be out there in the field when they are "ripe". This would have been the case in a Sabbatical Year. All the fields were not then being harvested.

 

[visionary]

Fields during Sabbatical Years would produce much grain, since they had not been sowed in the previous autumn and winter, all one has to do is to recall that Leviticus 25:5 indicates there would always be a crop during the fallow Sabbatical Year from the grains that fell on the ground in the sixth year of harvest. Grain was in the stalks, but unharvested.

 

[visionary]

Luke tells us in the Greek that on “The Day of the Sabbaths” (or, “The Day of the Weeks”) [another possible way of saying Pentecost to agree with the terminology of Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10; and 2 Chronicles 8:13], Yeshua was handed the scroll of Isaiah and He read chapter 61, verses 1 and 2.

“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Day of the Sabbaths [or, The Day of the Weeks] and stood up to read. And he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the scroll, and found the place where it was written: ‘The Lord’s Spirit is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and sight to the blind, to set free the bruised, to proclaim the Lord’s acceptable year.’ And he rolled up the scroll, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him. And he began to say unto them, ‘Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears’.”

There is a reason that the synagogue attendant would hand Yeshua the scroll of Isaiah that particular Sabbath. It is in the synagogue liturgy requirements to have Isaiah to be read that day on Pentecost. It also indicates that Yeshua read the regular triennial cycle selection from the prophets that accompanied the sequential readings from the five books of Moses. It is interesting that the section that Jesus quoted was that which paralleled the readings from the Law of Moses for Pentecost on the second year of the triennial cycle. This is just another indication that this event in the synagogue in Nazareth occurred on Pentecost.