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Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee. Dr. Henderson ends the chapter with this clause and begins the next chapter with the latter clause of this verse. Some regard the harvest here as used in a good sense, as pointing to the ingathering of the people of God. But such a view is scarcely admissible. It evidently refers to punishment, and some suppose to that terrible punishment that fell on Judah as recorded in 2 Chronicles 26:6-9. Divine punishment for sin is elsewhere spoken of as a harvest: "Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great." "Another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe." The imagery suggests -

I. That retribution is natural in its season. There are the "appointed weeks, of harvest." These weeks come round with an undeviating regularity, and they come because the immutable One has decreed their advent. "Seed-time and harvest shall not fail." Punishment comes to the sinner naturally, so far as the proper time is concerned. In this life the sinner has many harvests. Every transgression is a seed, and the seed sometimes grows rapidly and ripens fast. In truth, to some extent man reaps today morally what he sowed yesterday; not the whole crop, it is true, for every sin is awfully prolific, but some portion. The law of memory, habit, causation, render this constant reaping inevitable. No man can do a wrong thing anywhere or anywhen, without its bringing to him sooner or later a harvest, even in this life. But in the after-world there is a full and complete harvest. All the sins committed are there ripened into crops of corresponding miseries. Yonder is the harvest; there is the reaping - reaping - reaping, and little else than reaping forever. The wicked there reap "the fruit of their own doings."

II. That retribution is natural in its RESULTS. In harvest, the man reaps the kind of seed he has sown, whatever it may be, barley or wheat. Also as a rule the amount. if he has sown sparingly, he reaps sparingly; if with abundance, he will reap abundantly. He gets what he wrought for. It is just so in the retributive ministry of God. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The cheat shall be cheated, the oppressor shall be oppressed, the malicious shall be hated. "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." The sinner in every pang of suffering will recognize the fruit of some sinful act of his. He will feel evermore that his misery has grown out of such a sin, and this out of that, and so on. Hence he will never be able to blame either God or his creation for his wretched destiny; he reaps "the fruit of his own doings."

III. That retribution is natural in its APPROACH. As soon as the seed is sown and germination begins, it proceeds slowly and silently from day to day, week to week, and month to month, towards maturition, its harvest state. It is just so with sin; it proceeds naturally to work out its results. "Lust, when it is conceived, bringeth forth sin; sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Punishment for sin does not require the positive and direct interposition of eternal justice; it comes - comes as the harvest comes - comes by the established laws of the moral universe. In truth, sin is more certain to ripen than the seed of the husbandman. Ungenial soil, foul weather, nipping frosts, scorching rays, destructive insects, may destroy the seed in the ground, so that it may never spring even to blade. But sin, unless uprooted by God's redemptive hand, cannot be destroyed, must grow, and ripen into a harvest of misery. "Be sure your sins will find you out."

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all."

(Longfellow.)

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KJV: Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee, when I returned the captivity of my people.

WEB: "Also, Judah, there is a harvest appointed for you, when I restore the fortunes of my people.