---

After the subsidence of the Deluge, there was a promise given to Noah that, "while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest... summer and winter... shall not cease." Scanning the surface of the Scripture narrative, it appears as if this promise had not been kept, seeing there is a record of several notable and protracted famines; and moreover, we have only too good reason to suppose that millions in the successive ages of the world have perished from famine. We must hold, however, to God's promise having been kept in the spirit of it; its non-fulfillment, so far as human experience is concerned, must arise from some other cause than the unfaithfulness of God. An inquiry into these painful experiences is suggested by the utterance of this verse. The meaning seems to be that harvest and summer, the annual gathering of the corn and the wine and the oil, have nevertheless, in some way or other, left the people who should have profited by them, unprovided for. The words may be applied in two ways.

1. When there is an actual gathering of harvest. There may be an abundance, even a superabundance, of the fruits of the earth, and yet those who sowed and planted, watched and watered, may not get the slightest benefit. Now, not to get the expected benefit from these things means, if not destruction of life, at least a considerable impairment of it; for natural life depends upon them. And Jeremiah 5:15-24 casts no small light on this state of things. There the mighty men from the north are spoken of, and Israel is addressed as follows: - "They shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat:... they shall cat up thy vines and thy fig trees." Strangers pluck the rich fruit of the husbandman's toil, and he himself is trampled into privation, reduced to the bare subsistence of a slave taken in war. Thus we see how God may lay before a man that which through the sin and folly of the recipient he may not be able to use. Think of the prosperous man in the parable, who had such abundant crops that he must needs build bigger barns, and yet in the very day of his pride was taken away. What is wealth unless God, in the prosecution of his own wise purposes, chooses to give security in the possession of that wealth?

2. When the harvest itself fails. The harvest season may pass and the summer close, only to leave men with empty garners, in hunger and despair. Whither shall they turn, when drought, blasting, and mildew, palmerworm and locust, cankerworm and caterpillar, have done their work? Then it is that "those who are slain with the sword are better than those who are slain with hunger, for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field" (Lamentations 4:9). Thus, whether the harvest be given or withheld, the practical result is the same. The people are not saved. God may bring the harvest to a complete and beautiful maturity, may, so to speak, save the harvest - and "save the harvest" is not an unfamiliar expression to those who are engaged in the vicissitudes of agriculture - only to teach thereby a more impressive lesson to the people who live so that they cannot be kept safe. What force there is in the expression of this verse if we take it to mean, "The corn is saved; the vintage is saved; the olives are saved; all the pleasant fruits of the land are saved; but we are not saved!" The life is more than the bodily nourishment, and when men will not take heed to the higher things which belong to the life, it is just what might be expected that they should have disappointments in the lower things which belong to the nourishment. The true material wealth of every land, when we get at the substance of it, lies in what its soil produces; and when men beast, as they are apt to do, that their own land has gotten them their wealth, it is needful that Jehovah should show them how completely he controls the roots and fruits of everything that he has made to grow for human food. No wonder evil comes to those who do not say in their hearts, "Let us now fear Jehovah our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest' (Jeremiah 5:24). Malachi puts into striking words the fundamental reason for the sore complaint we have been considering, and the way in which it may be brought to cease (Jeremiah 3:9-11). - Y.

---

---

KJV: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

WEB: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.