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It is pardonable to hesitate in accepting the statement that the harvest here refers to
judgment, seeing that in many passages the reaping of the harvest includes the righteous.
One prophecy seems to speak directly of this same period. We refer to Joel 3: 12-14:--
"Let the nations be weakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will
I sit to judge all the heathen round about. 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. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of threshing: for the day of
the Lord is near in the valley of threshing."
Here without doubt is a scene of judgment, and here the figures both of harvest and
vintage are used. Further, there is a verbal connection which should be remembered. In
Rev. 14: 15 the word "thrust" is the Greek word pempō = to send. In Joel 3: 13 the
LXX has exapostellō, which likewise means "send" (see Joel 2: 25). The sickle is sent,
just as the other agencies of judgment and mercy, and just what will answer to the symbol
we may not at present know. Another passage bearing upon the subject is Jer. 51: 33:--
"The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor, it is time to thresh her; yet a little
while, and the time of her harvest shall come."
While judgment is manifestly the setting of these visions, the harvest at the end of the
age is a reaping of both wheat and darnel. In this case the "tares" or darnel, the "children
of the wicked one", are the worshippers of the image. These are bound in bundles to be
burned. The "wheat" are the children of the Kingdom, the blessed dead who die in the
Lord at that time. With regard to the Vintage the language is plain. It represents
unmitigated wrath. The clusters of the vine of the earth are cast into the great winepress
of the wrath of God. This is but an echo of the figure of verse 10, "the wine of the wrath
of God", Isa. 63: 1-6 speaks of this terrible vintage:--
"Who is This That cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? This That
is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength? I that speak in
righteousness, Mighty to save . . . . . I have trodden the winepress alone . . . . . I will tread
them in Mine anger, and trample them in My fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled
upon My garments, and I will stain all My raiment. For the day of vengeance is in Mine
heart, and the year of My redeemed is come."
When we were dealing with the earlier portion of Rev. 14: we found Isa. 34:
applicable. That chapter contains much that fits in with the Vintage of Rev. 14: There
we read of a "sacrifice in Bozrah". The same awful emphasis upon "blood". "The land
shall be soaked (drunken) with blood". And the same period is indicated as that of
Isa. 63::--
"For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the
controversy of Zion" (Isa. 34: 8).
Israel is represented as a vine. Sometimes they become worse than the "vine of
Sodom" (Deut. 32: 32), or "the degenerate plant of a strange vine" (Jer. 2: 21), yet in
the day of their restoration they shall "grow as the vine" (Hos. 14: 7), and the vine that
the Lord brought out of Egypt shall once again blossom and bud and fill the earth with