Job 5:26 You shall come to your grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn comes in in his season. This text literally reads, "Like as a shock of wheat that is lifted up." It is a perfect vision of the closing days of harvest. It is the consummation of the year; the last triumphant act in a long drama of skill and patience. 1. The first parable of harvest is, that harvest is God's memorial, and the parable of His love. His promise is that while the bow is in the heaven, springtime and harvest shall not fail. God sets the bow for a sign, a bright watcher or minister, to declare His goodwill to us. How miraculous a thing is the wheat harvest of the world! The wheat harvest in the East is the one supreme event of the year. This is the first and chief lesson of the harvest; we are God's pensioners, and He spreads the table in the wilderness. 2. The order of the world is use first, and beauty second. There are many things more beautiful than corn. True, it has a certain humble grace of its own, but it is the democratic grace of the worker, not the aristocratic grace of the idler. You could live in a world without roses, but not in a world without corn; you like to have perfume, but you must have bread. 3. The harvest is the parable of life itself. How little spoils both. How irrevocable the tendencies of each! A slight error spoils the year's husbandry, as slight errors often spoil a whole life. See in corn an illustration of the solidarity of life itself. The corn travels the wide world over. It has no local limit, it is cosmopolitan. It has no personal life; its life is for the race. In these respects the parable of life is revealed. We live in infinite relations, beyond our relation to the soil we thrive in, and the age we are said to live in. We sow ourselves as corn is sowed, and others reap; even as we before reaped what others sowed. 4. The harvest is the parable of death. What is death? We know that decomposition is recomposition. Nothing perishes, for there is no waste in nature. Here we have the revelation of the true purpose of life — which is use; and of the true triumph of life — which is to be sacrificed, as the corn must be plucked and ground before it can become bread. (G. W. Dawson.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.WEB: You shall come to your grave in a full age, like a shock of grain comes in its season. |
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