Joel 3:13

Hebrew Bible

10 Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, ‘I too am a warrior!’ 11 Lend your aid and come, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves to that place.” Bring down, O Lord, your warriors! 12 “Let the nations be roused and let them go up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit in judgment on all the surrounding nations. 13 Rush forth with the sickle, for the harvest is ripe! Come, stomp the grapes, for the winepress is full! The vats overflow. Indeed, their evil is great! 14 Crowds, great crowds are in the Valley of Decision, for the day of the Lord is near in the Valley of Decision! 15 The sun and moon are darkened; the stars withhold their brightness. 16 The Lord roars from Zion; from Jerusalem his voice bellows out. The heavens and the earth shake. But the Lord is a refuge for his people; he is a stronghold for the citizens of Israel.

Revelation 14:18

New Testament

14 Then I looked, and a white cloud appeared, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man! He had a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Then another angel came out of the temple, shouting in a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud, “Use your sickle and start to reap, because the time to reap has come, since the earth’s harvest is ripe!” 16 So the one seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped. 17 Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he, too, had a sharp sickle. 18 Another angel, who was in charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to the angel who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes off the vine of the earth, because its grapes are now ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the earth and tossed them into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 Then the winepress was stomped outside the city, and blood poured out of the winepress up to the height of horses’ bridles for a distance of almost 200 miles.

 Notes and References

"... The phrase πέμψον τὸ δρέπανόν σου, “send your sickle,” repeated with some variation in v 18—πέμψον σου τὸ δρέπανον τὸ ὀξύ, “send your sharp sickle”—is an allusion to Joel 3:13 ... While it is not immediately evident why the two commands in Joel 4:13 (“Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe” and “Go in, tread, for the wine press is full”) are transformed into commands from one angelic being to another here in vv 15 and 18, the answer may lie in the traditional Jewish exegesis of this passage found in the Midrash of Psalm 8 ... In this midrash, God commands angels to harvest and to tread the winepress, while in Rev 14:14–20, some angels command other angels to perform tasks that are metaphors for divine judgment. The role of angels as reapers is explicitly stated in the Matthaean interpretation of the parable of the sower in Matt 13:39, οἱ δὲ θερισταὶ ἄγγελοί εἰσιν, “And the reapers are angels”. In Mark 13:26–27 = Matt 24:30–31, the returning Son of man sends his angels to gather the elect from all parts of the world, and this older logion is probably the source of Matthew 13:39. In Jewish tradition, however, there are angels of punishment, as in Revelation 9:15, who are agents of God in punishing and destroying humans ..."

Ramantswana, Hulisani Day Two of Creation: Why Is the Raqia (Firmament) Not Pronounced Good? (pp. 991-992) University of South Africa, 2913

 User Comments

Do you have questions or comments about these texts? Please submit them here.