Jeremiah 14:4 - "Because of the ground which is dismayed, since there is no rain in the land, the farmers are ashamed, they cover their heads."

2 Timothy 2:6 - "It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops."

James 5:7 - "Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it until it receives the early and the late rain."

Palestine was one of the world’s earliest agricultural centers. By 7500 B.C., the land was irrigated, and farming was good. The Israelites learned to farm from the Canaanites, and they built their villages near their fields where they worked all day. In later times, these villages grew into walled towns. Much of the farming was done on hillsides, and as a result, terracing came into practice quite early.

Among the chief crops in ancient Palestine were wheat, rice, barley, oats, rye, beans, peas, lettuce, celery, cabbage, beets, turnips, mustard, radishes, onions, flax, cotton, and many others. But it wasn’t easy. The land was rocky and the farmer was often threatened by such things as ants, caterpillars, field mice, tares, wind, hail, and so on. Fallowing, which means to plow, but not plant, was practiced every seven years to enrich the soil, control weeds, and furnish food for the poor, since whatever grew of itself was given to them.

The farm season opened in November after the early October rains, and the Gezer Calendar marks the program of a Palestinian farmer in this way:

"his two months are (olive) harvest;
his two months are grain-planting;
his two months are planting;
his month is hoeing up of flax;
his month is barley harvest;
his month is harvest and festivity;
his two months are vine-tending;
his month is summer-fruit."

The farmer’s plow was a forked branch with an attached piece of sharp metal. During the time of Saul, the Philistines monopolized iron, and Hebrew farmers were forced to go to the Philistines to have their plows sharpened. A plank or a faggot of thorns served as a harrow.

Planting was done simply by broadcasting it or by a kind of funnel fixed to the plow, called a seed-pipe. Harvesting was accomplished by grasping a small tuft of grain in the left hand and cutting it with a sickle held in the right hand. The short-handed sickle was made with flint until about 1100 B.C. when iron became common.

Sheaves were bound into bundles and taken to the threshing floor. There the farmer beat the ripe grain with a staff or rod. Threshing floors were usually situated outside the village. Using pitchforks, the farmer winnowed the grain by tossing it into the wind. The grain was then sifted through screen trays, stored, and transported to market.

The dry season, extending from mid-May until mid-October, gave the farmer some of his greatest problems. This lack of water explains the many cisterns found in Palestine. Many regulations and customs pertain to agriculture:

1. It was forbidden to move boundaries.
2. It was forbidden to mix different kinds of seed.
3. It was forbidden to yoke animals of different species together.
4. Permission to glean fields was given to the poor.
5. The sides of a field were uncut to benefit the poor.
6. It was forbidden to turn back for a forgotten sheaf.
7. Passers-by were authorized to pluck ears.

Land was measured by the yoke - that is, the area that a pair of oxen could plough in a day. The value of the land was fixed according to whatever was planted in it. Now, of course, I don’t have to spell out the comparable occupation today. Although the methods have certainly changed, the occupation hasn’t, and it is still as vital a one as it has ever been.