The Bible is a book that is loaded with images from agriculture.  The reason is obvious.  The people described from the first page to the last lived close to the land.  They were a people who knew what it was to stoop for long hours in the hot sun to till the soil.  Their toes and feet were often covered by the black soil on a spring day.  They chopped and hoed through the summer, waiting patiently for the coming harvest.  They knew what it was to watch as the crops slowly inched upward with first the blooms and then the tiny shapes of the fruit appearing.  They, no doubt, spent endless hours discussing too much rain or not enough of it.  They fought the insects and the weeds just like farmers do today.  And in the fall, they experienced the profound joy that comes from a crop well-harvested.  They did not always understand the deep things of God, but they knew about the rhythms and cycles of nature.

Because of that, agricultural images crop up in every part of this book.  When the writers were challenged to explain something new about God, they reached for what they knew – the agricultural life all around them.