The wheat, winnowing, and threshing

By Elizabeth Prata

“His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:12 LSB)

The way the ancients used to process their wheat is to gather it from the field, place it on the hardened threshing floor, and thresh and winnow it. The threshing-floor is a hollowed out spot with a packed earthen floor on the top of a hill where the late afternoon wind kicks up. The first part of the process is threshing. They thresh the wheat stalks by passing a sledge over them on the threshing-floor. Dragging the sledge over the stalk rolls the chaff kernel off the wheat stalk. The chaff is waste, like a husk.

You can see one woman standing on a sledge in the photo. The sledge is the tied-together planks with turned up front. Sledging separates the wheat from the chaff. You want the wheat. The chaff is the hard kernel husk, and you don’t want that. It is inedible. As the threshing process goes on they mound the stalks in the middle of the floor.

A threshing floor in the hills of Galilee – the women threshing

Library of Congress

Next they take a winnowing fork, poke it into the mound, and toss all the material – wheat, chaff, straw, weevils, etc, – into the air. The wind carries the chaff away. The heavier wheat falls to the ground.

Primitive winnowing [picture] : [Palestine, World War II]

When they finish the threshing and winnowing, they gather the broken straws and bundle them for fuel to be burned. The wheat is gathered and tied together in bundles also and put into the barn.

The Matthew verse speaks to the judgment of Jesus. The chaff are unbelievers who will be burned with an unquenchable fire. That speaks to the fire of hell which will torment the unbeliever forever.

The wheat that has been gathered into the barn represents the raptured and resurrected saints gathered to Jesus to the place He has prepared for us.

Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:18 LSB)