Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX A
And I looked and lo a White Cloud, and upon the
Cloud one Seated like a Son of Man, having upon his head
a Golden crown and in his hand a sharp Sickle.
And another Angel came out of the Naos, crying in a
loud voice to the one Seated on the Cloud,
Send thy Sickle and reap: for the hour k come to reap;
for the Harvest of the Land is dried up.
And the one Seated on the Cloud put his Sickle to the
Land and the Land was reaped.
And another Angel came out of the Naos in Heaven
also having a sharp Sickle.
And another Angel came out of the Altar who had
charge of the Fire and said with a loud voice to the one that
had the Sickle, saying Send thy sharp Sickle and cut the
clusters of the Vine of the Land; for its Grapes are full-ripe.
And the Angel put his Sickle into the Land, and cut the
Vine of the Land, and put it into the Great Winepress of the
wrath of God.
And the Winepress was trodden outside the City, and
there came out Blood from the Winepress.
The liturgical form and tone of this section are obvious,
and invite closer study than we were able to give it in
the text of the book. It is a very complicated passage.
1. Its primary reference is to Mark 13:26, which
speaks: (a) of the Son of Man coming on the
Clouds, (b) of his sending his Angels to gather the
elect into his kingdom, and (c) of the sun darkened,
etc., by which is meant the fall of Jerusalem.
2. The meaning of a resurrection of the just is
impossible as the passage stands, though it may have
meant that in an early recension of the poem. As it
stands it means the separation of the elect, and their
escape from the doom of Jerusalem.
3. There is a reference to the Jewish Calendar and the
system of feasts observed at the Temple: (a)
Passover at the beginning of the year, marking the
beginning of harvest, and (b) Tabernacles or
Ingathering at the end of the year, marked by the
vintage. This allusion relates the vision to our
previous supposition that the early recension J
ended with symbolism based on Tabernacles. 14:1
ff. would have followed this vision.
4. The liturgical form suggests that it may be based on
the ritual of gathering in the harvest. Now the
cutting of the first sheaf was itself a ritual, known as
the Omer of Firstfruit. It occurred on Nisan 15, the
“high day” of John 19:31, and as it was done at night
it was contemporaneous with the resurrection.
Nisan 14. Lamb killed. Crucifixion.
Passover eaten. Burial.
15. High day.
Firstfruit cut. Resurrection.
In the year of the crucifixion it chanced that Nisan
15 was also a sabbath; but this was, of course, a
coincidence. I have dated the crucifixion, etc., as in
the fourth gospel, which I take to be correct; but in
any case the references in Revelation are to the
crucifixion story as related in that gospel.
5. Lightfoot in his account of the Temple and its
services gives an outline of the ritual for the Omer.
“Those that the Sanhedrin sent about it went out at
the evening of the Holy Day (the first day of the
Passover Week); they took baskets and sickles, etc.
“They went out on the Holy Day when it began to
be dark, and a great company went out with them;
when it was now dark, one said to them,
“On this Sabbath, On this Sabbath, On this
Sabbath.
“In this Basket, In this Basket, In this Basket.
“Rabbi Eliezer the son of Zadok saith, With this
Sickle, With this Sickle, With this Sickle, every
particular three times over,
“And they answer him, Well, Well, Well; and he
bids them reap.”
This is not perhaps on first sight as close a parallel
as one might have desired to the passage we are
discussing; but there are points of likeness: (a)
There was a dialogue which took place at the
beginning of harvest. (b) It explicitly mentions the
time: This Sabbath = The Hour is come. (c) It
explicitly mentions the Sickle. (d) The reaper is
then commanded to do his work; but the words of
this command are not given. The two dialogues are
of the same character, have the same purpose,
involve similar speakers, and have points of
resemblance; we could not expect much more.
(The word Sabbath demands a note. I think I am
right in saying that Nisan 15, though not
necessarily a Sabbath, might be called a Sabbath,
because it was in every respect equal to a Sabbath
and observed in the same way. The breach of the
Sabbath involved in cutting the first sheaf was
excused.)
6. A further very interesting parallel is afforded by the
stage we have now reached in the Tamid, or daily
offering. To the pieces of the lamb were added (a)
the meal offering of fine flour, and (b) the daily
offering of the high priest, which consisted of bread
and wine. The Son of Man is, of course, the
Christian high priest; the wheat harvest and the
vintage afford some parallel to the bread and wine.
The connection, which seems rather fanciful, will
amount to a certainty if we accept the relation
proposed in the text of the book between the
cutting of the Vine of the land and the murder of
the high priest Ananus; for this provides a second
point of contact with the thought of the high priest.
To a poet of St. John’s type, the thought of the high
priest’s offering of bread and wine would prove a
basis for rich and complex symbolism. (a) Considering
the crucifixion, there is the thought of the high
priest Jesus offering himself on Calvary, and
antithetically the thought that his offering was the
work of the official high priest Caiaphas; and linked
with this the institution of the sacrament of bread
237