This death sickle will go out over the face of the land to punish every thief and everyone who swears falsely. Zechariah sees “a flying sickle, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide” (LES 2). The Septuagint translates the Hebrew word “scroll” (מְגִלָּה) as “sickle” (δρέπανον), the same word used here in Revelation 14. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.” In Jeremiah 51:33 Babylon on the threshing floor and the “the time of her harvest will come.” Joel 3:13 is likely the text John alludes to in Revelation 14 since it combines a grain and grape harvest: “Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. But in Isaiah 17:4 it is Jacob that is judged at the harvest of olives. Isaiah 27:12-13 the Lord will “thresh out the grain” and Israel will be gleaned so that they can return to Jerusalem and worship God. Grain harvests can be used to describe either a gathering to salvation or a gathering to judgment. In Mark 4:29 he says “But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” The arable of the Wheat and Weeds, for example, looks forward to the separation of the wheat and the weeds at the harvest time (Matt 13:24-30). But there is an eschatological edge to some of Jesus’s harvest sayings. The disciples are the workers in the harvest. In the next paragraph Jesus selects the twelve disciples, gives them authority to heal and cast out demons, and then sends them out to announce the Kingdom of God to the Jewish people in Galilee. In the Gospels, since the crowds following him as a plentiful harvest, Jesus tells his disciples to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers” (Matt 9:37/Luke 10:2). The first harvest is for the elect and the second for the non-elect to damnation. The first (verses 14-15) is a wheat harvest and includes all people, while the second is a grape harvest (verse 16-20) only falls on the unrighteous.
However, some commentators think there are two harvests in 14:14-20. The combination of the image of a harvest and a sickle seems to indicate this is a harvest to judgment and the extreme gore of verses 19-20 describe an epic final judgment of all the earth. But there is a second angel who reaps a harvest of grapes and treads the grapes in the “great winepress of God’s wrath.” Is this a single judgment, or are there two harvests in view? Is this “harvest of the earth” in Revelation 14 for salvation or judgment? Revelation 14 concludes with a son of man reaping a harvest from the earth.
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