“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.”
'Do you not say, "It is still four months until harvest"? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. — Jesus shifts from individual conversion (the woman) to the larger harvest. The grain fields metaphor is eschatological: the whitened grain represents readiness for judgment and redemption. The shift from seasonal time ('four months') to kairos (God's time) suggests that the harvest is spiritually present.
Church Fathers on John 4:35
Say you not, There are yet four months, and then comes harvest?
Now you are expecting a material harvest. But I say to you, that a spiritual harvest is at hand: lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. He alludes to the Samaritans who are approaching.
And he that reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to life eternal, that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together.
Read all 10 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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