“Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. The agricultural image of winnowing — throwing grain and chaff into the air so the wind separates them — is the image of judgment that separates what is valuable from what is not. The threshing floor is the whole human community; the wheat is those who bear genuine fruit; the chaff is the fruitless religious performance. The unquenchable fire is not threatened but announced as certain: the coming one carries the winnowing fork, and the floor will be cleared. Isaiah 66:24 speaks of the fire that will not be quenched; John appropriates the language of final judgment to describe what the arrival of the Messiah will bring.
Church Fathers on Matthew 3:12
As in the preceding words John had explained more at length what he had shortly preached in the words, 'Repent ye,' so now follows a more full enlargement of the words, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
John baptizes not with the Spirit but with water, because he had no power to forgive sins; he washes the body with water, but not at the same time the soul with pardon of sin.
For while as yet the sacrifice had not been offered, nor remission of sin sent, nor the Spirit had descended on the water, how could sin be forgiven? But since the Jews never perceived their own sin, and this was the cause of all their evils, John came to bring them to a sense of them by calling them to repentance.
Read all 29 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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