Say not, There are yet four months, and then comes harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.
All Commentaries on John 4:35 Go To John 4
Theophylact of Ochrid
AD 1107
Now he begins to reveal clearly to His disciples the meaning of what He had said before in riddles. "You say," meaning, you think, "that the harvest," namely, the material harvest, "is coming in four months. But I say to you, the noetic harvest is here already." He said this in reference to the Samaritans who were just then approaching Him. "Therefore lift up your eyes, both noetic and physical, and behold the multitude of approaching Samaritans and the souls eager and ready to believe, which are like fields white for the harvest." Just as whitened ears of wheat are ready for harvest, so have these men been prepared for harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. What He means is this: the prophets sowed but did not reap. Yet they have by no means been deprived of the pleasure of the reward, but rejoice with you who do the reaping. It is not so with [farmers'] harvests, where, if it should happen that one man sows and another reaps, there is only sorrow for the man who does not reap. But in the spiritual harvest, the prophets who preached long ago, cultivating and preparing the minds of men, rejoice together with you who now draw men to salvation. The Lord says, I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour, so that when He should send the disciples out to preach, they would not be overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task. The prophets undertook the harder work, He says, while you are sent out merely to complete what has already been prepared. He speaks truly, mentioning that well-known proverb, One soweth, and another reapeth. See how He speaks always with authority as Master, It is I Who sent you to reap [Eg ymas apesteila therizein]. Let the followers of the accursed Marcion, Manes, and the like, who would sever the Old Testament from the New, take note, for here they are rebuked. If the Old had indeed been separated from the New, how could the Apostles have reaped what the prophets had sown? But the Apostles have reaped the harvest of the Old Testament, which therefore is not estranged from the New—they are one and the same. And let the followers of Arius hear that it is as Lord and Master that He sends out His disciples. He sends them out to cut down and reap Jews and Greeks alike, who had stood planted in the earth and in corruptible things, and to carry them into the threshing floor, that is, into the Church, where they are threshed by the oxen, who signify the teachers, and made subject to them. There they are crushed and broken [signifying repentance and contrition], and when they have discarded all that is chaff, fleshly, and fuel for the fire, they are stored up as pure ears of wheat in heavenly granaries, becoming food for God Who takes delight in their salvation. In this same manner Paul reaped souls and cut them away from the earth, teaching us that our citizenship is in heaven. [Philip. 3:20] The words, look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest, some have elegantly applied to old men, referring to their white beards and the harvest of death.
