When reading the Bible we often come across words, tools, or phrases that do not make sense to us in today’s world. For example: winnowing, winnowing fork or chaff. What is a threshing floor?

These terms are often used but not always as a picture of God’s judgment. It is a visual that the Jewish people understood very well but is foreign to us today.

Winnowing is a farming method developed by ancient people for separating the grain from the chaff. The chaff is the dry, scaly protective casing of the seeds of grain or the husk of corn.

In simple terms, after harvesting the grain, they would strike, beat or crush the grain to loosen it from the desirable grain from the stalk. Then they would go through a winnowing process which was to throw the mixture into the air, often with a basket or winnowing fork, so the wind blows away the lighter chaff and the heavier grain falls to the floor. It’s separating the good from the bad. In modern farming, this process is made easy by the combine.

The threshing floor is where this process happens. It could have been outdoors on a flat piece of land or indoors over a smooth floor of earth, stone or wood.

Here are some examples in scripture where the writer uses these terms to create a picture for the reader of God’s judgement. When God will separate the good from the bad.

Matthew 3:12 (Luke 3:17)

His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Isaiah 41:14-16

“You will winnow them, and the wind will carry them away,

And the storm will scatter them;

But you will rejoice in the Lord,

You will glory in the Holy One of Israel.

Jeremiah 15:7

“I will winnow them with a winnowing fork

At the gates of the land;

I will bereave them of children, I will destroy My people;

They did not repent of their ways.

Jeremiah 51:1-2

“I will dispatch foreigners to Babylon that they may winnow her