The question which demands solution here, and which, when solved, will solve all the rest, is, What is meant by thrusting in the sickle and reaping the ripened grain when the harvest has come? Apart from this parable two distinct significations may be attributed to the analogy, both alike true in fact, and both alike adopted in the Scriptures. In some cases the harvest and the reaping point to the end of the world and the awards of the judgment; expressly in the Lord's own interpretation of the parable of the tares, it is said, "The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels" (Matt. xiii. 39). But in other cases the reaping of the ripened grain is employed to represent that success in the winning of souls which human ministers of the word may obtain and enjoy. Such is its meaning in Ps. cxxvi. 6, "He that goeth forth and reapeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." In the same sense it is employed by the Lord (John iv. 35, 36), "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 unto 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." The same idea is expressed in terms, if possible, still more articulate, in Matt. ix. 37, 38. "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers unto his harvest."[56] [56] Bengel's suggestion is ingenious and interesting, but contributes nothing towards the solution. "Sermo concisus. Mittet falce preditos, nam αποστελλεσθαι est viventis cujuspiam." He would understand the phrase "he putteth in the sickle" as a curt form of expression, intended to intimate that he sends out reapers with sickles to reap the grain; fortifying his opinion by the remark that the term "putteth in," (αποστελλει, "sends out,") refers to a living person, and not an inanimate instrument. Countenance for this view might be found in Matt. ix. 37 where εκβαλειν equivalent to αποστελλεσθαι is employed to indicate the sending forth of reapers. On the other hand, however, the passage, Rev. xiv. 15, 16, goes decidedly against it; for there both πεμμτειν and βαλλειν, "thrust in" (the sickle) are certainly applied to the instrument itself, and not to the men who wield it. But while the symbol taken from the reaping of ripened grain represents alternately in Scripture, these two distinct though analogous conceptions, it is the latter and not the former which this parable adopts and employs. The reapers are the human ministers of the word, and the reaping is their successful ingathering in conversion here, not the admission of the redeemed into glory at the end of the world.