2. The Farm of Q 10:2

In a separate publication, I argued that Q 10.2 deals with a hypothetical farm (not an actual farm) as representative of Palestinian agriculture more generally.Footnote ¹⁵ Even if Q 10.2 does not use the word ‘farm’, it does reveal quite a bit about this hypothetical farm. The mentioning of a ‘large’ (πολύς) harvest assumes a large farm, probably larger than the typical smallholding.Footnote ¹⁶ This is confirmed by the use of an impersonal word like ‘workers’ (ἐργάται) to describe the harvesters. Smallholders typically relied on family and assisted one another when bringing in the harvest, which means that the ‘workers’ would have been one or more of the following: members of the extended family, neighbours, members from the same tribe or clan, friends, fellow villagers, and, on very rare occasions, locally hired workers, typically paid in kind.Footnote ¹⁷ Varro makes mention of this: ‘All agriculture is carried on by men — slaves, or freemen, or both; by freemen, when they till the ground themselves, as many poor people do with the help of their families’.Footnote ¹⁸ Family was central to Judean-Israelite society, especially the village peasantry.Footnote ¹⁹

Tenant farmers would in all likelihood have made more use of hired workers and less use of neighbours, friends, and fellow villagers than smallholders, although members of the extended family would still have done their part.Footnote ²⁰ Some of the workers hired by tenant farmers included fellow smallholders and tenant farmers in the area who survived by hiring themselves out when not tending to their own fields.Footnote ²¹ Other hired hands were the poor generally, including former smallholders who had lost their lands.Footnote ²² These workers were commonly ‘part of the native population and of its social structure’.Footnote ²³ Many of these people lived in caves and other natural shelters outside the village.Footnote ²⁴ The point of all this is to show that smallholders and tenant farmers personally knew most or all of the workers helping them to bring in the harvest. As such, the repeated use of the impersonal word ‘workers’ in Q 10.2, instead of terms like ‘family’, ‘village’, ‘brothers’,Footnote ²⁵ ‘friends’, or ‘neighbours’, and without once identifying these workers as such, suggests a larger operation than a mere smallholding. This is especially true in the context of Q, where the idea of ‘family’, whether biological or symbolic, is front and centre.Footnote ²⁶ In contrast to the use of family and friends on smallholdings, large estates supplemented their workforce during harvest time largely or exclusively with hired workers and day-labourers.Footnote ²⁷ Stegemann and Stegemann explicitly confirm this general portrayal: ‘Wage earners were apparently needed only in larger agricultural units. In the smaller rural household, the division of work was determined by the organization of households’.Footnote ²⁸ Rollens understands the term ἐργάτης in Q 10.2 as denoting day-labourers specifically, including struggling and dispossessed peasants.Footnote ²⁹ If this is correct, it adds further support to our case that the imagined farm should be understood as a large estate.

The most compelling proof, however, comes from the title ‘master of the harvest’ (κύριος τοῦ θɛρισμοῦ), which clearly stands for someone greater than a mere paterfamilias who owned a small plot of land.Footnote ³⁰ This term probably refers to the owner or manager of a large estate.Footnote ³¹ According to Crook, non-servile farm workers in the Roman world had to obey the orders of either the landowner or the farm manager.Footnote ³² These and other possibilities will be considered in more detail in a forthcoming publication. For our current purposes, it is sufficient to note that the ‘master of the harvest’ is highly unlikely to be a mere smallholder. In addition to being called ‘master’ (κύριος), the hierarchical superiority of the ‘master of the harvest’ in Q 10.2 is indicated both by his ability to ‘send’ (ἐκβάλλω) the workers into his harvest, and by the fact that people have to ‘beseech’ (δέομαι) him to send workers into his harvest. Bazzana and Roth note that the use of ἐκβάλλω is odd here.Footnote ³³ On the (presumed) metaphorical level of the saying, a verb like ἀποστέλλω would be more fitting. This oddity is even more noticeable when considering that the rest of the mission discourse features ἀποστέλλω.Footnote ³⁴ On the literal level, the verb μισθόω (‘hire (workers)’) might have been expected.Footnote ³⁵ The verb ἐκβάλλω has a wide range of lexical meanings, most of which are decidedly negative.Footnote ³⁶ These semantic possibilities all revolve around the central and most straightforward meaning of the word, which is to ‘throw out’ or ‘cast out’.Footnote ³⁷ Whatever the reason might be for choosing this verb here, it fits much better with the idea of a social superior commanding his workforce than a smallholder rounding up peers in the village to help with the harvest. Whereas the verb ἐκβάλλω reveals the superior position of the ‘master of the harvest’ towards his workers, the verb δέομαι reveals the inferiority of others towards this individual.

Although δέομαι is typically translated as ‘ask’, it literally means to beg or plead for something.Footnote ³⁸ Whoever is tasked in this logion with approaching the ‘master of the harvest’, they are not portrayed as making a polite suggestion to a peer, but as speaking in a way more at home with social inferiors addressing a superior. What is more, the notion that the ‘master of the harvest’ needs to be reminded to send workers into his harvest certainly does not point to a smallholder, who was dependent on the harvest for survival and would have watched his field like a hawk.Footnote ³⁹ Instead, such inattentive indifference points to an absent landowner or a lazy estate manager, both of whom, incidentally, appear in Q 12.42–6.Footnote ⁴⁰ Finally, although one should be careful not to read too much into the singular grammar of the noun ‘harvest’ (θɛρισμός), it does seem to assume a context of monocropping typical of large estates, over against the polycropping of traditional smallholdings in ancient Palestine.Footnote ⁴¹ All these factors point in the direction of the hypothetical farm being a large estate, perhaps with a sizable workforce, even if insufficient during harvest time, as was generally the case.Footnote ⁴²

This goes against the assumption by some scholars that Q 10.2 alludes to a peasant's smallholding. One example is Bazzana, who answers the verisimilitude question in the affirmative, but does so while assuming that the farm is a smallholding and the workers are peasants:

Against this view, and in line with the argument outlined above, Horsley states: ‘The model on which this harvest [of Q 10.2 and 2 Cor 11.13] is conceived is a large estate of a “master/lord” who hires and sends out laborers, as portrayed in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt. 20.1–16).’Footnote ⁴⁴ To be fair, Bazzana does consider the possibility that Q 10.2 might also have in mind ‘farmers managing the fields of a landowner’ – a phrase that could denote either tenant farmers or estate managers.Footnote ⁴⁵ Bazzana then goes on to remark: ‘It is commonly observed by commentators that Q 10.2 presupposes the second option [i.e. “farmers managing the fields of a landowner”].’Footnote ⁴⁶ At any rate, it is accepted here, based on the evidence presented, that Q 10.2 has a large estate in mind.

3. Estates and Labourers in Ancient Palestine

Although Palestinian estates were not nearly as large as the latifundia of Rome,Footnote ⁴⁷ there were certainly large estates in first-century Palestine.Footnote ⁴⁸ Papyrological evidence from Roman Egypt shows that large estates were a feature of the Roman provinces during this period.Footnote ⁴⁹ A few of these papyri actually make mention of the large estates in Palestine, including Galilee, from as early as the third century bce.Footnote ⁵⁰ For example, Glaukias, who managed Apollonios’ estates in Palestine, writes the following in 257 bce to Apollonios: ‘But when I arrived at Baitanota [that is, Beth Anath in Galilee], I took Melas with…’.Footnote ⁵¹ These papyri are correct to trace the existence of large estates back to earlier periods, although the number of large estates increased dramatically during the Roman period. King David certainly had a number of large farms with estate managers, all of whom were mentioned by name.Footnote ⁵² Back to the first century, Josephus recounts that he himself owned large estates in Judea and the coastal plain, and that the same was true for many others, including Ptolemy, a friend of Herod, in Samaria; Costobar, a governor of Herod, in Idumaea; Crispus, an eparch of Agrippa, in the Transjordan; and Philip, a lieutenant of Agrippa, near Gamla.Footnote ⁵³ Although Philo trivialises the institution of slavery by subordinating it to Stoic paradigms, he does recount that some wealthy Jewish landowners utilised both Jewish and gentile slaves on their farming estates.Footnote ⁵⁴ In addition, the existence of large farming estates in Palestine is both assumed and described by the canonical Gospels.Footnote ⁵⁵ Although archaeological evidence seems to suggest that large estates were not a feature of the area between Nazareth and the tip of the Galilean Sea, literary evidence supports archaeology in showing that large farming estates did exist on the great plain directly south of Nazareth.Footnote ⁵⁶ At the end of the day, Fiensy has argued persuasively and decisively that large farming estates did exist in Palestine during the Herodian period.Footnote ⁵⁷ In addition to large estates, some wealthy landholders owned multiple smaller plots scattered throughout the region.Footnote ⁵⁸ As such, the size of a smallholding is not necessarily an indication of the affluence or poverty of its owner, with many smallholdings belonging to larger conglomerates farmed by tenants or supervised by managers.Footnote ⁵⁹

For a variety of reasons, including chiefly military and political success, there were far more slaves on Roman farms than on the farms of the Roman provinces and other nations of the first century.Footnote ⁶⁰ Even in Rome, slaves were not used as much for agricultural labour during the first century as in earlier times.Footnote ⁶¹ During all periods, slaves represented a minority of the agricultural workforce in Italy as a whole, while non-servile peasants and labourers represented the majority.Footnote ⁶² This was true to a much greater extent in the Roman provinces.Footnote ⁶³ Unlike Roman Italy, mass slavery was simply not a feature of Roman Palestine, especially the countryside.Footnote ⁶⁴ Although there were undoubtedly a few large estates in Palestine run entirely by slaves,Footnote ⁶⁵ it was much more common for these Palestinian estates to be worked by resident (contract) labourers, headed by a tenant farmer or estate manager, who hired additional workers during laborious periods.Footnote ⁶⁶ When it came to farming in the Roman provinces generally, it was commonplace to make use of indigenous non-servile labour rather than slave labour.Footnote ⁶⁷ Even in Italy, landowners were sometimes forced to hire contract labourers when slaves were unavailable.Footnote ⁶⁸ If a farm did have slaves, wage earners would work alongside these slaves, and sometimes even under the supervision of a servile manager or foreman.Footnote ⁶⁹ Generally speaking, non-servile workers could hire themselves out for different durations of service, from the day-labourer who typically worked for one day and had to find new work each morning, to the wage earners who signed contracts with their employers for lengthy periods, to the political administrators who earned annual salaries.Footnote ⁷⁰ Many ancient examples of lengthy contracts exist, like the one between non-servile labourer, Memmius Asclepi, and his temporary employer, Aurelius Adiutor, to work in the goldmines of Transylvania for six months in exchange for 70 denarii plus accommodation.Footnote ⁷¹ Bazzana rightly notes that when it comes to Egyptian documentary papyri, ‘we possess several contracts, in which laborers […] set down the amount of work they are going to perform and the payment they are going to receive in exchange’.Footnote ⁷² Here is a fragment of one such contract dating from the first-to-second century ce:

All non-servile workers who hired out their labour, including struggling peasants, dispossessed peasants, tenant farmers, and the poor in general, were collectively known in the Roman world as mercennarii.Footnote ⁷⁴ In De re rustica 1.17.2, Varro distinguishes between three categories of non-servile agricultural workers, namely smallholders, hired labourers (mercennarii), and debt-labourers (obaeratii).Footnote ⁷⁵ An important sub-category under hired labourers (mercennarii) is of course day-labourers (laboriosi, operarii, operae).Footnote ⁷⁶ The Greeks referred to a non-servile (agricultural) worker as πένης (‘one who works for his living, day-labourer, poor man’); μισθουργός (‘hired workman’); μισθωτός (‘hireling, hired servant’); μίσθιος (‘hired labourer, servant, mercenary’); ἔριθος (‘day-labourer, hired servant, mower, reaper’); θής (‘serf, bondsman, hired labourer’); σύργαστρος (‘day-labourer’); or χɛρνητικός (‘day-labourer, the proletariat’).Footnote ⁷⁷ The Hebrew word for a day-labourer or hired worker was שׂכיר.Footnote ⁷⁸ Such a worker could also be hired for periods longer than a day, and was known as a שׂכיר שׁנה when hired for a full year.Footnote ⁷⁹ It was not uncommon in ancient Palestine for workers to hire themselves out for a three-year period.Footnote ⁸⁰ Even so, it seems that in ancient Palestine hired agricultural workers consisted mostly of day-labourers.Footnote ⁸¹ Another Hebrew word for an agricultural labourer was אכר, usually translated as ‘ploughman’ or ‘husbandman’.Footnote ⁸² The exact position and status of the latter group of workers is uncertain, but they seem to have worked both for others and in a semi-feudal capacity for their employers.Footnote ⁸³

The services of dispossessed peasants, obaeratii, day-labourers, and other ‘freelancing’ workers were typically required on large estates during laborious periods, especially at harvest time.Footnote ⁸⁴ Hiring non-servile workers for harvesting work, especially reaping, was common practice and an accepted fact throughout the Roman Empire, including first-century Palestine.Footnote ⁸⁵ In the fourth century, Greco-Roman authors typically presume that reapers were non-servile workers. Discussing the Roman world in general, Garnsey writes: ‘freeholders, tenant-farmers, and the landless poor of the rural and urban centres all made major contributions of [agricultural] labour, and in all cases on a temporary basis’.Footnote ⁸⁶ The distinction between these different categories was fluid.Footnote ⁸⁷ Again, it is worth quoting Garnsey: ‘It can be agreed that tenant-farmers, freedmen employees and hired labourers were heterogeneous groups who occupy no fixed point on the continuum […] the several categories which make up the free [i.e. non-servile] rural labour force were separated by fluid boundaries which were frequently crossed.’Footnote ⁸⁸ In this regard, it is noteworthy that the Latin word colonus can mean either ‘farmer’ or ‘tenant’.Footnote ⁸⁹ One can imagine, for example, the same individual acting as a tenant on his appropriated plot, helping a neighbouring peasant reap his harvest, and occasionally working as a day-labourer on a large estate.

4. Harvests in Ancient Palestine

The emphasis in Q 10.2 is on the harvest, given that the word ‘harvest’ (θɛρισμός) is repeated no less than three times in this short saying.Footnote ⁹⁰ All three occurrences of θɛρισμός in Q 10.2 can reference either the crop being harvested or the process of harvesting that crop.Footnote ⁹¹ It is further possible to understand the logion as intending both meanings simultaneously. Let us first consider the crop being harvested, before turning to the process of harvesting. Most commonly, θɛρισμός refers to the harvesting of grain, that is, the seeds of wheat and other cereals.Footnote ⁹² However, it can also refer to any crop being harvested, including fruit.Footnote ⁹³ Deuteronomy 8.8 describes Canaan, which corresponds geographically to later Palestine, as ‘a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey’.Footnote ⁹⁴ Wheat and barley, to which one may add millet, are mentioned first because cereals were the primary field crops in Palestine.Footnote ⁹⁵ Out of these, wheat constituted the staple food, while barley was known as the food of animals and the poor.Footnote ⁹⁶ In Galilee, adequate rainfall made barley unnecessary, which is why they mainly cultivated wheat.Footnote ⁹⁷

Some of the species of wheat favoured in Palestine included triticum monococcum (einkorn), triticum dicoccum (emmer or kussemet), triticum durum (hard wheat), and triticum aestivum (bread wheat).Footnote ⁹⁸ These cereals were used to bake bread, cook porridge or gruel, and make beer.Footnote ⁹⁹ Grain was the most common produce to be stored in peasant houses, as well as the large storehouses of the political and socio-economic elite.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In addition to eating grain raw or parched, the grain could be ground using either a mortar and pestle to produce a pulp that was used for various dishes, or grinding stones to produce flour for baking bread.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Grinding grain to produce flour was a daily activity commonly performed by women and slaves.Footnote ¹⁰²

Olives and grapes share the second position when it comes to the popularity of produce in ancient Palestine.Footnote ¹⁰³ Grain, wine, and oil are commonly associated in the Hebrew Scriptures, probably because they were the most popular produce.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Olive trees were cultivated in olive groves, mainly for oil, and grapevines were grown in vineyards, mainly for wine.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Grapes and olives were usually cultivated on mountains and hills, which meant that arable land remained available for the cultivation of cereals.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The hilly terrain of Palestine necessitated agricultural innovation. The valleys might have been suitable for field crops, but the hills were less than ideal.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The slopes of these hills were put to effective use by constructing terraces with levelled ground (or strips that elevate gradually) and planting fruit trees on these artificial plots, including olives and grapes.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Some grapevines were planted in mixed orchards with other trees, although vineyards were much more common.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Olive oil had multiple uses, including culinary, medicinal, cosmetic, fuelling lamps, anointing kings, and offering libation.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Wine was the most common beverage in Palestine, sometimes even outperforming water, which was often contaminated.Footnote ¹¹¹ Together with cereals, wine and olive oil were produced in bulk by wealthier and elite landowners, exported, and sold to foreigners.Footnote ¹¹² In addition to making wine, grapes could be eaten as they were, pressed to make grape juice, used to make vinegar, and dried to make raisins.Footnote ¹¹³ In modern Palestine, wealthier peasant families tend to also prepare grape molasses, jam, and marmalade for the winter.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Olives were initially only used to make oil, but started being eaten raw when pickling or salting was introduced during the Greco-Roman period.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Other fruit trees were often combined in the same terrace or in an orchard near the house and included trees of pomegranate, apple, fig, sycamore, apricot, carob, date, blackberry and black mulberry.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Apart from being eaten or squeezed for juice, these fruits were also used to make dried fruit (which was sometimes pressed into cakes), marmalade-like products, honey-like syrup, and even alcoholic drinks.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Quite often, the groves of fruit trees also included nut trees, like pistachio, walnut, pine nut, and almond.Footnote ¹¹⁸ A very popular category of field crops was legumes, which included fenugreek, lentils, peas, fava beans, broad beans, chickpeas, bitter vetch, and grass-peas.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Besides legumes, other vegetables were also grown, often in the same groves as the fruit trees or in vegetable gardens near the house, including melons, carrots, gourds, cucumbers, garlic, musk, onions, and leeks.Footnote ¹²⁰ Other agricultural produce included sesame and flax seeds, as well as spices like cumin, coriander, and dill.Footnote ¹²¹ This general picture is confirmed by the account of Sinuhe, an Egyptian official who settled in Yaa (probably Canaan) around 2000–1900 bce: ‘Figs were in it, and grapes. It had more wine than water. Plentiful was its honey, abundant its olives. Every (kind of) fruit was on its trees. Barley was there, and emmer [a species of wheat]’.Footnote ¹²² For the most part, the need for additional help during harvest time applied only to olives, grapes, and cereals, especially wheat. Given that θɛρισμός most commonly refers to the harvesting of grain (see above), it is likely that a cereal harvest would have been foremost in the minds of those listening to Q 10.2. However, the capacity of θɛρισμός to reference the harvesting of any produce (see above) means that a few of these listeners might also have called to mind grape and olive harvests.

The Israelite-Judean people longed for a time when agricultural produce would be harvested throughout the year, so that ‘the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed’.Footnote ¹²³ In reality, however, there were months when nothing was harvested, due mainly to the rainfall patterns.Footnote ¹²⁴ According to King and Stager, ‘Palestine has only two seasons – the dry season in summer, from May-June through September, when there is usually no rain; and the wet season from mid-October through March, with most of Palestine's rainfall occurring between November and February’.Footnote ¹²⁵ Since rainfall increased moving north, Galilee received much more rain than Judea, with Upper Galilee receiving the most rain.Footnote ¹²⁶

Within the wet season, different types of rain predictably fell during certain times of the year, which determined the agricultural calendar.Footnote ¹²⁷ As a result, different types of produce were harvested at different times, as the Gezer Calendar, discovered in Judea and dating to the time of Solomon, indicates:

1. 1 two months of ingathering (olives)/ two months

2. 2 of sowing (cereals)/ two months of late sowing (legumes and vegetables)

3. 3 a month of hoeing weeds (for hay)

4. 4 a month of harvesting barley

5. 5 a month of harvesting (wheat) and measuring (grain)

6. 6 two months of grape harvesting

7. 7 a month of ingathering summer fruitFootnote ¹²⁸

The months listed here add up to twelve, constituting a full calendar year.Footnote ¹²⁹ According to this calendar, seven months of the year were spent harvesting and gathering produce, including two months for olives, one month for barley, one month for wheat, two months for grapes, and one month for fruit. With the help of other sources, including Israel's feast calendar celebrating specific harvests, these periods can be determined more precisely as follows: spring equinox to late April harvesting barley; late April to late May harvesting wheat; June and July harvesting grapes; late July to late August collecting summer fruit; and late August to late October gathering in olives.Footnote ¹³⁰ Within these window periods, the same crops might ripen at different times on separate farms, depending on the weather and when they were planted.Footnote ¹³¹ Differences in climate throughout ancient Palestine also accounted for regional variations to the agricultural calendar.Footnote ¹³² Since different produce ripens in different months of the year, and the same produce often ripens at different times in different regions and on separate farms during those months, non-servile farm workers could potentially find work and food throughout the seven-month harvesting season.Footnote ¹³³ In the Roman world generally, workers could earn enough during the harvesting season to survive during the off season.Footnote ¹³⁴ They could also make ends meet during the off season by performing other tasks, like weeding and hoeing, especially on vineyards, which required a lot of additional labour at certain times during the off season.Footnote ¹³⁵ Despite these opportunities, the precariousness of being a hired agricultural labourer was amplified by the seasonality and availability of work.Footnote ¹³⁶ It was customary at the time to calculate the size of the return in relation to the amount of seed that had been sown in the first place.Footnote ¹³⁷ For example, Columella hardly recalls any harvest greater than a fourfold yield in most of Italy.Footnote ¹³⁸ According to Oakman, first-century Palestine on average produced a fivefold yield, compared to modern yields of thirty to fortyfold.Footnote ¹³⁹ Biblical returns of thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold are probably exaggerations.Footnote ¹⁴⁰

5. Harvesting Work in Ancient Palestine

Let us turn now to the process of harvesting, that is, the actual work of securing the harvest. This harvesting process involved several different activities. In the case of cereals, for example, these activities included reaping, binding, collecting, transporting, threshing, and winnowing.Footnote ¹⁴¹ In the case of grapes and olives, threshing and winnowing would be replaced by other activities, including primarily pressing.Footnote ¹⁴² In economic terms, agricultural tasks can be broadly divided into front-end activities, like ploughing and reaping, and back-end activities, like binding, transporting, pressing, threshing, and winnowing.Footnote ¹⁴³ Out of these activities, the word θɛρισμός denotes reaping in particular, which sometimes included gathering the wheat in bundles as well.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Reaping activities were further categorised based on whether the stalks were cut near the top, just below the heads of grain, or near the bottom, just above the ground, and whether there were one or two rounds of cutting.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ A second round of cutting was sometimes necessary to collect the stalks, which were often used as fodder. With high cutting, the grain heads were often carried away in baskets, and the stalks that were left over in the field had to be cut during a second round, which was not at all urgent and earned much less wages.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ With low cutting, the grain heads could be separated from the stalks in the field during a second round of cutting, but it was much more common to transport whole sheaves to the threshing floor, sometimes using pack animals like donkeys, mules, and camels.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Low cutting was probably more popular in ancient Palestine.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Small fields could be harvested without any tools by simply uprooting the whole plant, but more commonly a sickle was used.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Depending on the skill of the worker and the conditions of the field, one reaper could reap between one-third and three-quarters of a Roman iugerum per day, with one iugerum being roughly equivalent to a quarter hectare.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Timing was very important when it came to harvesting. On the one hand, waiting too long could lead to loss, either due to birds and animals eating the crops, or due to the produce spoiling or falling from the stalks or trees.Footnote ¹⁵¹ On the other hand, harvesting could happen prematurely when the produce was not ripe yet, which likewise resulted in significant losses.Footnote ¹⁵² Inclement weather was also a constant threat, leading some agronomists to advise reaping earlier rather than later, allowing some ripening to happen after the harvest.Footnote ¹⁵³

Reaping was extremely hard physical labour.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ For hours on end, the reaper had to swing hard with a hand-held sickle to cut the stalks, which required being constantly bent over with an arched back.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ The replacement of the sickle with the scythe in later periods meant that physical strength was a requirement for reaping.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Even if men were almost exclusively responsible for reaping in antiquity, there is evidence that at least some women in the Mediterranean and elsewhere also partook in this backbreaking work.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ More typically, however, women would focus their attention on the back-end of the harvesting process.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ In addition, women were typically involved in ‘service’ activities like cooking and weaving, meaning that they were effectively employed as support staff for labourers, who needed to be housed, fed, and clothed.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ If measured by modern and ancient servile practices, peasant children started helping out with farming activities at a young age.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ The physical toll of the labour was not made any easier by the horrid conditions, especially the heat of the sun and the hindrance of insects, like the swarms of gnats in Palestine, as well as flies, mosquitoes, and wasps.Footnote ¹⁶¹ Even in modern Palestine, sunstroke is not uncommon among villagers.Footnote ¹⁶² Roman mosaics, frescoes, and coins typically depict harvest workers with wide-brimmed hats and traditional headgear as protection against the sun, and a mosaic of a harvester wearing a hat was discovered at a synagogue in Sepphoris, Galilee.Footnote ¹⁶³

For the most part, estate owners and managers treated non-servile workers and day-labourers far worse than slaves, regarding their position as inferior to that of slaves.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ Hired workers tended to get the heavy and unhealthy work, since slaves were more valuable as the landowner's acquired property.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ Varro writes: ‘With regard to these [referring to obaerarii] in general this is my opinion: it is more profitable to work unwholesome lands with hired hands than with slaves; and even in wholesome places it is more profitable thus to carry out the heavier farm operations, such as storing the products of the vintage or harvest.’Footnote ¹⁶⁶ On the upside, Roman agronomists emphasise the importance of providing adequate food, clothing, and accommodation to slaves in order to keep them content and thereby maximise productivity.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Yet hired workers were easily let go when circumstances like bad weather interfered with harvesting.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ The day-labourer would customarily not get any payment if the work for that day was cancelled.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ In fact, there is evidence that hired workers would at times simply get paid less than the agreed wage or not get paid at all after completing their work.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Such practices made regulations like the one in Deuteronomy 24.14–15 necessary: ‘Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it’.Footnote ¹⁷¹ The need for this directive indicates that hired workers were exploited, even in earlier times, but probably much more so in the first century ce. The same is indicated by a number of Egyptian papyri, like the letter written around 250 bce to Zenon, manager of Apollonios’ large estates, by a vinedresser named Menon: ‘Three dr(agmas) are still owed me for the [month] of Hathyr as wages. Therefore, please give orders that [the wages] be paid to me. For you know that I do not, as others do, have [other income] – neither a vegetable garden nor anything else, but rely solely on my wages’.Footnote ¹⁷² Shaw comments as follows about harvesting work in the ancient world as a whole: ‘The erratic nature of the labour demands created uncertainties about employment, wages, and work conditions that led to serious contentions between employers and those seeking employment’.Footnote ¹⁷³ What Garnsey refers to as ‘the seasonality and irregularity of agricultural work’ must have been the cause of some anxiety for these labourers, who would have received at least some comfort from the message of Jesus in Q 12.22–31.Footnote ¹⁷⁴

On large estates, the manager and resident staff would often live on the property itself, which meant that the house and barracks were usually very close to the field.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ First-century Roman agronomist, Columella, who farmed with olives, grapes, and grain, resided in a comfortable home apart from the farmhouse that held his slaves, together with facilities like a threshing floor, press rooms, stalls, pens, a mill, and bakery ovens.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ Such a farmhouse had more than enough space to house a sizable group of day-labourers during harvest. Columella further recommended building a sizable kitchen with a high ceiling and enough natural light so that the slave household could rest and sleep there.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Archaeological excavations in western Samaria have uncovered farmsteads that clearly separate the owner or manager's dwelling from accommodation for labourers.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ There is also some evidence of towers standing in the fields of ancient Palestine, where entire families could live and work during harvest time.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ These towers were particularly popular in vineyards and were used to store farming equipment, but also functioned as housing for workers during the harvest season, when they were expected to guard the harvest against pilfering.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ Sometimes, non-servile, non-resident workers were also allowed to stay on the premises for the duration of the harvest, especially on large estates.Footnote ¹⁸¹ For workers who were homeless, this would have been a very welcome supplementary benefit.Footnote ¹⁸² Agricultural workers who entered into longer contracts were customarily provided with lodging.Footnote ¹⁸³ These individuals were sometimes left to do as they pleased on the farm and only paid at the end of these contracts.Footnote ¹⁸⁴

Whether provided with shelter or not, workers were expected to keep the same hours that a traditional peasant would, meaning that they had to be at the field at daybreak and could only leave at twilight.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ It was common, especially at harvest time, for hired workers to be provided with lunch (or brunch) during the day, sometimes followed by a brief siesta.Footnote ¹⁸⁶ Lunch could be eaten at the associated dwelling or in the relevant field, under the shade of a tree if one was available, and would typically include foodstuff like bread, pulse, yoghurt, grain, cheese, (dried) fruit, vegetables, and water.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ Food and water were often specified as an expectation to be provided by the estate manager or landowner in harvesting contracts, together with beer or wine on the last day of work.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ Consider, for example, this excerpt from a contract that was discovered at Hermopolis, Egypt, and dates to 125 ce:

This corresponds to the portrayal in Ruth 2.8–9, 14, where workers have ready access to food and water:

Workers were also typically allowed to eat from the produce being harvested.Footnote ¹⁹¹ Consider, for example, this ruling from the Mishnah: ‘One who brought his workers into the field, when he is not obligated to provide for them, they may eat and be exempt from tithes. If, however, he is obligated to provide for them they may eat of the figs one at a time, but not from the basket, nor from the large basket, nor from the storage yard’.Footnote ¹⁹² On the other hand, harvesting contracts from Roman Egypt commonly specified that workers were not allowed to steal from the produce, and that thievery would result in deductions from their final payment.Footnote ¹⁹³ If they were not allowed to eat from the crops, the estate manager or landowner was expected in these contracts to provide food.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ In fact, it was a ubiquitous expectation during different periods and regions that the estate manager, tenant farmer, or landowner would provide food, drink, and temporary shelter to hired harvesters.Footnote ¹⁹⁵ Contracted harvesters could be paid in kind or in cash.Footnote ¹⁹⁶ Shaw writes: ‘A harvester's entire reimbursement was usually a per diem payment that was an amalgam of money, payments in kind of the produce itself, and living arrangements during the harvest that included shelter, food, and drink.’Footnote ¹⁹⁷ Harvesting contracts from Roman Egypt show that labourers received between one-and-a-half and three times more money or crops for reaping than they did for other agricultural work.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ In Syria-Palestine, day-labourers could earn up to four times the typical daily fee of one denarius for reaping and harvesting work, especially during periods when such labour was in high demand due to shortages of available temporary farm workers.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ It is likely, however, that day-labourers received less payment than contract workers.Footnote ²⁰⁰ It was much more common for estate managers or other responsible parties (like procuratores or actores) to enter into these contracts with seasonal workers than for landowners to do so.Footnote ²⁰¹

Slaves and other resident workers were typically provided with clothing and shoes in addition to food.Footnote ²⁰² Some wage earners were also lucky enough to receive clothing and shoes, especially on large estates.Footnote ²⁰³ Cato the Elder, for example, writes: ‘Clothing allowance for the [farm]hands: A tunic 3½ feet long and a blanket every other year. When you issue the tunic or the blanket, first take up the old one and have patchwork made of it. A stout pair of wooden shoes should be issued every other year’.Footnote ²⁰⁴

6. Findings

The aim of this study was to illuminate the literal or ‘image’ side of Q 10.2 by considering its setting in first-century Palestine. After arguing that the imagined farm of Q 10.2 is a large agricultural estate, it was determined that such estates were a prominent feature of first-century Palestine. It was common to use non-servile labourers on these estates during harvest time, especially for reaping. These wage earners consisted mainly of struggling peasants, dispossessed peasants, tenant farmers, and the poor in general. Although Q 10.2 primarily calls the grain harvest to mind, it does not prevent the audience from imagining a grape or olive harvest. Since different produce ripened in different months of the year in ancient Palestine, and the same produce often ripened at different times in different regions, non-servile farm workers could potentially find harvesting work and food throughout Palestine's seven-month harvesting season. Yet harvesting work was essentially seasonal, irregular, and unpredictable. From among the different harvesting activities in antiquity, Q 10.2 is about reaping. Reaping was extremely hard physical labour that lasted from sunrise to sunset under very unpleasant conditions. What is more, these workers were often treated worse than slaves and were vulnerable to exploitation by owners and managers. On the upside, the non-servile farmhands of large estates were typically provided with food, drink, shelter, and sometimes even clothing and shoes. These benefits were in addition to their wages, which could be paid in cash or in kind, or a combination of both. The wages for reaping were typically much higher than the usual fee for other occasional work performed by wage earners.