wheat

• first weights were grains of

69:4.5The first weights were grains of wheat and other ce­re­als. The first medium of ex­change was a fish or a goat. Later the cow be­came a unit of barter.

• improved in Garden of Eden

81:1.7For thou­sands of years the de­scen­dants of Adam had grown wheat and bar­ley, as im­proved in the Gar­den, through­out the high­lands of the up­per bor­der of Mes­o­po­ta­mia. The de­scen­dants of Adam and Adam­son here met, traded, and so­cially min­gled.

• Amos said God would sift Israel like

97:4.3Said Amos: “He who formed the moun­tains and cre­ated the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morn­ing and makes the day dark as night.” And in de­nounc­ing his half-re­li­gious, time­serv­ing, and some­times im­moral fel­lows, he sought to por­tray the in­ex­orable jus­tice of an un­chang­ing Yah­weh when he said of the evil­do­ers: “Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” “And though they go into cap­tiv­ity be­fore their en­e­mies, thence will I di­rect the sword of jus­tice, and it shall slay them.” Amos fur­ther star­tled his hear­ers when, point­ing a re­prov­ing and ac­cus­ing fin­ger at them, he de­clared in the name of Yah­weh: “Surely I will never for­get any of your works.” “And I will sift the house of Is­rael among all na­tions as wheat is sifted in a sieve.”

• God allows w. to grow together with weeds

130:1.6“Your Fa­ther in heaven, by en­dow­ing you with the power to choose be­tween truth and er­ror, cre­ated the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive of the pos­i­tive way of light and life; but such er­rors of evil are re­ally nonex­is­tent un­til such a time as an in­tel­li­gent crea­ture wills their ex­is­tence by mischoos­ing the way of life. And then are such evils later ex­alted into sin by the know­ing and de­lib­er­ate choice of such a will­ful and re­bel­lious crea­ture. This is why our Fa­ther in heaven per­mits the good and the evil to go along to­gether un­til the end of life, just as na­ture al­lows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side un­til the har­vest.” Ga­diah was fully sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ an­swer to his ques­tion af­ter their sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion had made clear to his mind the real mean­ing of these mo­men­tous state­ments.

• apostles rubbed w. on Sabbath

147:6.4But the spies did not have long to wait for their op­por­tu­nity to ac­cuse Je­sus and his as­so­ciates of Sab­bath break­ing. As the com­pany passed along the nar­row road, the wav­ing wheat, which was just then ripen­ing, was near at hand on ei­ther side, and some of the apos­tles, be­ing hun­gry, plucked the ripe grain and ate it. It was cus­tom­ary for trav­el­ers to help them­selves to grain as they passed along the road, and there­fore no thought of wrong­do­ing was at­tached to such con­duct. But the spies seized upon this as a pre­text for as­sail­ing Je­sus. When they saw An­drew rub the grain in his hand, they went up to him and said: “Do you not know that it is un­law­ful to pluck and rub the grain on the Sab­bath day?” And An­drew an­swered: “But we are hun­gry and rub only suf­fi­cient for our needs; and since when did it be­come sin­ful to eat grain on the Sab­bath day?” But the Phar­isees an­swered: “You do no wrong in eat­ing, but you do break the law in pluck­ing and rub­bing out the grain be­tween your hands; surely your Mas­ter would not ap­prove of such acts.” Then said An­drew: “But if it is not wrong to eat the grain, surely the rub­bing out be­tween our hands is hardly more work than the chew­ing of the grain, which you al­low; where­fore do you quib­ble over such tri­fles?” When An­drew in­ti­mated that they were quib­blers, they were in­dig­nant, and rush­ing back to where Je­sus walked along, talk­ing to Mat­thew, they protested, say­ing: “Be­hold, Teacher, your apos­tles do that which is un­law­ful on the Sab­bath day; they pluck, rub, and eat the grain. We are sure you will com­mand them to cease.” And then said Je­sus to the ac­cusers: “You are in­deed zeal­ous for the law, and you do well to re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; but did you never read in the Scrip­ture that, one day when David was hun­gry, he and they who were with him en­tered the house of God and ate the show­bread, which it was not law­ful for any­one to eat save the priests? and David also gave this bread to those who were with him. And have you not read in our law that it is law­ful to do many need­ful things on the Sab­bath day? And shall I not, be­fore the day is fin­ished, see you eat that which you have brought along for the needs of this day? My good men, you do well to be zeal­ous for the Sab­bath, but you would do bet­ter to guard the health and well-be­ing of your fel­lows. I de­clare that the Sab­bath was made for man and not man for the Sab­bath. And if you are here pres­ent with us to watch my words, then will I openly pro­claim that the Son of Man is lord even of the Sab­bath.”

• parable of w. and weeds

151:4.1The next day Je­sus again taught the peo­ple from the boat, say­ing: “The king­dom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while he slept, his en­emy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and has­tened away. And so when the young blades sprang up and later were about to bring forth fruit, there ap­peared also the weeds. Then the ser­vants of this house­holder came and said to him: ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Whence then come these weeds?’ And he replied to his ser­vants, ‘An en­emy has done this.’ The ser­vants then asked their mas­ter, ‘Would you have us go out and pluck up these weeds?’ But he an­swered them and said: ‘No, lest while you are gath­er­ing them up, you up­root the wheat also. Rather let them both grow to­gether un­til the time of the har­vest, when I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the weeds and bind them in bun­dles to burn and then gather up the wheat to be stored in my barn.’”

• parable of grain of

174:5.8“But to both Jew and gen­tile I de­clare the hour has about come when the Son of Man will be glo­ri­fied. You well know that, ex­cept a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies in good soil, it springs up again to life and bears much fruit. He who self­ishly loves his life stands in dan­ger of los­ing it; but he who is will­ing to lay down his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall en­joy a more abun­dant ex­is­tence on earth and in heaven, life eter­nal. If you will truly fol­low me, even af­ter I have gone to my Fa­ther, then shall you be­come my dis­ci­ples and the sin­cere ser­vants of your fel­low mor­tals.