Fall Bible verses, and the autumn hiding in them

The Bible has no word for fall, and it hardly names autumn at all. What it has is a farmer’s year: harvest, the feast of ingathering, the first rain on dry ground, and a good many leaves. Below are the verses people reach for in September and October, quoted in full, and what the English does to the autumn underneath them.

The verses on every fall list

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 comes first on nearly all of them, for its seasons and for a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. We quote it in full, and count it, in another post. The next two are the harvest promise and the fading flower:

Let’s not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season if we don’t give up.Galatians 6:9 · World English Bible

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.Isaiah 40:8 · King James Version

Galatians is the one for anyone tired of doing the right thing with nothing to show for it yet. Isaiah is the one for anyone who finds the turning of the year a little sad: the grass and the flower go, and the word stays.

The Bible’s autumn is hiding under “winter”

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.Genesis 8:22 · King James Version

The promise after the flood names its seasons in pairs: seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter. Neither of our translations has an autumn in it. But the Hebrew word they render winter, choreph (2779), is glossed by Brown-Driver-Briggs as “harvest-time, autumn”, and Strong’s concordance explains it as “the crop gathered” and so “the autumn (and winter) season”. The pair is closer to the hot half of the year and the cold half, and the cold half begins at harvest.

The word occurs only seven times. Two of them are worth reading in both translations, because the translations disagree:

The sluggard will not plough by reason of the winter; therefore he shall beg in harvest, and have nothing.Proverbs 20:4 · World English Bible

The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.Proverbs 20:4 · King James Version

The modern rendering says winter, the King James says cold, and Brown-Driver-Briggs reads the line as “a sluggard ploughs not after harvest”. Plowing and sowing followed the first autumn rain (more on that below), so the lazy man in this proverb is not avoiding a frozen field. He is skipping autumn, and in harvest he has nothing.

as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was in my tent,Job 29:4 · World English Bible

As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle;Job 29:4 · King James Version

And this is the best of the seven. Job, looking back at his life before everything went, says in my prime in the modern rendering and in the days of my youth in the King James. The word is choreph again, and Brown-Driver-Briggs gives this verse as “in the days of my autumn (prime)”, the word “implying maturity”. A life at its best, pictured as the harvest season: not the spring of it, the gathering-in.

The New Testament names autumn once, as a warning

These are hidden rocky reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you, shepherds who without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;Jude 1:12 · World English Bible

These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;Jude 1:12 · King James Version

Autumn trees without fruit in the modern rendering; trees whose fruit withereth in the King James, which leaves the season out. The Greek is phthinopōrinos (5352), and it occurs once in the New Testament. Thayer’s lexicon gives “autumnal”, from a verb meaning to wane and a noun for the late summer, and explains the picture: trees “such as they are at the close of autumn, dry, leafless and without fruit”, used here “of unfruitful, worthless men”.

Not one for a fall card. It is here because it is the only verse in the New Testament that says autumn at all, and one of our two translations hides even that.

The year ended at harvest

And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labours, which you sow in the field; and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when you gather in your labours out of the field.Exodus 23:16 · World English Bible

And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.Exodus 34:22 · King James Version

Two lists of the same three feasts, and both put the feast of ingathering at the end of the year. The Hebrew says it two different ways: at the going out of the year in Exodus 23:16, and at the turn of the year in Exodus 34:22, where the word is tequphah (8622), glossed “coming round, circuit”. Leviticus dates the same feast to the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land:

Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath.Leviticus 23:39 · King James Version

The commentaries on Exodus 23:16 are plain about what that means. The Cambridge Bible: “The old Hebrew year ended, with the agricultural operations for the year, in autumn.” Ellicott places the feast in the month Tisri, “corresponding to our October”. In the farmer’s calendar, October was the end of the year rather than its fading middle.

Scripture also starts a year in the spring, at Passover, and our page of New Year readings sets that out. Matthew Poole’s note on this verse puts the two side by side: a civil year beginning in September, and a sacred year beginning in March.

The early rain is the autumn rain

Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and late rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.James 5:7-8 · World English Bible

James’s farmer waits until it receives the early and late rain. The pair is much older than James:

that I will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil.Deuteronomy 11:14 · World English Bible

The early rain is yoreh (3138), which Brown-Driver-Briggs says “falls in Palestine from the last of October until the first of December”. The latter rain is malqosh (4456), the spring rain, “showers of March-April”. So the wait James describes runs from autumn to spring. Bible Hub’s topical note on the word has the first rain “softening sun-baked soil so that grain could germinate after sowing”: the ground is plowed and sown after it, and the farmer waits through the winter for the second. The King James calls the autumn one the first rain in Deuteronomy, and in English the season that ends the year brings the first rain of the next.

Our page of Bible verses about patience quotes James 5:7-8 for the waiting. This is what the waiting was for.

The leaf that fades, and the leaf that does not

For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.Isaiah 64:6 · World English Bible

He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that produces its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper.Psalms 1:3 · World English Bible

The verse people quote when the leaves turn, and the verse about a tree that stays green. They are built from the same two Hebrew words, nabel (5034), to wilt, and aleh (5929), a leaf, with and without a “not”. As far as we can count from the concordance, the two words meet in six verses (Psalm 1:3, Isaiah 1:30, Isaiah 34:4, Isaiah 64:6, Jeremiah 8:13 and Ezekiel 47:12), and only two of them say the leaf will not fade: the psalm, and the river in Ezekiel.

And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.Ezekiel 47:12 · King James Version

Put this beside the King James of the psalm and you can watch the English split one phrase: his leaf also shall not wither, whose leaf shall not fade. The modern rendering says wither both times. Nothing in the Hebrew is disputed. It is one verb with one noun, and English happens to have two words for what a leaf does in October.

Isaiah 64:6 is a confession, a people saying it of themselves, and it is honest about the season. Psalm 1:3 is the person rooted by water. Read together, the second answers the first in its own words.

Which to use

For a bulletin or a harvest supper, Psalm 65:11 is the classic, and our New Year readings page explains what the two translations do with its second half:

You crown the year with your bounty. Your carts overflow with abundance.Psalms 65:11 · World English Bible

For a card to someone having a hard autumn, Galatians 6:9 or James 5:7-8. For yourself, on the day the trees are bare, Psalm 1:3.

For Thanksgiving next month, see the Thanksgiving section of our Bible verses about gratitude; for a long wait, our verses on patience; and for a season that is ending in your own life, our verses for new beginnings. Everything quoted here is public domain: print it in a bulletin, a card or a harvest program with no permission and no fee.