The Israelite agricultural calendar

Based on Oded Borowski, Daily Life in Biblical Times. Atlanta: Journal of Biblical Literature, 2003


 

The Israelite agricultural calendar

 

The Israelite calendar was determined by seasonal work and included feasts to celebrate these events. However, the calendar presented in the Bible is in fact the result of a combination of several calendars, a process that took place over a long period of time. The biblical calendar includes remnants of the Canaanite, Israelite and Babylonian calendars, which were introduced at different times and under different circumstances. However, daily life was determined by the seasons and the tasks that had to be accomplished at the time. For the work of the land, we have a document, the Gezer calendar, which helps us to reconstruct the agricultural year. Discovered on the site of the ancient town of Gezer in the early 20th century, this limestone palette contains seven lines describing eight agricultural tasks.

1 two months of ingathering (olives)/ two months
2 of sowing (cereals)/ two months of late sowing (legumes and vegetables)
3 a month of hoeing weeds (for hay)
4 a month of harvesting barley
5 a month of harvesting (wheat) and measuring (grain)
6 two months of grape harvesting
7 a month of ingathering summer fruit

Since four of the chores are listed as lasting two months each, and the other four are listed as lasting one month each, they total twelve months and cover the entire year. The chores are sowing (cereals), late sowing (legumes and vegetables), weeding, harvesting cereals and grapes, and picking other summer fruits, including olives. The periods allocated to each chore also included sufficient time for processing and by-product production. The Israelite feasts were determined by the start or completion of these tasks.

Cereal sowing, which took place from late October to late December, marked the beginning of the agricultural year. (sowing was followed by ploughing). This was followed by late sowing of legumes (late December to late February) and weeding (March). The barley harvest (from the vernal equinox to the end of April), the beginning of which was celebrated by the Passover feast, marked the start of the harvest. This was followed by the wheat harvest (late April to late May), which ended with the celebration of the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost). Grapes were harvested in June and July, other summer fruits from the end of July to the end of August, and the picking season ended with two months of olive harvesting (from the end of August to the end of October), culminating in the great feast of the "harvest" (tabernacles or tents).