"They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

This theme of sowing in tears and reaping in joy was more than mere poetic fancy. It was an allusion to a pagan custom with which the Israelites, only just returned from Babylon, must have been thoroughly familiar, associated with the worship of the Babylonian god Tammuz, the god of vegetation and springtime and new life. The sowers went out casting seed into the ground, weeping as they did so because the seed must die; when the time of harvesting the corn was come they went out again with ceremonial rejoicing because it was the time of new life for the world with the gathering of the crop. In their old legends Tammuz, the young and beautiful god, had been treacherously slain and had gone down into the underworld, and with his going the trees and plants wilted, the flocks and herds failed to bring forth their young. But the underworld could not hold him and he came back, and with his coming new life blossomed forth on earth and all was well. It is impossible not to see in that old pagan legend an anticipation of the death and resurrection of Christ with all that these entail; in that ceremonial weeping because the seed sown must die, and rejoicing when it sprang forth into new life, an anticipation of Christ's own words "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12.24). The elaborate mythology of the Babylonians contained some seeds of truth which must have survived from an older and happier time when men, not so far removed from the Fall in Eden, possessed a tolerably clear knowledge of the principles of the redemptive plan of God.

AOH