John the Baptist used a harvest reference that would have been familiar to his hearers when he spoke of Jesus saying "whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire." He was using the task of winnowing as a metaphor. When the stalks of grain were gathered and brought in from the fields, they would be spread out upon a threshing floor and beaten or driven over by a sled-type board that would break up the stalks. Then the stalks would be placed into a winnowing basket and tossed into the air, as the young girl is doing. The breeze would then blow away the lighter straw leaving the heavier grain to fall back into the basket. When there was no wind, a fanner would use a palm frond as a fan to create the wind that would blow away the chaff which would then be gathered up and burned. This was the task John used as an analogy of the sifting of the Jewish nation that Jesus would accomplish so that the good seed could be brought into God's storehouse while the chaff would be burned up. The reference was to the 7-year war that came to pass 40 years later that destroyed the Jewish nation and brought the Old Covenant economy to an end.
