5 Your threshing shall reach to the vintage, and the vintage shall reach to the sowing time; and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Your threshing shall reach unto the vintage - According to Pliny, Hist. Nat., l. xviii., c. 18, the Egyptians reaped their barley six months, and their oats seven months, after seed time; for they sowed all their grain about the end of summer, when the overflowings of the Nile had ceased. It was nearly the same in Judaea: they sowed their corn and barley towards the end of autumn, and about the month of October; and they began their barley-harvest after the passover, about the middle of March; and in one month or six weeks after, about pentecost, they began that of their wheat. After their wheat-harvest their vintage commenced. Moses here leads the Hebrews to hope, if they continued faithful to God, that between their harvest and vintage, and between their vintage and seed-time, there should be no interval, so great should the abundance be; and these promises would appear to them the more impressive, as they had just now come out of a country where the inhabitants were obliged to remain for nearly three months shut up within their cities, because the Nile had then inundated the whole country. See Calmet. "This is a nervous and beautiful promise of such entire plenty of corn and wine, that before they could have reaped and threshed out their corn the vintage should be ready, and before they could have pressed out their wine it would be time to sow again. The Prophet Amos, Amos 9:13 expresses the same blessing in the same manner: The ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who soweth seed." - Dodd.
And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time,.... Signifying that there should be such plentiful harvests of barley and wheat, the first of which began in March, as would employ them in threshing them out unto the time of vintage, which may be supposed to, be in the month of July; for on the twenty ninth of Sivan, which was about the middle of June, was the time of the first ripe grapes, as appears; see Gill on Numbers 13:20; and that they should have such quantities of grapes on their vines, as would employ them in gathering and pressing them until seedtime, which was usually in October, see Amos 9:13,
and ye shall eat your bread to the full; which is put for all provisions; and the meaning is, they should have plenty of food, eat full meals, or however, what they ate, whether little or much, should be satisfying and refreshing to them, having it with a divine blessing:
and dwell in your land safely; would have no need to go out of it into other lands for the sake of food, and would be in no danger from enemies invading them and carrying off their substance; plenty without safety would not be so great a blessing as with it, since, though they had it, they might be deprived of it, wherefore security from enemies is promised.
your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time, &c.--The barley harvest in Judea was about the middle of April; the wheat harvest about six weeks after, or in the beginning of June. After the harvest came the vintage, and fruit gathering towards the latter end of July. Moses led the Hebrews to believe that, provided they were faithful to God, there would be no idle time between the harvest and vintage, so great would be the increase. (See Amos 9:13). This promise would be very animating to a people who had come from a country where, for three months, they were pent up without being able to walk abroad because the fields were under water.
The vintage - That is, you shall have so plentiful an harvest, that you shall not be able to thresh out your corn in a little time, but that work will last till the vintage.
*More commentary available at chapter level.