Bible Fact · Ecclesiastes 3:1–2 — 'For everything there is a season... a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.'
The Gezer Calendar
The Fact
The Gezer Calendar is a small soft limestone tablet, about the size of a hand, discovered in 1908 at Tel Gezer in Israel. Dating to around 925 BC, in the era of Solomon's successors, it lists the months of the agricultural year in ancient Hebrew: months of harvest, months of planting, months of late planting, months of hoeing flax, months of barley harvest, month of the wheat harvest and measuring, months of vine-tending, and the summer month. The text is inscribed in early Hebrew script and represents the oldest substantial Hebrew inscription ever found. Some scholars believe it was a school exercise tablet for learning to write. The calendar reflects a deeply agricultural society where time was organized around planting and harvest — exactly the world reflected throughout the Old Testament laws, psalms, and histories. It is now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
Context
Gezer was one of the cities Solomon received as a gift from Pharaoh and rebuilt (1 Kings 9:16–17). The calendar comes from the early monarchic period when Hebrew writing was becoming standardized.
Significance
The Gezer Calendar proves that Hebrew was written down in the early monarchic period, pushing back the date of Hebrew literacy and supporting the early composition of biblical texts.
Reflection
The Old Testament is full of agricultural imagery — sowing, reaping, pruning, harvests. What spiritual season do you feel you are currently in?