Former and Latter Rain the Comparsion

  Rain also serves as an image and medium of God’s wrath. If the people of Israel did not remain faithful, God would withhold the rain (; ; ). To be without rain was to be cursed (; compare ), and the famine that followed drought was disgrace (). God’s prophet Elijah declared that there would be no rain due to the faithlessness of the people (). In the judgment, those who do not submit to the Lord will be without rain (). In the same way too much water also results in destruction (; ; ). Rain could slowly destroy a home (). However, even in judgment, the rainbow (קֶשֶׁת‎, qesheth) serves as a sign of God’s promise not to destroy the earth (; ). The rainbow also demonstrates God’s glory (; ; ; ; ).

The absence of rain is noted in the creation account. Collins proposes that the annual wet and dry seasons form the background for what many argue is a “second” creation account in (Collins, , 101). In Collins’ view, is a description of the end of the dry season and serves as the background for . So describes the conditions when God created Adam and not a different creation “day” (Collins, , 103). Without rain nothing grew (; compare Genesis Rabbah, 13:1). The account in , therefore, may be an expanded description of the sixth day. The land was emerging from a period of being without water; it had not rained. Collins states, “We are then able to understand what means: in some land, at the end of the dry season, when the ‘mist’ (or rain cloud) was rising to begin the rains, God formed the first man; he then planted a garden in Eden and moved the man there. Some time after that he made the woman” (Collins, , 111).

Rain also serves as an image for the word of God and its effect on the lives of God’s people. The author of Hebrews brings together much of Scripture’s rain imagery (O’Brien, Hebrews, 229–30). God sends His rain on the righteous and the wicked (); so also God’s word dropped like rain upon His people (; ; see also ; compare ; ). It is life giving (compare ), and the land on which it falls must bear fruit (; compare ; ). Rain serves to reveal the inclinations of the heart and the allegiance of God’s people (; compare ).

Land that has drunk the rain and does not produce good fruit must be burned (; compare ; , ). As God’s son and the representative of the people, the king of Israel was to be “like the rain” (; ). God’s people bring the rain with them as they go ().1

1 II, R. G. R. (2016). Rain. In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, … W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.