As befits a primarily agricultural economy images from farming are predominant in the Bible. Farmers, planting, reaping, weeds, etc. all serve as metaphors for spiritual realities. Seeds are mentioned frequently, perhaps because of the almost miraculous power they possess. Put a tiny acorn in the ground and eventually that seed produces a mighty multi-ton oak. St. Paul used the image of a seed to help explain the resurrection from the dead. What you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel of wheat. That kernel produces the staff of life. What is sown in death, the Apostle says, is an earthly body put it produces a “spiritual body” — unlike the kernel sown but necessary for the spiritual to arise.
