Stand at a threshing floor on a windy day and you see why Scripture reaches for chaff. The grain falls where it is thrown; the light husk blows away. Psalm 1 uses the picture for people who ignore God: they are “like the chaff which the wind driveth away” (Psalm 1:4). The prophets use it for nations that rage and then vanish, and John the Baptist says the Messiah will gather his wheat into the garner and burn up the chaff (Matthew 3:12). Wheat and chaff describe a final sorting, and the passages use it as both a warning and a promise of care for what is kept.
9 verses
They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carrieth away.
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the LORD chase them.
Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the early dew that passeth away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney.
Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
The refuse of winnowed corn. It was usually burned (Ex. 15:7; Isa. 5:24; Matt. 3:12). This word sometimes, however, means dried grass or hay (Isa. 5:24; 33:11). Chaff is used as a figure of abortive wickedness (Ps. 1:4; Matt. 3:12). False doctrines are also called chaff (Jer. 23:28), or more correctly rendered “chopped straw.” The destruction of the wicked, and their powerlessness, are likened to the carrying away of chaff by the wind (Isa. 17:13; Hos. 13:3; Zeph. 2:2).
William Smith, 1884
the husk of corn or wheat which was separated from the grain by being thrown into the air, the wind blowing away the chaff, while the grain was saved. The carrying away of chaff by the wind is an ordinary scriptural image of the destruction of the wicked and of their powerlessness to resist God’s judgments. (Psalms 1:4; Isaiah 17:13; Hosea 13:3; Zephaniah 2:2)