CHAFF — the husks and broken straw thrown up with the grain when a winnowing fork (ptyon) tosses a threshed heap into the evening wind: the kernels fall back, the chaff blows off. John's picture at Matthew 3:12 is therefore not a judge choosing but a farmer SEPARATING what is already mixed on his own floor. ⚠ It is the same image that stands at the head of the Psalms, where the Hebrew is motz — 'not so the wicked; they are like chaff that the wind drives away' (Psalm 1:4) — so the last prophet before Jesus preaches the threshing floor the psalter opens with. The fire that takes it is 'unquenchable' (asbestos, the word behind the mineral's name): fire that cannot be put out, which is not quite the same claim as fire that never finishes. → first discussed at Matt 3:12