A SICKLE — the curved blade for cutting standing grain, and a word that stands in exactly TWO verses of the Hebrew Bible, both of them in this book and both about the same crop at the same moment. Deuteronomy 16:9 uses the first swing of it to start the count to the Feast of Weeks. Deuteronomy 23:26 (now on these pages) uses it to draw a line through the law of gleaning: in your neighbour’s standing grain you may pluck ears with your hand, but you may not swing a chermesh at it — the tool is what separates a hungry traveller from a harvester. ⚠ A different word, maggal, is the sickle of Joel 3:13 and Jeremiah 50:16; they are not interchangeable in the text even though every English Bible renders both ‘sickle’. → first discussed at Deut 16:9