What is the meaning of chaff in the Bible?

The refuse of threshed and winnowed grain — the husk of the wheat. Used symbolically for that which is quickly consumed, or easily swept away by the wind — worthless people. Ps. 1:4;

Ps. 35:5; Isa. 5:24; Jer. 23:28. The wicked also are compared to chaff to be burned up with unquenchable fire — eternal punishment. Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17.

This was accomplished in the open air, by throwing up the grain with a shovel, or a fan (λίκνος, really a kind of shallow basket); the wind carried away the chaff. Boaz winnowed his barley in the evening, when there would be more wind. Ruth 3:2; Isa. 30:24. John the Baptist said of the Lord that His fan was in His hand, and He would thoroughly purge His floor; gather His wheat into the garner; and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17. It is now a day of grace, a sowing time, but the harvest will come, and the winnowing will surely follow.

How dreadfully in contrast are the ungodly seen to be in these three verses. Matthew 13:30 speaks of believers as "wheat," and Peter is shown to be "wheat" in Luke 22:31; but the ungodly are "like that chaff which the wind drives away" (v. 4). When grain was threshed in the threshing floor, doors were opened at both ends to allow the wind to blow through and take away the chaff, while the wheat remained because of its heavier weight. The chaff was of no value, and unbelievers have no moral weight.

The second part of the psalm shows the character and doom of the ungodly in contrast with the blessing of the godly. Brief enough is their description, and the image used with regard to them carries us once more onward to the gospels. The Baptist, in his denunciation of judgment to come, draws, as the psalmist does, his similitude from the threshing-floor: He will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather the wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Here the figure is not pursued so far: "they are like chaff which the wind driveth away." The rootless, fruitless vain-doer is shown in the judgment of God in his own nothingness, chased away out of the world, as the wind, from the top of the hills on which the threshing-floors were placed, carried off the useless husk of the grain.

Then the ungodly: "Like the chaff which the wind driveth away" is a prophecy of the time when the ungodly are dealt with in judgment, when "He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:12). Then the ungodly will forever disappear and cease troubling the righteous. They will have no place in the assembly of the righteous in millennial times.

"The ungodly are not so": entirely contrasted in character, whatever prosperity they may have for the present, it is short-lived, and they themselves, like "the chaff which the wind driveth away." Think of the difference between the tree planted by the rivers of water, and the chaff which the wind driveth away! It is only till the judgment that the wicked can be supposed to prosper; but that judgment is sure, and "the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." They are mingled together now, however different in character; dwelling in the same city, perhaps under the same roof, sitting at the same table, or sleeping in the same bed. But judgment will distinguish accurately between the one and the other. And mark well, there is no hint here of the translation of saints to heaven, such as we are now taught to expect at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was a mystery never revealed till apostolic times — till redemption had been accomplished, the Holy Ghost had come down, and the earthly people had not only rejected and crucified their Messiah, but rejected the last offers of mercy through His death, by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. Then, when nothing remained but for sovereign grace to call out from every nation a saved people to be associated with an earth-rejected Christ in His heavenly place and glory, then it was revealed, that He will perfect His work of grace by descending to raise His sleeping, and change His waking, saints — all being caught up together to meet Him in the air, and so be for ever with Him: a translation of the whole body of the saints from earth to heaven, not dependent on any judgment to fall upon the wicked.

"The ungodly are not so": entirely contrasted in character, whatever prosperity they may have for the present, it is shortlived, and they themselves, like "the chaff which the wind driveth away." Think of the difference between the tree planted by the rivers of water, and the chaff which the wind driveth away! It is only till the judgment that the wicked can be supposed to prosper; but that judgment is sure, and "the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." They are mingled together now, however different in character; dwelling in the same city, perhaps under the same roof, sitting at the same table, or sleeping in the same bed. But judgment will distinguish accurately between the one and the other. And mark well, there is no hint here of the translation of saints to heaven, such as we are now taught to expect at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was a mystery never revealed till apostolic times — till redemption had been accomplished, the Holy Ghost had come down, and the earthly people had not only rejected and crucified their Messiah, but rejected the last offers of mercy through His death, by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. Then, when nothing remained but for sovereign grace to call out from every nation a saved people to be associated with an earth-rejected Christ in His heavenly place and glory, then it was revealed, that He will perfect His work of grace by descending to raise His sleeping, and change His waking, saints — all being caught up together to meet Him in the air, and so be for ever with Him: a translation of the whole body of the saints from earth to heaven, not dependent on any judgment to fall upon the wicked.

"The ungodly are not so." Nebuchadnezzar on the throne was a tree (see Dan. 4:22), but his leaf faded. For a brief moment prosperity shone upon him; where is he now and his glory? "But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away." Alas! it is the ungodly in Israel the Psalm speaks of, and the prophet Hosea (Hosea 13:3) pronounces the same judgment upon Ephraim, "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."

(3) In this part Job fully admits that there will be a final manifestation of the sin of the wicked, but it is so often seen in the children instead of themselves; and what do they care for their house after them? (ver. 21). In opposition to Zophar, he reminds him "how rarely is the candle of the wicked put out," as ver. 17 has been rendered; how seldom does calamity break in upon them, as the scatterings of "snares" or "lightnings" in the wrath of God. While it is true, as the psalmist tells us, that the ungodly are "like the chaff which the wind driveth away" (Ps. 1:4), Job reminds his hearers that this seldom takes place in the present life; it is reserved for the "judgment." The two following verses, 19, 20, state the facts (which are put in the form of a desire in another rendering), that God layeth up the iniquity of the wicked for the children, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." He shall eventually see the result of his evil, though the day is long deferred.

"Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them." So also in the passage which presents to us the Lord having the fan in His hand — the chaff is burnt up with unquenchable fire; and the wheat is gathered into the garner. Whilst this passage has its direct application to a future separation of the chaff on the earth — when all Gentile glory shall become as "the chaff of the summer threshing floor," and the Lord's own floor (evidently on earth in connection with Israel) shall be thoroughly purged, and the wheat gathered into the garner — yet it has its present application. "What is the chaff and the wheat, saith the Lord?" may be a question at all times suitably asked, not only in the falsehood which mimics truth, but where there may be the form of godliness apart from the power.