RAIN. The great importance to the inhabitants of Pal. of the country’s limited rainfall is made clear by the variety of Heb. words which describe it. The Heb. commonly distinguishes rain (מָטָר, H4764) from showers (גֶּ֫שֶׁמ֒, H1773, or שָׂעִיר֩, H8540, the “small” rain of Deut 32:2, KJV); it also records the seasonal occurrence of the rain (see below).

The annual amounts of rainfall received in various parts of Pal. are described in Palestine, Climate (q.v.). The average figures, however, are liable to mislead, since totals vary greatly from year to year. In Jerusalem, for example, the long term average is 26.1 inches, but the maximum received in any one year was 40 inches and the minimum 12 inches. With fluctuations of this magnitude in the total, the impact upon a society dependent for its livelihood on the land can well be imagined.

Most important to the farmer is the distribution of rainfall throughout the year. This is very uneven indeed. As the accompanying diagram for Jerusalem shows, no rain falls at all during the four hottest months of the year. This hot, dry summer is a common feature of most of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean; it is balanced by a cool wet winter, but, from the farmer’s point of view, the two critical periods are the beginning and end of the wet season, when temperatures are high enough to promote growth, and the soil is moist enough to work.

The farmer’s year is therefore linked closely to the coming of the rains. In October these begin, generally with a series of thunderstorms, and plowing and sowing can then be started on the hard-baked soil. If the start of the rainy season is delayed, crop yields suffer; if the delay is a long one, crop failure may result. Hence, these “early” rains (יﯴרֶה֮, H3453) are of the utmost importance. At the other end of the winter, rains continuing into late April and May, when temperatures are high, are of much more value than in January or February, when they are low; they increase yields for every day that the rains are prolonged. The farmer therefore hopes for the “latter rains” (מַלְקﯴשׁ, H4919, after-crop).

This combination of early and latter rains is referred to frequently in the Bible, e.g. Deuteronomy 11:14; Jeremiah 5:24; Hosea 6:3; Joel 2:23; James 5:7. So, too, is the failure of the rains, as seen in the reference to famine, an event never far from the thoughts of the inhabitants of Pal., from the time of Abraham onward. See [http://biblegateway/wiki/V. Climate PALESTINE, CLIMATE OF].

Bibliography N. Rosenau, “One Hundred Years of Rainfall in Jerusalem,” Israel Meteorological Service, Series A, No. 13 (1955); D. Baly, The Geography of the Bible, chs. IV-VI (1957); G. Adam Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land (ed. of 1966), 62-70; D. Elbashan, “Monthly Rainfall Isomers in Israel, 1931-1960,” Israel Journal of Earth Sciences, XV (1966), 1-7.