threshing floor Traditionally an area in which grain is beaten from its husks; here it is an area in the church where the saints pray. Metaphorically, it represents separating the sinners and the saved, just as the chaff is separated from wheat and is an allusion to the biblical passage, “His [God’s] winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:12).”
ineffaceable impossible to wipe out or erase.
Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego the three biblical captives who came out of the fiery furnace miraculously unharmed: Daniel 3:12–27.
David the biblical king of Israel and Judah, reputed to be the writer of many Psalms.
Jeremiah a biblical prophet of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.
the accursed son of Noah Ham, who had laughed at his father’s nudity and who had been cursed by his father to be “a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Genesis 9:18–27).
