Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. In Judea, as in modern Syria and Egypt, the larger grains, wheat, barley, and rice, were not threshed, but beaten out by the feet of oxen, which, yoked together, trode round day after day the wide open spaces which form the threshing-floors. These flat open spaces or floors are formed of clay hardened with cow's dung, as the barn-floors are with a small mixture lime in this country. A pole or pillar is raised in the center, and by a halter attached to it on the one end, and to the neck of the oxen on the other, the patient animals are made to perambulate in circular courses at their daily work. The ancient paintings in Egypt represent oxen as commonly used in treading out the grain from the ear in harvest time-rarely donkeys. Swine, not being sufficiently heavy for the purpose, are not likely to have been employed in this work, although Herodotus asserts it. Horses and mules are sometimes driven over threshing-floors in Spain and other countries of Southern Europe (Wilkinson in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' b.
ii., ch. 15:, note 3).
The Israelites used oxen alone. The animals were allowed freely to pick up a mouthful when they chose to do so-a wise as well as humane regulation introduced by the law of Moses, as it would have been not only great cruelty, but have produced a dispiriting effect on the cattle, to be trampling, as was the primitive practice, with a bag on their mouths, or their necks bound up a whole day, amid heaps of grain, while they were under irksome restraint from touching the grain or the straw.
That this law continued in full operation in Israel during the later times of the monarchy, is evident from Hosea 10:11. Though enacted in a particular case, it teaches the humane lesson, that animals, while engaged in the service of man, are entitled to his indulgence and kindness.
Paul quotes this law (1 Corinthians 9:9; 1 Timothy 5:18), and shows that God did not appoint it for the sake of oxen alone, but that every labourer is worthy of his hire; and hence, declares the obligation of men to exercise justice in properly rewarding those who labour for their advantage, and specially those who labour for the good of their souls.
The application he makes of the passage, so far from weakening, seems to confirm its obligation and reference to that point, inasmuch as it displays to us that in the eye of God the same principles of equity are expected to prevail among all His creatures, and that they are not to be confined to our dealings with men.