For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
The fitches are not threshed ... - the farmer uses the same discretion in threshing. The dill ("fitches") and cummin, leguminous and tender grains, are beaten out, not as wheat, etc., with the heavy corn-drag ("threshing instrument"), but with "a staff." Heavy instruments would crush and injure the seed.
Cart wheel - two iron wheels armed with iron teeth like a saw, joined together by a wooden axle. The 'grain-drag' was made of three or four wooden cylinders armed with iron teeth or flint stones fixed underneath, and joined like a sledge. Both instruments cut the straw for fodder as well as separated the corn.
Staff - used also where they had but a small quantity of corn: the flail (Ruth 2:17).