Deuteronomy 25:4

Thou shall not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out [the corn].

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.

As the Gentiles used to do, having divers devices to keep them from eating when they trod out the corn, which they did in those parts and times by oxen, , either immediately by their hoofs, , or by drawing carts or other instruments over the corn, 28:27 41:15 . Hereby God taught them humanity and kindness, even to their beasts that served them, , and much more to their servants or other men who laboured for them, and especially to their ministers, .

Deuteronomy 25:4 Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out [the corn].Ver. 4. That treadeth out the corn.] Which was the manner of that country: whereunto also the prophet alludeth, "Ephraim is a heifer, that loveth to tread out the corn" (because while it treads, it feeds on the corn), but not to plough, because no refreshing till the work was done.

XXV. Deuteronomy 25:1-3. IN .(1) They shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.—“I will not justify the wicked” (Exodus 23:7). “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 17:15). It should be noticed that justify is here used forensically, not meaning to make righteous, but to treat as righteous. Those who object to this sense in St. Paul’s Epistles, will find it hard to put any other sense upon the word in the rest of Holy Scripture. (2) If the wicked man be worthy to be beaten.—Literally, a son of beating, or of Haccôth, according to the Hebrew. The treatise called Maccôth, in the Talmud, describes the infliction of the punishment in later times, when “of the Jews five times” St. Paul “received forty stripes save one.” The details have been described by Canon Farrar in an appendix to his Life of St. Paul.Shall cause him to lie down.—The Talmud interprets the position as not sitting nor standing, nor exactly lying, but with the body inclined. Before his face.—This is interpreted as on the front of his body. The thirty-nine stripes were given thirteen on one shoulder, thirteen on the other, and thirteen on the breast. (3) Forty stripes.—The Talmud says that they considered first what a man could bear, and flogged him according to their estimate. In some cases, if the whole punishment could not be administered at once, it was divided. It is contemplated as possibly fatal, however. Lest . . . thy brother should seem vile unto thee.—The punishment was not considered to be any degradation, after it had been inflicted. It was inflicted in the synagogue, and the law was read mean while from Deuteronomy 28:58-59, with one or two other passages. (4) Thou shalt not muzzle the ox.—We have a comment on these words from St. Paul in two places (1 Corinthians 9:9, and 1 Timothy 5:18). It is not only written for the sake of the oxen, but to prove that the “labourer is worthy of his hire;” “they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.”

Verse 4. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox, c.] In Judea, as well as in Egypt, Greece, and Italy, they make use of beeves to tread out the corn and Dr. Shaw tells us that the people of Barbary continue to tread out their corn after the custom of the East. Instead of beeves they frequently made use of mules and horses, by tying by the neck three or four in like manner together, and whipping them afterwards round about the nedders, as they call the treading floors, (the Libycae areae Hor), where the sheaves lie open and expanded, in the same manner as they are placed and prepared with us for threshing. This indeed is a much quicker way than ours, though less cleanly, for as it is performed in the open air, (Hosea 13:3), upon any round level plot of ground, daubed over with cow's dung to prevent as much as possible the earth, sand, or gravel from rising; a great quantity of them all, notwithstanding this precaution, must unavoidably be taken up with the grain, at the same time that the straw, which is their chief and only fodder, is hereby shattered to pieces; a circumstance very pertinently alluded to in 2Kg 13:7, where the king of Syria is said to have made the Israelites like the dust by threshing. - Travels, p. 138. While the oxen were at work some muzzled their mouths to hinder them from eating the corn, which Moses here forbids, instructing the people by this symbolical precept to be kind to their servants and labourers, but especially to those who ministered to them in holy things; so St. Paul applies it 1 Corinthians 9:9, c. 1 Timothy 5:18. Le Clerc considers the injunction as wholly symbolical; and perhaps in this view it was intended to confirm the laws enjoined in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the former chapter. See Dodd and Shaw. In Bengal, where the same mode of treading cut the corn is used, some muzzle the ox, and others do not, according to the disposition of the farmer.-Ward.

4. Against Muzzling the Labouring Ox. Peculiar to D; a clear The present writer has never seen them muzzled. ‘In all W. Asia it is the universal custom to allow the oxen or other animals thus employed freely to eat of the crop’ (Van Lennep, op. cit. 81). ‘I have seen them muzzled, though this is rare’ (Conder, Tent Work, etc., 329). ‘Not muzzled as a rule’ (Baldensperger, PEFQ, 1907, 20). In 1 Corinthians 9:9 f. Paul in illustrating from this law the principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire asks, Is it for oxen that God careth? According to D, undoubtedly He does. Paul may be writing playfully; if not it is a remarkable illustration of the effect of the allegorising habit of the later Jewish exegesis.

Compare the marginal references. In other kinds of labor the oxen were usually muzzled.

4. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox — The ancient mode of threshing with oxen yoked together and driven over the sheaves of grain is still in use in the East. Those who muzzle the ox are looked upon as niggardly peasants.