JEWISH AGRICULTURE. 379 



with the twelfth. Job had five hundred yoke of oxen, five 

 hundred she-asses, seven thousand sheep, and three thousand 

 camels. Both asses and oxen were used in plowing, for Moses 

 forbade the Jews to yoke an ass with an ox, their step or 

 progress being different, and of course their labors unequal. 



Among the operations of agriculture are mentioned watering 

 by machinery, plowing, digging, reaping, threshing, etc. " Doth 

 the plowman plow all day to sow ? doth he open and break the 

 clods of his ground ? When he hath made plain the face thereof, 

 doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, 

 and cast in the principal wheat, and the appointed barley, and 

 the rye in their place ? " The plow was probably a clumsy 

 instrument, requiring the most vigilant attention from the 

 plowman, for Luke uses the figure of a man at the plow look- 

 ing back, as one of utter worthlessness. Covered threshing- 

 floors were in use, and, as it appears in the case of Boaz and 

 Ruth, it was no uncommon thing to sleep in them during the 

 harvest. 



Wheat was threshed in different ways. "The fitches," says 

 Isaiah, " 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. Bread 

 corn is bruised ; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor 

 break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horse- 

 men." Grain was "winnowed with the shovel and the fan." 

 Sieves were also used, for Amos says, " I will sift the house of 

 Israel among all nations, as corn is sifted in a sieve" ; and Christ 

 is represented by St. Luke as saying, " Simon, Simon, behold, 

 Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." 

 Isaiah mentions the "digging of hills with the mattock," to 

 which implement the original pick would gradually arrive. 



Vineyards were planted on rising grounds, fenced around, the 

 soil well prepared, and a vintage-house and watch-tower built, in 

 a central situation, as it is still done in European Turkey and 

 Italy. Moses gives directions to the Jews for cultivating the 

 vine and other fruit trees. The first three years after planting 

 the fruit is not to be eaten, the fourth is to be given to the 

 Lord, and it is not till the fifth year that they are "to eat of 

 the fruit thereof." The intention of these precepts was, to 



