Crib

The crib is the feeding-trough where domesticated cattle take their fodder. The handful of references treat it as a fixture of agricultural life — a place that signals an animal's bond to its owner and the cost a household pays for the labor of an ox.

The wild ox refuses the crib

Job's catalogue of beasts the human tongue cannot tame asks whether the wild-ox will lodge at a manger like a yoke-animal: "Will the wild-ox be content to serve you? Or will he spend the night by your crib?" (Job 39:9). The answer is implicit. The crib belongs to the broken, working ox; the wild-ox knows nothing of it.

The price of a clean crib

The proverb weighs an empty stall against a full one and finds the empty one a poor bargain: "Where no oxen are, the crib is clean; but much increase is by the strength of the ox" (Pr 14:4). A spotless crib means there is no ox to feed it, and no ox means no harvest.

The donkey knows its master's crib

Isaiah turns the image into an indictment. The dumb beast still recognizes where its keeper feeds it; Israel has lost even that much instinct: "The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's crib; [but] Israel does not know, my people do not consider" (Isa 1:3). The crib here marks the elementary tie between creature and provider — a tie Israel has broken with Yahweh.