Harrow

The harrow is an agricultural implement — a spiked drag pulled across plowed ground to level the soil, break up clods, and cover sown seed. UPDV preserves it under that name in two settings: the field figure of Job and Hosea, and the forced-labor scene at the close of David's Ammonite campaign.

In the Field

Job's tour through the wild creatures presses on the question of which animals can be put to work. The wild-ox is one of them: "Can you bind the wild-ox with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after you?" (Job 39:10). The image is the ordinary farm sequence — bind the beast, send him through the furrow, drag the harrow across the valley floor — set against an animal that will not submit to it.

Hosea pairs the same field operations with Israel's covenant history. Ephraim is the heifer trained to tread out the grain, but the next stage of work is laid on the brother tribes: "And Ephraim is a heifer that is taught, that loves to tread out [the grain]; but I have passed by her fair neck: I will set a rider on Ephraim; Judah will plow, Jacob will break his clods" (Hosea 10:11). Plowing and clod-breaking are the harrow's two tasks, distributed across the tribes as a figure for the labor coming on them.

Iron Harrows at Rabbah

When David takes the Ammonite capital, the same implement reappears as a forced-labor instrument: "And he brought forth the people who were in it. And he put [them to work] with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes of iron. And he made them serve making bricks. And thus he did to all the cities of the sons of Ammon. And David and all the people returned to Jerusalem" (2 Samuel 12:31). The list — saws, iron harrows, iron axes, brick-making — describes the conscripted workforce assigned to David after the conquest.

The Chronicler records the same campaign with almost identical wording: "And he brought forth the people who were in it. And he put [them to work] with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. And thus David did to all the cities of the sons of Ammon. And David and all the people returned to Jerusalem" (1 Chronicles 20:3). The implement is the same, the labor is the same, and the closing return to Jerusalem matches.