Mule

The mule appears across the Old Testament as a working animal of the wealthy and the powerful — the mount of kings and princes, a measure of tribute and trade, a beast carrying provisions and earth, and, in one prophetic vision, a conveyance bringing the scattered home to Jerusalem.

Royal Mounts

The mule is the saddle animal of David's house. When Absalom orders Amnon killed at the sheep-shearing, "all the king's sons arose, and every man got up on his mule, and fled" (2Sa 13:29). Years later Absalom himself dies on muleback: "Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth; and the mule that was under him went on" (2Sa 18:9). The narrative leaves the riderless mule walking on as Absalom is suspended in the tree.

David designates his own mule as the sign of succession. Bringing Solomon to Gihon to be anointed king, he commands: "Take with you⁺ the slaves of your⁺ lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride on my own mule, and bring him down to Gihon" (1Ki 1:33). The king's mule carries the king's heir.

Tribute and Trade

Mules figure among the goods that move into and out of Solomon's kingdom. Of the annual tribute brought to him, "they brought every man his tribute, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and raiment, and armor, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year" (1Ki 10:25). In Ezekiel's lament over Tyre, the mule appears as an article of long-distance trade: "They of the house of Togarmah traded for your wares with horses and warhorses and mules" (Eze 27:14).

Pack Animals

Beyond their use as mounts, mules carry burdens. When the tribes gather at Hebron to make David king, the northern provinces send food on every available beast: "Moreover those who were near to them, [even] as far as Issachar and Zebulun and Naphtali, brought bread on donkeys, and on camels, and on mules, and on oxen, victuals of meal, cakes of figs, and clusters of raisins, and wine, and oil, and oxen, and sheep in abundance: for there was joy in Israel" (1Ch 12:40).

Naaman uses the same idiom of cargo capacity to ask for Israelite soil after his cleansing: "If not, yet, I pray you, let there be given to your slave two mules' burden of earth; for your slave will from now on offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice to other gods, but to Yahweh" (2Ki 5:17). The mule-load is his unit of measure for what he wishes to carry home.

Return from Exile

In the census of those who came back from Babylon, mules are counted alongside horses, camels, and donkeys: "Their horses were seven hundred thirty and six; their mules, two hundred forty and five" (Ezr 2:66). The animals make the return journey with the people.

Mules in Prophecy

Two prophetic passages place the mule in a wider frame. In Isaiah's vision of the nations bringing Israel home, mules are among the conveyances: "they will bring all your⁺ brothers out of all the nations for an oblation to Yahweh, on horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and on mules, and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem" (Isa 66:20). What had carried princes, tribute, and exiles now carries the gathered people of God.

Zechariah's eschatological oracle sets the mule on the other side of the same scene. In the plague that strikes the camps that fight against Jerusalem, no working animal is spared: "And so will be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, and of the donkey, and of all the beasts that will be in those camps, as that plague" (Zec 14:15).