Plow

The plow appears in Scripture both as a working tool of Israelite agriculture and as a figure for prolonged affliction. The umbrella collects narrative scenes — Elisha at his oxen, Job's servants at the field, and the Israelites going down to the Philistines to have their iron sharpened — together with one figurative use in the Psalter.

A Working Tool of the Field

In the Philistine domination of Israel, iron-craft was monopolized, and Israelites had to descend to Philistine smiths even for routine sharpening:

"but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his plowshare, and his coulter, and his ax, and his mattock;" (1Sa 13:20).

In the household of Job, plowing oxen are part of the daily wealth attacked at the opening of the book:

"that there came a messenger to Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys pasturing beside them;" (Job 1:14).

Elisha at the Twelve Yoke

The most extended scene attached to the plow is Elisha's call. He is found at field-work behind a long line of oxen, and the prophetic mantle is cast over him there:

"So he departed from there, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing, with twelve yoke [of oxen] before him, and he [was] with the twelfth: and Elijah passed over to him, and cast his mantle on him." (1Ki 19:19).

The detail of twelve yoke and Elisha himself driving the twelfth fixes the call at a moment of full-scale plow-work.

Plowing as Affliction

The figurative use treats the back of the afflicted as a field. The image is sustained: not only that plowers passed over, but that they made the furrows long:

"The plowers plowed on my back; They made long their furrows." (Ps 129:3).

The plow's ordinary work — opening the soil — becomes here the figure of suffering deliberately drawn out.