This implement was at first extremely simple, the turning up of the soil being effected by means of sharp sticks. The plough, strictly so called, as observed by many recent travelers, is generally a branch, or small tree, cut below the bifurcation; the share is of wood, and the point of iron. As the husbandman guides the plough, he carries a rod, armed at the extremity with a sharp piece of iron, with which he clears away the weeds from the share of his implement, or goads his oxen. So light is the whole apparatus, that he has to press hardly on it in the upturning of the soil; and he often carries his plough home on his shoulder on returning from the fields at night. The only harrow seems to have been a thick clump of wood, borne down by a weight, or a man sitting upon it, and drawn by oxen over the ploughed field: the same which the Egyptians use at the present time. In this way the turfs were, and still are, broken in pieces, and the fields leveled. In harvest, the Hebrews used the sickle, so that the stubble remained in the earth. The crops, when bound in bundles, were conveyed by hand, on beasts of burden, or in wagons, to the threshing-floor. This was in some elevated part of the field, and was nothing more than a circular space thirty or forty paces in diameter, where the ground had been leveled and beaten down. At first the grain was thrashed with sticks; but afterward this mode was adopted only in respect to the lesser kinds of grain, and in beating out small quantities. At a later period, it was trodden out by the hoofs of oxen, as it is in the East to this day. These allusions to agricultural pursuits recall to the mind the words of the prophet— “Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the ploughman plough 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? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For the fitches 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 horsemen. This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, Which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.”