Threshing corn we first read of in Deut. xxv. 4, when we find the following direction given: ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn,’ a practice which the natives of Aleppo, and some other Eastern places, still religiously observe.
How Gideon (Jud. vi. 11) or Oman (I. Chron. xxi. 20) threshed, whether by oxen or by flail, we cannot tell, but in Isaiah xxviii. 27, 28, we find five methods of threshing then in vogue. ‘For the fitches [this is supposed to be the Nigella sativa, whose seeds are used as a condiment, like coriander or caraway] 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.’ In Lowth on Isaiah we find this passage made somewhat clearer:
‘The dill is not beaten out with the corn-drag;
Nor is the Wheel of the Wain made to turn upon the cummin.
But the dill is beaten out with the Staff,
And the cummin with the Flail, but
The bread corn with the Threshing-Wain;
And not for ever will he continue thus to thresh it,
Nor vex it with the Wheel of its Wain,
Nor to bruise it with the Hoofs of his Cattle.’