Israel’s Clear Warning (Part 4)

Pastor Bill Farrow

Isaiah 28: 28

²⁸Bread flour must be ground; Therefore he does not thresh it forever, Break it with his cartwheel, Or crush it with his horsemen.

Isaiah 28:28

Bread flour - The word evidently denotes the material from which bread is made. The word is used in the same sense in Isa. 30:23.

Must be ground - That is, is more severely dealt with than the dill and the cummin; it is pressed and crushed by passing over it the sledge, or the wagon with serrated wheels. The word means often to break in pieces; to make small or fine. It is, however, applied to threshing, as consisting in beating, or crushing.

Therefore he does not thresh it forever - The word rendered ‘because’ evidently here means “although” or “but”; and the sense is, that he will not always continue to thresh it; this is not his only business. It is only a PART of his method by which he obtains grain for his bread. It would be needless and injurious to be ALWAYS engaged in rolling the stone or the sledge over the grain. So God takes various methods with his people. He does not always pursue the same course. He sometimes smites and punishes them, as the farmer beats his grain. But he does not always do it. He is not engaged in this method alone; nor does he pursue this constantly. It would crush and destroy them. “He, therefore, smites them just enough to secure, in the best manner, and to the fullest extent, their obedience; just as the farmer bruises his sheaves enough to separate all the grain from the chaff.” When this is done, he pursues other methods. Hence the various severe and heavy trials with which the people of God are afflicted.

Break it with his cartwheel, or crush it with his horsemen - Some render this, ‘With the hoofs of his cattle;’ but the word may denote not only a “horsesman,” but the “horse” itself on which one rides. That horses were used in treading out grain there can be no doubt. They are extensively used in this country; and though in Palestine it is probable that oxen were chiefly employed (Deut. 25:4) in the early times, yet there is no improbability in supposing that in the times subsequent to Solomon, when horses abounded, they were preferred. Their more rapid motion, and perhaps the hardness of their hoofs, makes them more valuable for this service. There are here, therefore, four modes of threshing mentioned:

1.      The sledge with rollers, on which were pieces of iron, or stone, and which was dragged over the grain.

2.      The cart with serrated wheels, and which was also drawn over the grain.

3.      The flail, or the stick.

4.      The use of cattle and horses.

In general, that God who gives the husbandman this wisdom is, doubtless, himself infinitely wise. It is God that instructs the husbandman to discretion, as his God, farmers have need of discretion wherewith to order their affairs, and ought not undertake that business unless they do in some measure understand it; and they should by observation and experience endeavor to improve themselves in the knowledge of it. Since the king himself is served of the field, the advancing of the art of husbandry is a common service to mankind more than the cultivating of most other arts. The skill of the husbandman is from God, as every good and perfect gift is. This takes off somewhat of the weight and terror of the sentence passed on man for sin, that when God, in execution of it, sent man to till the ground, he taught him how to do it most to his advantage, otherwise, in the greatness of his folly, he might have been for ever tilling the sand of the sea, laboring to no purpose. It is he that gives men capacity for this business, an inclination to it, and a delight in it; and if some were not by Providence cut out for it, and mad to rejoice (as Issachar, that tribe of husbandmen) in their tents, notwithstanding the toil and fatigue of this business, we should soon want the supports of life. If some are more discreet and judicious in managing these or any other affairs than others are, God must be acknowledged in it; and to him husbandmen must seek for direction in their business, for they, above other men, have an immediate dependence upon the divine Providence.