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| [Illustration:  Egyptian plowing                                   |
| (Similar to Hebrew Method.)]                                      |
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| [Illustration:  Egyptians threshing and WINNOWING                  |
| (Hebrews used same methods.)]                                     |
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| [Illustration:  Egyptian or Hebrew threshing floor]                |
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| Cuts on this page used by permission of the Palestine Foundation  |
| Fund.                                                             |
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=Driving an ox team.=—­So we can imagine the young Canaanites of those days watching a Hebrew farmer taking his first lesson with a team of oxen.  There was a wooden yoke to lay on their necks; there was the two-wheeled farm cart with its long tongue to be fastened to the yoke.  There was the goad, a long pole with a sharp point, to stick into the animals’ flanks if they should balk.  And probably there were many useful tricks to be learned; for example, words like our “Gee” and “Haw” and “Whoa,” to shout at the animals when it was necessary to turn to the left or the right or to stop altogether.

Plowing was one of the most difficult of the tasks to be done with oxen.  The furrows had to be run straight and true.  And the plows were clumsy affairs—­not like our shining steel plows to-day—­just a long pole with a short diagonal crosspiece, sharpened at the lower end, or tipped with a small bronze share.

CROPS OF ANCIENT CANAAN

The Hebrews raised the same crops as the earlier Canaanites.  The leading ones were wheat, barley, olives, grapes, and figs.  The two grain crops were, of course, the most necessary to life.  They were planted in the early spring, and harvested in the summer.  The grain was sown broadcast, by hand, just as Jesus describes in his great parable of the sower.

=Ancient agriculture.=—­Harvesting and threshing were done almost entirely by hand.  The grain was cut with sickles.  Some of the old sickles have recently been found by investigators, buried deep in the mounds where ruined Canaanite cities lie hidden.  Some of these sickles are of metal, and others are made of the jawbones of oxen or asses, with sharp flints driven into the tooth sockets.  After the grain was cut it was tied in bundles and carried to the threshing floor, which was usually a wide, level space of hard ground or rock.  Oxen were driven back and forth across the grain on the floor, drawing a heavy weight, until all or nearly all the kernels were shaken or crushed out of the heads.  It usually