Deuteronomy 22:10
Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together.
Open Deuteronomy 22:10 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Non arabis in bove simul et asino.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- οὐκ ἀροτριάσεις ἐν μόσχῳ καὶ ὄνῳ ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- לֹֽא תַחֲרֹ֥שׁ בְּשׁוֹר וּבַחֲמֹ֖ר יַחְדָּֽו
Haydock's commentary
Plough. In Leviticus xix. 19, this law is expressed, so as to forbid the procreation of mongrels. See Judges xiv. 18. People who have treated on agriculture observe, that it is a pernicious practice to make animals of unequal size and speed work together. (Colum. vi. 2.)
St. Paul explains to us the mystical sense of this passage. Bear not the yoke together with infidels, 2 Corinthians vi. 14. (Calmet)
Marry not with such. (Haydock)
Employ not in the sacred ministry the imprudent and wicked with those of a virtuous disposition. (St. Gregory, Mor. i. 16.)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter XVIII. The Mosaic Law the Fountain of All Ethics, and the Source from Which the Greeks Drew Theirs
And it prohibits an ox and ass to be yoked in the plough together; pointing perhaps to the want of agreement in the case of the animals; and at the same time teaching not to wrong any one belonging to another race, and bring him under the yoke, when there is no other cause to allege than difference of race, which is no cause at all, being neither wickedness nor the effect of wickedness. To me the allegory also seems to signify that the husbandry of the Word is not to be assigned equally to the clean and the unclean, the believer and the unbeliever; for the ox is clean, but the ass has been reckoned among the unclean animals. …
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Ageruchia
5. Apart from these considerations, that which is absolutely good and not merely relatively so is to be as the apostle, that is loose, not bound; free, not enslaved; caring for the things of God, not for the things of a wife. Immediately afterwards he adds: “The wife is bound by the law to her husband as long as her husband liveth, but if her husband be fallen asleep, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord. But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the spirit of God.” This passage corresponds with the former in meaning, because the spirit of the two is the same. For though the epistles are different, they are the work of one author. While her husband lives the woman is bound, and when he is dead, she is loosed. Marriage then is a bond, and widowhood is the loosing of it. …