Fodder

Fodder (Hebrew belil, meaning a mixture or medley) refers to feed given to working animals — typically a mixture of grain, straw, chaff, and legumes such as wheat, barley, vetches, and lentils. The Latin farrago (from which the English "farrage" derives) describes the same type of mixed animal feed. Job 6:5 uses the donkey's braying and ox's lowing when fodder is available as analogies for the appropriateness of his complaint: "Does a wild donkey bray when it has grass? Does an ox bellow when it has fodder?" (Job 6:5).

Job 24:6 references those who harvest fodder in another man's field — an image of the destitution of the poor. Isaiah 30:24 describes the future prosperity of the messianic era partly in terms of agricultural abundance: working animals will eat "salted fodder" winnowed with a shovel and fork (Isaiah 30:24). The mention of fodder thus appears consistently in contexts of subsistence, abundance, or its absence, grounding even the animals' feed in the broader covenant blessings and curses of Israel's agricultural life.