Threshing

Threshing was the process of separating grain from its stalks, practiced in Palestine from the earliest agricultural period. After the harvest, sheaves were carried to the threshing floor — typically a flat, exposed rock surface on a hilltop where wind could carry away the chaff. Oxen were driven over the grain to break the stalks (Deut. 25:4), or a heavy threshing sledge studded with iron or sharp stones was pulled across it (Isa. 41:15).

Threshing-floors were communally significant sites. Boaz's encounter with Ruth occurred at his threshing floor (Ruth 3). David purchased Araunah's threshing floor on Mount Moriah as the site of his altar after the plague, and this site became the location of Solomon's temple (2 Sam. 24:18-25; 2 Chr. 3:1). Prophetic imagery frequently invokes threshing as a metaphor for divine judgment (Isa. 21:10; Jer. 51:33; Matt. 3:12).