Certainly ¹  caraway seed is not threshed with a sledge, nor is the wheel of a cart rolled over cumin seed. ²  Certainly caraway seed is beaten with a stick, and cumin seed with a flail.

This is what the Lord says: “Because Damascus has committed three crimes ¹  – make that four! ²  – I will not revoke my decree of judgment. ³  They ripped through Gilead like threshing sledges with iron teeth. ⁴ 

You furiously stomp on the earth, you angrily trample down the nations.

O my downtrodden people, crushed like stalks on the threshing floor, ¹  what I have heard from the Lord who commands armies, the God of Israel, I have reported to you.

So she gathered grain in the field until evening. When she threshed ¹  what she had gathered, it came to about thirty pounds ²  of barley!

For the Lord’s power will make this mountain secure. ¹  Moab will be trampled down where it stands, ²  as a heap of straw is trampled down in ³  a manure pile.

But they do not know what the Lord is planning; they do not understand his strategy. He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed ¹  at the threshing floor.

You must celebrate the Festival of Temporary Shelters ¹  for seven days, at the time of the grain and grape harvest. ² 

He seized the leaders ¹  of the city, along with some desert thorns and briers; he then “threshed” the men of Succoth with them. ² 

The Lord’s angelic messenger ¹  came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon ²  was threshing ³  wheat in a winepress ⁴  so he could hide it from the Midianites. ⁵ 

Grain is crushed, though one certainly does not thresh it forever. The wheel of one’s wagon rolls over it, but his horses do not crush it.

“Get up and thresh, Daughter Zion! For I will give you iron horns; ¹  I will give you bronze hooves, and you will crush many nations.” ²  You will devote to the Lord the spoils you take from them, and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ³  of the whole earth. ⁴