Ezekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - 1 Timothy 5:18 - 5:18

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Ezekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - 1 Timothy 5:18 - 5:18


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Ver. 18. For the Scripture saith,—the for implying that the passage to be quoted supports the sentiment just expressed,—Thou shalt not muzzle an ox while treading out, namely, the corn; or, as it might be expressed, Thou shalt not muzzle an ox when threshing. But the form of expression points to the peculiar mode of threshing in the East, by driving oxen over heaps of corn lying on the barn-floor, and either by their feet, or by means of a hurdle drawn after them, bruising the mass so as to separate the grain from the straw and chaff. It was a clumsy and imperfect style of operation, but the prevalent one in Bible lands and times. The passage respecting it is taken from Deu_25:4, and is one of a series of directions enjoining kind and considerate behaviour. It is the only one that has immediate respect to the lower animals; all the rest bear on the conduct that should be maintained toward one’s fellow-creatures, and especially toward those who might be in the unhappy position of bondmen; so that we can scarcely suppose this somewhat exceptional instruction could have been designed for the exclusive benefit of oxen. We may rather suppose it was intended, by carrying the injunction to cultivate a tender and beneficent disposition so low, to make it all the more sure that such a disposition should be exercised toward brethren of one’s own flesh, most especially toward those who were laying themselves out in self-denying labours for the public good. It is therefore a perfectly legitimate application which is made of the passage here, and in 1Co_9:9, to the labourers in the Christian ministry. Such an application is in entire accordance with its spirit and aim, and can hardly be termed, in the ordinary sense of the word, typical. It is merely to carry the kind and considerate treatment which it sought to foster and call forth into a related but higher sphere—to claim for the divinely-commissioned labourers in God’s spiritual harvest something akin to what a provision in the law had required of men toward the inferior animals that helped them in the harvest-field of nature. One claim, in a manner, and yet another; for the higher species of labourers here, and the unspeakably nobler service rendered by them, obviously gave an immensely greater strength to the obligation. If that was fitting, then how much more this!

The apostle, however, enforces his exhortation by another saying—one relating to the service of rational creatures: And the labourer is worthy of his hire. Is this also to be reckoned a scriptural quotation? or is it referred to simply as a maxim of ordinary life? The former opinion has the sanction of several commentators, and latterly it has been advocated by Baur and those of his school as one of their arguments for transferring the authorship of the epistle to a period subsequent to the apostolic age,—a period when New Testament Scripture had come to be formally quoted, as previously was done with the writings of the Old Testament. It is a kind of argument in which the wish is father to the thought. There is no reason for supposing that the apostle meant his reference to Scripture to extend further than the peculiar passage selected from Deuteronomy. What follows is a common proverb, which did not require to be backed by inspired authority, and which in a similar way is employed by our Lord in an address to His disciples (Mat_10:10; Luk_10:7). It is perfectly possible, and indeed altogether probable, that St. Paul was cognisant of the use which had been made of it by our Lord: for both in his First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 7), and in his address to the elders of Ephesus, he expressly alludes to specific utterances of Christ—in the latter case, indeed, to one that has found no record in any of the Gospels (Act_20:35); and it is not to be imagined that the apostle should have remained ignorant to the close of his life of so important a part of our Lord’s instructions as the great missionary address in which this passage occurs. But that affords no ground for supposing that he, or any other person in his name, meant the maxim under consideration to be regarded as a formal quotation from it: the object in view was best served by adducing a proverbial saying, which the common sense of mankind—their sense of what is just and right—has made current in respect to those who have laboured for their interest, that the labourer is worthy of his hire. If so in the commonest relations and employments of life, how should it be otherwise in that special field of labour which is occupied by the faithful minister, and which involves much that is peculiarly trying to flesh and blood? But this prudential maxim, it should be added, is introduced, like the legal prescription before it, merely for the sake of the general principle embodied in it; and to argue from it, as some do, that only pecuniary remuneration or salary was all that the apostle had in his eye in the honour due to teaching presbyters, is to press the matter too far, and to make a use of the one saying that cannot properly be made of the other.