1 Corinthians 9:10

“Or saith He it not altogether for our sakes? Yea, for our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that plougheth should plough in hope; and that he that thresheth should partake of the object hoped for.”

The meaning of the ἤ, or, is this: “Or, if it cannot be for the sake of oxen that God has spoken thus, is it not absolutely for us, that is to say, with a view to man's heart to train it to generous feelings?” The πάντως may signify entirely, absolutely (not at all on account of oxen); but it may also, as in Luke 4:13, have the meaning of certainly.

The sequel shows that the understood answer is strongly affirmative: “Yea, absolutely for us! for it is for us that it was written that...” The δἰ ἡμᾶς, for us, signifies that in thus legislating, it was man's moral good, and not the satisfying of oxen, that God had in view. The ἡμᾶς, us, has sometimes been taken as referring to the ministers of the gospel. There is nothing to justify this restricted application. In this case we should have required ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, in our favour. The opposite of oxen is men, and not apostles. Paul does not, therefore, in the least suppress the historical and natural meaning of the precept, as is thought by de Wette, Rückert, Meyer, Reuss, Edwards, and so many others. He recognises it fully, and it is precisely by starting from this sense that he rises to a higher application. In the conduct which God prescribes to man toward this animal, which serves him as a faithful worker, Paul finds the proof of the conduct which man should with stronger reason observe toward his human servants, and with still stronger reason the Church toward its ministers. This entire gradation would crumble instantly were the lowest step of the scale suppressed, that which was directly present to the mind of Moses; a fact which was understood by the apostle as well as by those who criticize him. Far from arbitrarily allegorizing, he applies, by a well-founded a fortiori, to a higher relation what God had prescribed with reference to a lower relation.

The for [yea] bears, as it does so often, on the understood affirmative answer. And the reasoning is this: “The precept has not its full sense except when applied to a reasonable being. For it is not oxen that can be encouraged during the toil of ploughing by foreseeing the joy of harvest. The human workman, on the contrary, can calculate beforehand the share in the result of his labour which will be granted to him, and be sustained by this hope. This is what God would have His people understand by forbidding them to deprive the ox of enjoying the result of his labour on the happy day of harvest.”

It is possible, as many do, to explain the ὅτι in the sense of because: “It was written, because this is how it is just that the case should be in all relations;” or we may translate by the simple that, which makes the following clause the subject of ἐγράφη, it was written. In this sense Paul would regard the clause dependent on ὅτι as the simple paraphrase of the word: Thou shalt not muzzle..., in Deuteronomy; but this, 1 Corinthians 9:10, contains a wholly new idea. In any case, it would be very forced to give to this ὅτι the meaning of: “to demonstrate that...,” as Edwards proposes.

This apostolic paraphrase of the Mosaic command is generally ill understood, and that because the two acts of ploughing and treading out are regarded as two parallel examples; they are taken to mean two works, of which Paul declares that both should be done with the expectation of recompense. With such an idea it becomes impossible to understand the words and reasoning of the apostle. According to a view common in the Scriptures, the act of ploughing is a hard and painful labour, and consequently the man who gives himself to it needs encouragement. This encouragement is the hope that he shall one day participate in the produce of harvest. There is nothing painful, on the contrary, in the act of treading out; it belongs to the harvest day, and consequently to the hour of joy, to the festival by which the ploughman is recompensed for his toil. On this entire order of ideas, comp. Psalms 126:5-6: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves.” And if this is true in regard to man, it ought to be so also in regard to the being of an inferior order who shares his labour and pain. But it cannot be so with the ox which has ploughed with him, except on condition that no muzzle is applied to deprive it of its portion at the time of the festival, hindering it from tasting the fruit which it has contributed to produce.

The two acts, then, of ploughing and treading out are so far from being related as two examples in juxtaposition, though they are constantly regarded in this light, that the former alone is considered as a labour; the latter is the recompense rightly expected by the workman who has done the former. The understanding of this suffices to make it plain that the reading preserved by the Greco-Latin Mjj. is the only one which corresponds to the apostle's thought: “He that plougheth should plough with hope (this is what sustains him in his painful toil), and (when the day of harvest has come) at the time when he treads out, he ought not to be cheated of the hoped-for boon (as would be the case if he were muzzled on that day).” Having been at the toil, he ought also to be at the recompense, enjoying the harvest. The Alexandrine copyists having, like the commentators in general, understood the two acts of ploughing and treading as two equally painful labours, which are both entitled to the expected recompense, thought that they should apply the notion of hope also to the act of treading, whereas it applied only to ploughing; hence their reading: “And he that treadeth out [should tread], with the hope of partaking. ” The Byzantines, after beginning like the Westerns, were led astray by the already corrupted Alexandrine text, and added, like them, to the end of the second proposition the words: ἐπ᾿ ἐλπίδι, in hope, which, as we have seen, have no meaning when applied to him who threshes. The application to the relation between the apostle and the Church which he founded is thus perfectly clear. The time comes when the apostle, after painfully ploughing and sowing, is entitled to partake of the harvest, by receiving from the community once formed what is needful for his maintenance. To refuse him this fruit of his painful labour at this time would be to act contrary to the spirit of the Mosaic precept, to convert the rightful expectation of the faithful workman into a deception.

This passage rightly understood is singularly instructive. It is difficult to suppress a smile when listening to the declamations of our moderns against the allegorizing mania of the Apostle Paul, or when we find even an Edwards imagining that he who ploughs is the labourer who founds a church, and he who threshes represents the subsequent labourers who build it up! Paul does not in the least allegorize either in the sense of Edwards or in any other. From the literal and natural meaning of the precept he disentangles a profound moral truth, a law of humanity and equity, and drawing from its temporary wrapping this permanent lesson, he applies it with admirable exactness to the case in hand.

Moreover, we have to gather from the study of this passage a very important lesson as to the preservation of the text. All our great modern critics, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, think the preference should be given as a rule to the readings of the ancient Alex. Mjj., and one is thought lagging behind the age if he does not follow them with docility in this path. Now here is a case where the corruption of the text in these documents is patent, and where it is easy to discover the false idea which produced the corruption. Is exegesis to be held bound, as Westcott and Hort would demand, to close its eyes to the light, and hold by a decidedly corrupt text, because it has on its side the Vaticanus and the Sinaïticus? The interpreter of the Holy Scriptures is not at liberty to subordinate his common sense to the arbitrariness, the ignorance, or the negligence of the ancient copyists.

The two following verses do not so much contain new arguments in favour of the apostolic right established by Paul, as subsidiary reflections, intended to show better how the precept founded on human analogies (1 Corinthians 9:7) and on biblical right (1 Corinthians 9:8-10) applies still more rigorously to the apostle and his fellow-labourers than would at first sight appear.