The Ox is a Tool
Handcrafted is not a mark of virtue, no matter what all the Trad-fluencers tell you.
“Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox.”—Proverbs 14:4
The first thing we see in this proverb is that this ox is a tool.
Have you ever seen an ox? Big, burly, massive strength. And then this wonderful sort of hump right behind his neck. Perfect for putting a yoke that this animal seems born to pull. And with this yoke it can haul things, plow things, scrape things, irrigate things.
In other words, the ox is, among other things, a tool. It is an implement that makes the work of men easier.
There is a kind of person who believes the more hand-made something is, the more virtuous it is. The more bare human fingers shape a thing, in all their natural, preindustrial, majesty, the more that thing can be called good. (I find it curious that these are the same people who glory in little heart icons attached to the 4K videos of their nature-made wonders, filmed with the least handcrafted devices ever made.)
But leaving Patchouli-smelling hypocrisy aside, the more important point is that this view (that handcrafted is better) is simply unbiblical. It is untruthful. It is not the Lord’s standard of good. It is an errant, false, distorted, and unwise.
And the proof of this is all over Scripture. We could start, perhaps, in the second chapter of Genesis where we read:
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
- Genesis 2:10-11
The gold of the land of Havilah is good. But if only natural and handcrafted things are good, why mention that? If I can’t get to that gold with my precious goat’s-milk-conditioned fingers, if I need a tool to get to the gold, then the gold is no longer good.
Next we might read, in Exodus 31, that God filled Bezalel with the Spirit of craftsmanship:
“And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.”—Exodus 31:5
The cutting of stones—but cut with what? Unless God also gave Bezalel metal hands and fire-breath, the things of the Temple were crafted with tools, therefore not handcrafted, and therefore (through the handcrafted aesthetic lens) the things of the tabernacle would less good than if Bezalel had decorated it with little compost cakes and organic carrots.
And the objection to this might be, “Well, of course I don’t object to those kinds of tools. I don’t mind pickaxes and that kind of thing.” But that objection means you either just don’t logic or you feel comfortable adding to Scripture. I’m happy for you to take your pick.
So, the ox is a tool, and though oxen and every other tool can be used for evil, here, clearly, the oxen is used for good: “much increase.”
But the ox is clearly something else — something highly relevant for our time: an intillgence. We’ll discuss the implications next week.
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