Deuteronomy Chapter 25 verse 4 Holy Bible
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out `the grain'.
read chapter 25 in ASV
Do not keep the ox from taking the grain when he is crushing it.
read chapter 25 in BBE
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out [the corn].
read chapter 25 in DARBY
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
read chapter 25 in KJV
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
read chapter 25 in WBT
You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out [the grain].
read chapter 25 in WEB
`Thou dost not muzzle an ox in its threshing.
read chapter 25 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 4. - The leaving the ox unmuzzled when treading out the corn was in order that the animal might be free to eat of the grains which its labor severed from the husks. This prohibition, therefore, was dictated by a regard to the rights and claims of animals employed in labor; but there is involved in it the general principle that all labor is to be duly requited, and hence it seems to have passed into a proverb, and was applied to men as well as the lower animals (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:9; 1 Timothy 5:18). The use of oxen to tread out the corn and the rule of leaving the animals so employed unmuzzled still prevail among the Arabs and other Eastern peoples (Robinson, 'Bib. Res.,' 2:206, 207; 3:6; Kitto, 'Bib. Cycl.,' 1:86).