23  Give ye ear, and hear my voice;

Hearken, and hear my speech.

24  Doth the plowman plow all day to sow?

Doth he open and xbreak the clods of his ground?

25  When he hath made plain the face thereof,

Doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin,

And cast in ||the principal wheat

And the appointed barley and the ||rie in their †place?

26  ||For his God doth instruct him to ydiscretion, and doth teach him.

27  For the fitches are not threshed with za threshing instrument,

Neither is a cart awheel turned about upon the cummin;

But the fitches are aabeaten out with a staff,

And the cummin with a rod.

28  Bread corn is bruised;

Because he will not ever be threshing it,

Nor break it with the wheel of his cart,

Nor bruise it with his horsemen.

29  This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts,

bWhich is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in cworking.