Historical Development

The two types of yokes that served as a symbol for the biblical writers were the ox yoke and the horse yoke, both of which had a unique development within ancient times. Ancient readers of the Bible would have been somewhat familiar with these terms.

The ox yoke was invented in approximately the fourth millennium bc (Tyer, “Yoke,” 7–8). The primary purpose was to lessen a human’s burdens and increase productivity in agricultural work by harnessing a plow to an ox. Pictographs from 3300–3000 bc display yokes being used for agricultural purposes (ANEP, 97, pl. 304). Toward the end of the second millennium, the ox yoke had become the standard in agricultural practice (Tyer, “Yoke,” 10).

Fourth millennium royal seals and pictographs provide evidence of horses yoked to chariots used in military settings (ANEP, 97, pl. 303; Childe, New Light, 156). By 1200 bc, the chariot-yoked horse was responsible for the rise of the Assyrian empire (Tyer, “Yoke,” 11). By the seventh century bc, the term “yoke” became synonymous with the power the Assyrian king Sennacherib had to subjugate and destroy his enemies (Tyer, “Yoke,” 13).

Relying on the symbolic power of the horse yoke, other Mesopotamian kings began yoking humans in a show of power and prominence over a newly subjugated people. Yoked (literally, “harnessed”) humans pulled war chariots in a royal display of humiliation of subjects (ANET, 300). Hammurapi yoked prisoners of war together to be transported as slaves (King, Letters, 83–84, 288). Even in Israel’s history, human slaves were yoked for the purposes of conscripted labor in which they participated in the construction of buildings or roads, carrying a heavy load of stones on their yoked shoulders (Mendelsohn, “State Slavery,” 15).