For it is written in the law of Moses, You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treads out the grain. Does God care for oxen?
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 9:9 Go To 1 Corinthians 9
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
For it is written in the law of Moses, &c. Deuteronomy 25:4. The reason doubtless was that it was right that the animals who laboured should also eat. Hence God forbade that the mouths of the oxen that trod out the corn should be muzzled, to prevent them from eating of what they trod out. It was the custom in Palestine, as it is now in some places, for the oxen to thresh out the grain by treading the corn-ears with their hoofs. That this is the literal meaning appears from the words in which it is enjoined on the hard-hearted Jews.
It may be objected that the Apostle seems here to exclude this meaning, by saying, "Doth God take care for oxen?" Abulensis, commenting in Deut. xxv, says that the literal sense of the verse is twofold: (1.) It refers to oxen, as has just been said, but not principally; (2.) The sense which is uppermost and chiefly intended by the Holy Spirit is that given by the Apostle here when he speaks of preachers. God, he says, takes care for oxen in the second place, but for teachers in the first; and therefore it is more the literal sense of the injunction that preachers should be maintained than that oxen should. But it is evident that the first only of these two is the literal sense. For the word ox denotes a preacher typically only, and not literally. Otherwise the literal sense would be wholly allegorical, which is absurd. For the literal sense is that which is the first meaning of any sentence; the allegorical or typical is that which is derived from the literal. As then the shadow of a body is not the body itself, so the typical sense cannot be the literal, but is merely shadowed forth by the literal.
The literal meaning therefore if the verse in Deuteronomy is that which I have given, but the mystical is that which is given by the Apostle, that preachers must be maintained, and that they are to live of the Gospel, just as the ox is fed on what he treads out; and since God"s chief care is for the former, the mystical meaning of the text Isaiah , as the Apostle says, the one that is uppermost.
Notice that it is a matter of faith that God takes care for oxen: for by His providence He cares for the sparrows (S. Matt. x29), and for the young ravens that call upon Him ( Psalm 147:9), and for all animals, as the Psalmist frequently says, and especially throughout Psalm civ. The Apostle means, therefore, that in this precept God"s chief care was not for oxen, but for preachers like S. Paul, who are like oxen in labouring and treading out the corn in the Lord"s field and threshing-floor, and are to be allowed to live of the Gospel.
