Threshing Floors in Ancient Israel:Their Ritual and Symbolic Significance

Vital to an agrarian communitys survival, threshing floors are agricultural spaces where crops are threshed and winnowed. But the Hebrew Bible rarely refers to such agricultural activities taking place at such sites. Instead, biblical narratives repeatedly depict threshing floors in ancient Israel as sites for mourning rites, divination rituals, cultic processions, and sacrifices. Kings consult prophets there; even the Solomonic temple was built on a threshing floor.

Jaime L. Waters shows th...