YOKE (מﯴט֮, H4573). The verb mot means to waver, totter, and the noun describes the tottering motion of one carrying a burden or a heavy yoke. Thus it came to mean the bars of the yoke and the yoke itself (מﯴטָה, H4574). More frequently the term עֹל, H6585, is used for “yoke,” including the curved pieces of wood which are fastened to the crossbeam. The Heb. צֶ֫מֶד, H7538, refers to a pair or team of animals called a “yoke.” The Gr. ζυγός, G2433, is a “team” or “yoke of oxen.” A yoke was a piece of timber or a heavy wooden pole, shaped to fit over the neck with curved pieces of wood around the neck fastened to the pole, and was used to hitch together a team of draft animals so that they could pull heavy loads evenly. In the Bible terms are most often used metaphorically to designate a burden, obligation, or slavery (Gen 27:40; 1 Sam 11:7; Isa 58:6, 9; Nah 1:13; Matt 11:29; Luke 14:19; Acts 15:10).

The term “yoke” in its literal meaning refers to a heavy wooden frame used to tie two draft animals together for pulling heavy loads such as plows and carts (Num 19:2), where the Lord instructs Moses: “Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect...and upon which a yoke (עֹֽל) has never come.” This statement in the Pentateuch indicates that the use of yokes for draft animals is very old.

Generally, however, the term is used fig. for slavery and the burdens and hardships people must bear. When Jehovah delivered Israel from Egyp. slavery, he said, “I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect” (Lev 26:13). When the yoke of bondage or slavery became severe, it is termed “a yoke of iron upon your neck” (Deut 28:48). A yoke of affliction is mentioned in Lamentations 3:27: “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” Isaiah states that for every man the Messiah will break “the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, and the rod of his oppressor” (Isa 9:4). “The yoke will be destroyed from your neck” (Isa 10:27). Sometimes the term is used to describe the burden of a person’s sin and its punishment: “My transgressions were bound into a yoke; by his hand they were fastened together; they were set upon my neck” (Lam 1:14).

Often in the OT the term “yoke” refers to a “team of oxen.” King Saul warned the people in hot anger when “He took a yoke of oxen, and cut them in pieces and sent them throughout the territory of Israel by the hand of messengers” (1 Sam 11:7). Job, among many other possessions, had “five hundred yoke of oxen” (Job 1:3). In a double metaphor, the amount of land, perhaps an acre, which a yoke of oxen could plow in a day, was called a yoke (1 Sam 14:14; Isa 5:10).

In the NT the term zygos is used much as in the OT. Except for the single exception in Luke 14:19, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them” (the term here is zeugos, “team” or “pair,” rather than zygos, the yoke which hitches them together), the term is always used fig. It refers to slavery, “Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor” (1 Tim 6:1); Roman conquerors compelled prisoners of war to march under an archway to symbolize defeat and slavery; to OT law such as circumcision, which is called a yoke when demanded of the Gentiles: “Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” (Acts 15:10; Gal 5:1); the yoke of service to Christ: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me: for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:29, 30). It is significant that Clement of Rome (1 Cor 16:17) describes Christians as those who come under the yoke of grace (hoi hypo ton zygon tees charitos elthontes). Because a scale or pair of balances was constructed with a crossbar reminding one of a “yoke” the term has this meaning in Revelation 6:5 where the rider of the black horse has “a balance (zygon) in his hand.”

Various kinds of draft animals were hitched or yoked together, but generally it was oxen or cattle. It is interesting that the Mosaic law forbade the yoking of an ox and an ass together (Deut 22:10) because of the inequality of the work, a rubric which no doubt is the source of the familiar mandate of the apostle that Christians should not be “unequally yoked together (heterozygountes) with unbelievers” (2 Cor 6:14 KJV). Yoked animals were used for pulling plows, stones, carts and other types of road or field work. Archeologists have discovered that yokes of many kinds were used throughout the ancient world and very early, and that yokes were crude and simple or more complex in design, depending upon the period of history.