How old is the literary tradition of the golden plow? This question arose unexpectedly while I was working my way through William Blake’s Jerusalem, where I encountered these striking lines:
They Plow’d in tears, the trumpets sounded before the golden Plow And the voices of the Living Creatures were heard in the clouds of heaven … (Blake, 1988, p. 205)
As often happens in literary exploration, the evocative image of the golden plow immediately diverted me from my primary task of continuing to read and understand Jerusalem. The golden plow, I realized, resonates deeply in our cultural consciousness, appearing not only in poetry but also in modern contexts—such as the Golden Plow Award, the highest honor presented to a sitting member of Congress by the American Farm Bureau.
The reasons for the golden plow’s enduring power as a poetic device are clear: the plow itself is a universal symbol of labor, cultivation, and renewal—an instrument that transforms barren soil into fertile ground, embodying humanity’s intimate connection with nature and the cycles of life. By portraying this familiar tool as golden, poets imbue it with sacred significance, elevating it from the mundane to the divine. Gold has long been associated with divinity, purity, and incorruptibility. In this sense, the golden plow often becomes not merely a tool of agriculture but a metaphor for spiritual or moral transformation, where the act of plowing symbolizes preparing the soul or society for renewal and growth.
This striking image led me to investigate its earliest literary appearances, which brought me to Herodotus’s Histories (late 5th century BC). In Book Four, he recounts the Scythian origin myth:
According to the Scythians, theirs is the youngest of nations, and it came into existence in the following way. The first man born in this land, when it was still uninhabited, was named Targitaos. They say that the parents of this Targitaos were Zeus and the daughter of the River Borysthenes, though that does not sound credible to me. Nevertheless, that is their claim. From such stock, then came Targitaos, and to him were born three sons: Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and the youngest of them, Colaxais. While they reigned, certain objects made of gold fell from the sky: they were a plow, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a cup. When these objects came to rest on Scythian ground, they were seen first by the eldest son, who, wanting to take them up, approached where they lay. But as he came near them, the gold caught on fire, so he left them there; and when the second son approached, the same thing happened. Thus the burning gold drove both of them away; but when the third and youngest son approached, the fire stopped burning and went out, so he carried the gold home, and the elder brothers reacted to this event by agreeing to surrender the entire kingdom to the youngest. (Herodotus, 2007, pp. 283–284)
While the specifically golden plow appears rarely in classical and medieval literature, the plow itself features prominently as a powerful symbol. In Virgil’s Georgics, the unadorned plow serves as both a practical tool and metaphor for poetic creation:
It must also be said what tools are the weapons of the hardy rustics,
without which neither could crops be sown nor harvests rise:
the plowshare and the heavy timber of the curved plow,
the slow-moving wagons of the Eleusinian mother,
the threshing boards, the sledges, and the rakes with uneven weight. (Virgil, 1846, Georgics I, lines 160–162, trans. by author)
Although Virgil’s plow is neither golden nor even gilded, its role as both a practical tool and poetic metaphor anticipates later literary uses of the golden plow as a symbol of sacred labor and creation.
The Jewish and Christian traditions, drawing upon their holy books, provided writers throughout the ages with rich sources of plowing imagery for metaphorical and allegorical purposes. Consider Luke 9:62, where commitment to discipleship is illustrated through the image of putting one’s hand to the plow; Amos 9:13, where the plowman overtaking the reaper symbolizes divine abundance and the promise of restoration; and Isaiah 2:4, where the transformation of swords into plowshares symbolizes divine peace. In these texts, the plow consistently signifies renewal, moral preparation, and divine purpose. This deep reservoir of symbolic meaning helps us understand the significance of Blake’s golden plow in Jerusalem.
In both Blake’s visionary poem and Herodotus’s historical narrative, the golden plow stands as a transformative symbol. For Blake, it is likely part of a cosmic act of redemption, accompanied by trumpets and celestial voices. For Herodotus, it conveys legitimacy and divine sanction within the founding myth of a nation. In each case, the golden plow bridges the earthly and the divine, elevating labor and effort to the realm of the sacred. This enduring image, rich with cultural and poetic imagination, invites reflection on how humanity’s most basic acts—plowing, cultivating, laboring—can become acts of profound spiritual significance.
That the symbol persists into our own time through awards like the Golden Plow Award suggests its continuing resonance with fundamental human values of cultivation, transformation, and excellence. Yet I wonder: might there be an even earlier literary reference to this powerful symbol than Herodotus’s account? Readers who know of earlier appearances are invited to share their findings.
References
Blake, W. (1988). The complete poetry & prose of William Blake (D. Erdman, Ed.; H. Bloom, Commentary). Anchor Books.
Ginsberg Project. (2024, October 14). William Blake – from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell – 14. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://allenginsberg.org/2024/10/oct14/ The Ginsberg Project has an interesting discussion of the Jerusalem extract which is the object of this post.
Herodotus. (2007). The landmark Herodotus: The histories (R. B. Strassler, Ed.; A. L. Purvis, Trans.; R. Thomas, Introduction). Pantheon Books.
The Jerusalem Bible: Reader’s Edition. (1968). Doubleday & Company.
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro). (1846). Georgica [Georgics], Book I, lines 160–162 (Hachette ed.). Translated by the author. Wikisource. Retrieved December 9, 2024, from https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Georgica_(Hachette)/Liber_I
Virgil. (2005). Virgil’s Georgics (J. Lembke, Trans.). Yale University Press.
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