Exodus 22:6. If fire break out, and catch in thorns, so that the stacks of corn, or the standing corn, or the field, be consumed therewith; he that kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.
Thorns grow plentifully around the edges of the fields, and intermingle with the wheat. “By harvest-time they are not only dry themselves, but are choked up with tall grass dry as powder. Fire, therefore, catches in them easily, and spreads with great rapidity and uncontrollable fury; and as the grain is dead ripe, it is impossible to extinguish it” (Thomson, The Land and the Book, 1, 529). The farmers are exceedingly careful of fire at such times The Arabs in the valley of the Jordan, according to Burckhardt, put to death any person who fires the grass, even though it be done innocently. After the harvest, and before the autumnal rains set in, it is quite common to set the dry thorns and weeds on fire in order to clear the land for plowing, and to furnish a fertilizer from the ashes.
2. The word “stacks” would be better rendered by heaps, since the grain was not put into stacks as with us; but being left uncut until fully ripe, it was, as soon as cut, gathered into heaps, ready for the threshing floor.