the male donkey, the standard beast of burden and draft animal of the ancient Near East
The Hebrew chamor is the common domestic male donkey, distinguished from the she-donkey (H0860 אתון) and from the mule (H6505 פרד), which was a crossbred animal. Across the biblical record the donkey appears in every role the animal actually played: carrying loads and supplies, serving as a mount for travelers, being counted among a household's livestock wealth, and falling under Israelite law governing animals.
The legal texts treat the donkey as paradigmatic livestock alongside the ox. It falls under the tenth commandment's prohibition on coveting (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21), under Sabbath-rest requirements that extend to working animals (Exodus 23:12; Deuteronomy 5:14), under tort law covering pits and theft (Exodus 21:33; 22:4), under the duty to help a neighbor's straying or overburdened animal (Exodus 23:4-5), under the rule against yoking an ox and donkey together (Deuteronomy 22:10), and under the firstborn-redemption law requiring a donkey's firstborn to be redeemed with a lamb or else have its neck broken (Exodus 13:13; 34:20). These laws reflect how central the animal was to Israelite agricultural and village life.
The donkey appears in figurative and poetic uses without departing from the same referent: Issachar is compared to a strong donkey lying between its saddlebags (Genesis 49:14), Isaiah rebukes Israel by noting that even a donkey knows its master's feeding trough (Isaiah 1:3), Proverbs pairs a bridle for a donkey with a whip for a horse (Proverbs 26:3), and Zechariah pictures the coming king arriving on a donkey, not a war horse (Zechariah 9:9). These are all the same animal, understood in its actual social role.