A man is tilling his field using a team of oxen. The work is hard and backbreaking, requiring him to drive the plow into the ground with all his srength. Despite his efforts, it will all come to nothing. There will be no harvest for him. Death has come for him.
In an ironic metaphor, the team of oxen is being aided by death which is of course no real help. It is an allusion to the toil which humans will have to experience following their expulsion from Eden, the husbandman plows his fields with the help of death, the Grim Reaper.
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Holbein - the Dance of Death.
