Encyclopedia › Weapons and warfare
Weapons and warfare
Bow and arrow
Hebrew qeshet (bow), chets (arrow) · Greek toxon · the composite bow
The bow was the main weapon for striking from far away, used by hunters and herdsmen as well as armies: Ishmael grew up in the wilderness as an archer, and Esau went hunting with his quiver and bow. Early bows were cut from a single piece of wood. The best bow of the Bible period was the composite bow, built up from wood, strips of animal horn and sinew, glued together; it was light and powerful, and by one estimate it could shoot 300 meters or more. Stringing it took strength — the archer bent it with his foot, so the Hebrew speaks of “treading” a bow.
Arrow shafts were usually of reed, with heads of bronze and later of iron, shaped to pierce the armor of the day. Benjamin was known for archers who could shoot with either hand (1 Chronicles 12:2). Saul was badly wounded by archers on Mount Gilboa, and King Ahab died from an arrow shot at random that struck “between the joints of his armor” (1 Kings 22:34). Egyptian and Assyrian reliefs show whole companies of archers.
Key verses
And God was with the boy, and he grew up and settled in the wilderness and became a great archer.Take your weapons—your quiver and bow—and go out into the field to hunt some game for me.I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as if I were aiming at a target. Then I will send a boy and say, ‘Go, find the arrows!’ Now, if I expressly say to him, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them,’ then come, because as surely as the LORD lives, it is safe for you and there is no danger. But if I say to the young man, ‘Look, the arrows are beyond you,’ then you must go, for the LORD has sent you away.When the battle intensified against Saul, the archers overtook him and wounded him critically.they were archers using both the right and left hands to sling stones and shoot arrows; and they were Saul’s kinsmen from Benjamin):However, a certain man drew his bow without taking special aim, and he struck the king of Israel between the joints of his armor. So the king said to his charioteer, “Turn around and take me out of the battle, for I am badly wounded!”Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Archer, Archery; Armor and Weapons: Bow
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
