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Weapons and warfare
Chariots and horses
Hebrew merkavah, rekhev · Greek harma · a two-wheeled vehicle drawn by horses
A chariot was a light two-wheeled car pulled by horses, carrying a driver and a fighter. It was above all a weapon, but kings and the wealthy also rode in chariots for travel, show and hunting: Pharaoh had Joseph ride in his second chariot (Genesis 41:43). The Hyksos, foreign rulers of Egypt in about the 17th–16th centuries BC, brought the war chariot into Egypt, and for centuries afterwards horse and chariot ruled the battlefield. Chariots needed flat ground: the Canaanites of the valleys had “iron chariots”, probably fitted with iron parts, and Jabin had nine hundred (Judges 4:3).
Israel’s hill-country tribes fought on foot, but Solomon built up 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses, kept in “chariot cities”, and traded in them: a chariot from Egypt cost six hundred shekels of silver, a horse one hundred and fifty (1 Kings 10:26–29). Pillared buildings at Megiddo were long taken for royal stables; by another view they were storehouses. An Assyrian inscription says Ahab sent 2,000 chariots to the battle of Qarqar in 853 BC.
Key verses
He had Joseph ride in his second chariot, with men calling out before him, “Bow the knee!” So he placed him over all the land of Egypt.He took 600 of the best chariots, and all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them.“The hill country is not enough for us,” they replied, “and all the Canaanites who live in the valley have iron chariots, both in Beth-shean with its towns and in the Valley of Jezreel.”Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, because Jabin had nine hundred chariots of iron, and he had harshly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.Solomon accumulated 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses, which he stationed in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.A chariot could be imported from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. Likewise, they exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of Aram.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 — Chariot; Animals: Horse; Hyksos*; Megiddo, Megiddon*
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.
