Archery

The bow is one of the oldest weapons in scripture, and almost every layer of the canon picks it up: a hunter's tool in the patriarchal narratives, a soldier's weapon in the conquest and the monarchy, a prophetic sign-act in the Elisha cycle, a figure for divine judgment in the Psalms and the prophets, and a covenantal token hung in the cloud after the flood. Hunters carry quivers, kings die between the joints of their armor when an arrow is loosed at random, prophets shoot arrows out of windows, and Yahweh himself draws his bow against his enemies and against, in Lamentations, his own people. The instrument that ends Saul's life on Gilboa is rendered with the same word Yahweh uses for the bow in the cloud — the pledge that the waters will not return.

The Hunter's Bow

Archery enters the narrative in the wilderness with Ishmael. Cast out with his mother, the boy grows up at Beer-sheba and into the bow: "And [the Speech of] God was with the lad, and he grew. And he dwelt in the wilderness, and became, as he grew up, an archer" (Gen 21:20). The same chapter measures Hagar's grief by a bow's reach: "she sat down across from him a good way off, as it were a bowshot. For she said, Don't let me see the child's death" (Gen 21:16) — the bowshot is already an idiom of distance.

A generation later the bow appears in Isaac's house. The blind father sends Esau out for venison with the same phrase used of the wilderness archer: "Now therefore take, I pray you, your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt venison for me" (Gen 27:3). Quiver and bow are paired as a hunter's kit; the same pairing recurs whenever a warrior is properly outfitted (Job 39:23).

Bow and Arrow in War

War-archery dominates the historical books. The bow is named alongside the buckler and the sword in muster-rolls of the trans-Jordan tribes — "of valiant men, men able to bear buckler and sword, and to shoot with bow, and skillful in war, were forty and four thousand seven hundred and threescore" (1 Chron 5:18) — and again of the Benjaminite descendants of Ulam, "mighty men of valor, archers, and had many sons, and sons' sons, a hundred and fifty" (1 Chron 8:40).

David, after Saul's death, codifies the bow into the national memory. The lament he composes is itself called by the weapon: "And he bade them teach the sons of Judah, 'The Bow.' Look, it is written in the Book of Jashar" (2 Sam 1:18). What had killed Saul becomes the title of Israel's elegy. The same bow is what the Almighty puts in the king's hands. Twice the royal psalm gives credit upward: "He teaches my hands to war, So that my arms bend a bow of bronze" (2 Sam 22:35; cf. Ps 18:34).

Several monarchic deaths are pinned on a single bowman. Saul falls on Mount Gilboa pressed by archers: "the battle went intensely against Saul, and the archers, men with the bow, overtook him; and he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers" (1 Sam 31:3). At Ramoth-gilead, after the Syrian king has ordered his chariot captains to fight only with the king of Israel (1 Kings 22:31-33), Ahab is killed by an unaimed shot: "a certain man drew his bow at a venture, and struck the king of Israel between the joints of the armor: therefore he said to the driver of his chariot, Turn your hand, and carry me out of the host; for I am critically wounded" (1 Kings 22:34). Jehu drops Joram with a deliberate shot: "And Jehu drew his bow with his full strength, and struck Joram between his arms; and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot" (2 Kings 9:24). At Megiddo Josiah falls the same way: "And the archers shot at King Josiah; and the king said to his slaves, Take me away; for I am critically wounded" (2 Chron 35:23).

Other peoples are catalogued by their archers. The Medes are conscripted against Babylon as a force whose "bows will dash the young men in pieces" (Isa 13:18). The men of Kedar are reduced to "the remnant of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the sons of Kedar" (Isa 21:17), few because Yahweh has decreed it. Egypt's coalition includes "the Ludim, that handle and bend the bow" (Jer 46:9), and Elam's strength is summed up by the same instrument: "Look, I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might" (Jer 49:35). Even when Yahweh musters Judah for war, the figure is drawn from archery: "For I have bent Judah for me, I have filled the bow with Ephraim; and I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece" (Zech 9:13).

The cost of fighting under archery is also reckoned. Deborah's song remembers archers as a fresh threat from which the watering-places must be reclaimed: "Far from the noise of archers, in the places of drawing water, There they will rehearse the righteous acts of Yahweh" (Judg 5:11). Joseph's tribal blessing reads the patriarch's life through the same image: "The archers have intensely grieved him because they shot at him, and persecuted him: But his bow remained firm, and the arms of his hands were agile, by [the Speech of] the Mighty One of Jacob, Israel's shepherd and rock" (Gen 49:23-24).

Sign-Acts with the Bow

Twice the bow becomes a prophet's sign. Jonathan, having promised to test his father's intent toward David, sets the warning into a practice round: "And I will shoot three arrows on its side, as though I shot at a mark" (1 Sam 20:20), and then sends the lad to retrieve them with a coded shout — "And as the lad ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. And when the lad came to the place of the arrow which Jonathan had shot, Jonathan cried after the lad, and said, Isn't the arrow beyond you?" (1 Sam 20:36-37). The arrow's flight is the message; David, in hiding, hears it and goes.

The Joash episode is more deliberate. The king has come to weep over the dying Elisha — "Now Elisha had fallen sick of his sickness of which he died: and Joash the king of Israel came down to him, and wept over him, and said, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" (2 Kings 13:14) — and the prophet turns the visit into a sign-act. He has the king draw a bow, lays his own hands over the king's hands, and orders him to shoot eastward: "Yahweh's arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Syria; for you will strike the Syrians in Aphek, until you have consumed them. And he said, Take the arrows; and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, Strike on the ground; and he struck three times, and stopped. And the man of God was angry with him, and said, You should have struck five or six times: then you would have struck Syria until you had consumed it, whereas now you will strike Syria but three times" (2 Kings 13:17-19). The number of strikes on the ground sets the limit of the victory.

Arrows are also turned to divination on pagan ground. At a fork in the road, Babylon's king "stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to tell his fortune: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the talismans, he looked in the liver" (Ezek 21:21).

Yahweh's Bow

The bow becomes one of the dominant figures for divine judgment. In Davidic theophany, Yahweh "sent out arrows, and scattered them; Lightning, and discomfited them" (2 Sam 22:15; cf. Ps 18:14), and the language hardens into a formula: "He has also prepared for him the instruments of death; He makes his arrows fiery [shafts]" (Ps 7:13). The royal psalms turn the bowstring against the king's enemies — "you will prepare with your bowstrings against their face" (Ps 21:12); "Your arrows are sharp; The peoples fall under you" (Ps 45:5) — and the cosmic psalms enlist the storm: "The clouds poured out water; The skies sent out a sound: Your arrows also went abroad" (Ps 77:17); "Cast forth lightning, and scatter them; Send out your arrows, and discomfit them" (Ps 144:6). The Song of Moses ends on the same image: "I will make my arrows drunk with blood, And my sword will devour flesh" (Deut 32:42). Habakkuk pictures the warrior God uncovering his weapon for theophany: "Your bow was bared naked; By means of [your Speech] the arrows are assigned by oath. Selah" (Hab 3:9), so that "The sun and moon stood still in their habitation, At the light of [your Speech] as they went, At the shining of your glittering spear" (Hab 3:11).

The same bow turns inward in the lament. Job feels the shafts: "For the arrows of the Almighty are inside me, The poison of which my spirit drinks up: The terrors of God set themselves in array against me" (Job 6:4). The penitent psalmist says it directly: "For your arrows pierce into me, And your hand presses me intensely" (Ps 38:2). And Lamentations refuses to soften the figure: "He has bent his bow like an enemy, he has stood with his right hand as an adversary, And has slain all who were pleasant to the eye: In the tent of the daughter of Zion he has poured out his wrath like fire" (Lam 2:4); "He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my reins" (Lam 3:12-13).

The bow is also the weapon Yahweh strikes from the hand. Of Gog: "I will strike your bow out of your left hand, and will cause your arrows to fall out of your right hand" (Ezek 39:3). Of the northern kingdom: "I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel" (Hos 1:5). Of Sennacherib in the Hezekiah oracle: "He will not come to this city, nor shoot an arrow there, neither will he come before it with shield, nor cast up a mound against it" (2 Kings 19:32). The instrument of judgment is also the instrument that judgment can disarm.

The Quiver

The quiver completes the kit. Job's warhorse charges where "The quiver rattles against him, The flashing spear and the javelin" (Job 39:23). The Servant of Isaiah is hidden as a finished weapon: "he has made me a polished shaft; in his quiver he has kept me close" (Isa 49:2). Sons are reckoned the same way: "Happy is the [noble] man who has his quiver full of them: They will not be put to shame, When they speak with their enemies in the gate" (Ps 127:5).

Figurative Arrows

Outside theophany the arrow becomes a stock figure for what wounds at distance. The wicked work in ambush: "the wicked bend the bow, They prepare their arrow on the string, That they may shoot in darkness at the upright in heart" (Ps 11:2). The slanderous tongue is reckoned the same way: "A man who bears false witness against his fellow man Is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow" (Prov 25:18); the lying tongue is itself "Sharp arrows of the mighty, With coals of juniper" (Ps 120:4). And Yahweh's protection is described in matching terms — "You will not be afraid for the terror by night, Nor for the arrow that flies by day" (Ps 91:5). Hosea pronounces a moral verdict using the same instrument: "they are like a deceitful bow; their princes will fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue" (Hos 7:16) — a bow that cannot be relied on.

The Bow in the Cloud

The same Hebrew word that names the war-bow names the rainbow. After the flood, Yahweh sets it as the sign of the Noahic covenant: "I have set my bow in the cloud, and it will be for a token of a covenant between [my Speech] and the earth" (Gen 9:13). The pledge is repeated: "when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant … and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow will be in the cloud; and I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant" (Gen 9:14-16). In the figure of Genesis 9, the weapon hung in the cloud is set there as the weapon that will not be drawn against all flesh again.

Sirach hears the same image as a doxology: "Behold the rainbow, and bless the Maker of it; It is exceedingly majestic in its glory; It encompasses the [heavenly] vault in its glory, And the hand of God has spread it out in might" (Sir 43:11-12), and uses it as a comparison for the high priest at his work: "Like the sun shining upon the Temple of the King, And like the bow appearing in the cloud" (Sir 50:7).

The visionary literature borrows the same color. Ezekiel sees "the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain" surrounding the throne-glory (Ezek 1:28); the throne-vision in Revelation reports a rainbow "around the throne, like an emerald to look at" (Rev 4:3); and a strong angel descending from heaven is "arrayed with a cloud; and the rainbow was on his head" (Rev 10:1). The covenant sign hung in the storm has become the standing iconography of God's presence.

The Conquering Rider

The bow makes one last appearance in the apocalypse, this time in the hand of a rider. At the breaking of the first seal: "I looked, and saw a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and there was given to him a crown: and he came forth conquering, and to conquer" (Rev 6:2). The weapon that opens the canon in Ishmael's wilderness closes it on a war-horse, with the same word — bow — and the same vector: shot from a distance, decisive at impact.