Bulwark
A bulwark is the heavy defensive work — wall, rampart, tower, fortified gate — that stands between a city and the army outside it. The UPDV uses the word in two registers. The first is concrete: the besieger throws up bulwarks of cut timber against a city he means to take, and the besieged king builds towers, walls, battlements, and engines to keep the city standing. The second is figurative: the worshipper is told to walk Zion's circuit and number her bulwarks, and the prophet sings of a strong city whose walls and bulwarks are nothing other than the salvation Yahweh appoints.
Building Bulwarks Against a City
Bulwark first appears in the law of siege. The hearer who has just been told to make peace-offers, and to spare food-trees, is also told what to do with the rest of the woodlot: "Only the trees of which you know that they are not trees for food, you will destroy and cut them down; and you will build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls" (Deut 20:20). The bulwark is the assault-work, raised from non-fruiting timber, planted against the wall until the wall comes down. The Preacher's parable carries the same picture: "There was a little city, and few men inside it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it" (Ec 9:14).
The siege-record shows what those bulwarks looked like in practice. At Abel of Beth-maacah, Joab's force "cast up a mound against the city, and it stood against the rampart; and all the people who were with Joab battered the wall, to throw it down" (2 Sam 20:15). At Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar's army "encamped against it; and they built forts against it round about" (2 Kgs 25:1). Against Tyre, the prophet hears Yahweh promise: "he will set his battering engines against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers" (Ezek 26:9). The bulwark is the besieger's working-end — earthwork, ramp, and battering apparatus pressed against the defender's wall.
Towers, Battlements, and Engines
On the defending side, the bulwark is the tower-and-battlement system itself. Uzziah's reign furnishes the catalogue. He "built towers in Jerusalem at the corner gate, and at the valley gate, and at the turning [of the wall], and fortified them" (2 Chr 26:9), and then equipped the walls themselves: "he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers and on the battlements, with which to shoot arrows and great stones. And his name spread far abroad; for he was marvelously helped, until he was strong" (2 Chr 26:15). The artillery sits on the bulwarks; the bulwarks carry the artillery.
The Maccabaean record adds the counter-engine. When the Seleucid king turned his army against the sanctuary "for many days," he "set up there battering slings, and engines and instruments to cast fire, and engines to cast stones and javelins, and pieces to shoot arrows, and slings" (1Ma 6:51). The defenders matched him at the wall: "they also made engines against their engines, and they fought for many days" (1Ma 6:52). The same wall holds two systems — one to break it, one to keep it whole.
The Fortified City of David
The bulwarking of a city often takes its name from the man who built it. David begins the pattern: "David dwelt in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Millo and inward" (2 Sam 5:9). The Antiochene occupiers reverse it on the same hill: "they built the city of David with a great and strong wall, and with strong towers, and made it a fortress for them" (1Ma 1:33). Judas answers them on Mount Zion: "they built up also at that time Mount Zion, with high walls, and strong towers round about, otherwise the nations should at any time come, and tread it down as they did before" (1Ma 4:60). And Judas anchors the southern frontier the same way: "he placed a garrison there to keep it, and he fortified it to secure Beth-zur, that the people might have a defense against Idumea" (1Ma 4:61).
Simon takes the program to its limit. After Bacchides had built "strong cities in Judea, the fortress that was in Jericho, and in Ammaus, and in Beth-horon, and in Bethel, and Thamnata, and Phara, and Thopo, with high walls, and gates, and bars" (1Ma 9:50) as the Seleucid containment-ring, Simon "gathering together all the men of war, he made haste to finish the walls of Jerusalem, and he fortified it round about" (1Ma 13:10), and then extended it across the country: "Simon built up the strongholds of Judea, fortifying them with high towers, and great walls, and gates, and bars: and he stored up victuals in the fortresses" (1Ma 13:33). The bulwark-program is finally ratified by the rival power itself: "let Jerusalem be holy and free, and all the armor that has been made, and the fortresses which you have built, and which you hold in your hands, let them remain to you" (1Ma 15:7).
The same program closes Sirach's praise of Simon the high priest. "In his days the wall was built, [With] turrets for strength like a king's palace" (Sir 50:3), and "he considered how [to protect] his people from ruin, And fortified his city against the enemy" (Sir 50:4). The high priest is exhibited as the bulwark-builder of the people he serves.
Yahweh as the Breaker of Bulwarks
The same God who appoints walls also brings them down. Against Damascus and the northern kingdom: "the fortress will cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria" (Isa 17:3). Against Moab: "the high fortress of your walls he has brought down, laid low, and brought to the ground, even to the dust" (Isa 25:12). The fortress-class is not exempt from judgment; it is the first-named casualty. When Yahweh turns against a city, its bulwarks come down to the dust along with everything else they were built to protect.
The Bulwarks of Zion
Beside the literal bulwark stands a figurative one. The pilgrim is told to walk the city's circuit and to count what stands: "Mark⁺ well her bulwarks; Consider her palaces: That you⁺ may tell it to the generation following" (Ps 48:13). The plural-you imperative is corporate — the worshipping community walks Zion's wall and reads off her towers as the testimony to be handed down. The bulwarks are evidence, not just defense.
Isaiah pushes the figure further. In the song of the strong city, the wall itself is named: "In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; salvation he will appoint for walls and bulwarks" (Isa 26:1). Salvation is what the wall is made of. The bulwark is no longer cut timber or quarried stone; it is what Yahweh assigns in their place.
Walls That Receive
At the close of the prophets the figure shifts once more. The bulwark stops keeping the nations out and begins to gather them in. "A day for building your⁺ walls! In that day the decree will be far removed" (Mic 7:11) opens the oracle, and the next verse fills the freshly walled city with arrivals: "In that day they will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt, and from Egypt even to the River, and from sea to sea, and [from] mountain to mountain" (Mic 7:12). The walls are still walls; their function has changed. The bulwark that once kept the besieger out now stands as the receiving-perimeter of the rebuilt city.
The same reversal is made personal in the Psalter. "No evil will befall you, Neither will any plague come near your tent" (Ps 91:10) places the same line of immunity Isaiah pictures around Jerusalem around the single sheltered worshipper, this time without any wall at all — the bulwark is the divine keeper standing where the masonry would. Isaiah's restored land lives the same condition at corporate scale: "my people will remain in a peaceful habitation, and in safe dwellings, and in quiet resting-places" (Isa 32:18). And under Simon, when the fortress-program of 1 Maccabees has done its full work, the people pass into the older formula: "every man sat under his vine, and under his fig tree: and there was none to make them afraid" (1Ma 14:12). The bulwarks have done what bulwarks are for; the unafraid sitting under one's own vine is what they were built to make possible.