Engine

"Engines" in scripture are siege machines — battering rams, stone-throwers, arrow-shooting devices fixed on city walls or wheeled against them. The references span Uzziah's defensive arsenal in Jerusalem, the prophesied assault on Tyre, and the long siege wars of the Maccabean period.

Uzziah's defensive engines on Jerusalem's walls

The Chronicler credits Uzziah with mounting engines on Jerusalem's towers and battlements: "And 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 Chronicles 26:15). The devices are designed for missile defense — arrows and great stones from a fortified position.

Engines against Tyre

Ezekiel's oracle against Tyre describes Nebuchadnezzar's coming siege in the same vocabulary, but on offense: "And he will set his battering engines against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers" (Ezekiel 26:9). Engines that protected Jerusalem's towers in Uzziah's day are now battering down a foreign city's defenses.

Maccabean siege warfare

The 1 Maccabees narratives use "engines" repeatedly for the heavy machinery of Hellenistic siege. The forces under Antiochus build them outside fortified positions: "And they came together, and besieged them in the year one hundred and fifty, and they made battering slings and engines" (1 Maccabees 6:20). At the assault on the sanctuary the inventory expands: "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" (1 Maccabees 6:51). The defenders match the attack with their own machines: "And they also made engines against their engines, and they fought for many days" (1 Maccabees 6:52). At Dora, King Antiochus presses Tryphon under continuous siege "assaulting it continually, and making engines" (1 Maccabees 15:25).

Read across these passages, the term covers both sides of the same technology — wall-mounted defensive launchers and free-standing offensive batterers. The same vocabulary serves Uzziah's engineers, the prophet's oracle, and the Hellenistic battlefields of the Maccabees.