Spear

The spear is the long-shafted thrust-and-throw weapon that surfaces across UPDV scripture in the hand of priest, king, mighty man, and Roman soldier, and in the prophetic figures of weapons made and unmade. Its companion piece, the javelin, is the lighter throw-class weapon often paired with shield in the muster-rolls. Both are exhibited as named arms of Israel and the nations: borne in court, raised as a battle-signal, stored in the temple, brandished against city walls, broken by Yahweh, reforged into pruning-hooks, beaten back into spears again, hurled from siege engines, and finally driven into the side of the crucified body.

The Spear in Israel's Hand

The spear and the javelin appear early as the hand-weapon of the executioner, the conquest-signal, and the king's court-implement. When the Midianitish woman is brought into the camp, Phinehas the priest "rose up from the midst of the congregation, and took a spear in his hand" (Nu 25:7) — the weapon seized from the assembly for the immediate execution-stroke. At Ai, the same hand-carried weapon-class becomes the Yahweh-commanded battle-signal: "And Yahweh said to Joshua, Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai; for I will give it into your hand. And Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city" (Jos 8:18) — a javelin raised toward the target-city to open its fall.

In Saul's court the spear is the king's permanent companion, a sign of the king's office and a ready instrument of murderous impulse. He sits with it in Gibeah: "Saul was sitting in Gibeah, under the tamarisk-tree in Ramah, with his spear in his hand, and all his slaves were standing about him" (1Sa 22:6). When the evil-spirit-from-God comes upon him while David plays the harp, "Saul had his spear in his hand" (1Sa 18:10), and in the next verse "Saul cast the spear; for he said, I will strike David even to the wall. And David avoided out of his presence twice" (1Sa 18:11). The court-implement and the murder-implement are the same weapon.

At the head of David's mighty-men roll the spear becomes the unstated instrument of legendary kill-counts: "Jishbaal the Hachmonite, [of] the elite troops; the same was Adino the Eznite, against eight hundred slain at one time" (2Sa 23:8). The Adino-the-Eznite epithet ("the spear-shaker," in the rabbinic gloss the rows do not invoke) is left implicit in the UPDV text; what the verse gives is the eight-hundred kill-tally laid against the elite head-of-the-mighty-men roll.

The Philistine Champion's Beam-Like Spear

Two Goliaths are described with the same signature weapon. Of the Gath champion in the Elah valley: "the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head [weighed] six hundred shekels of iron: and his shield-bearer went before him" (1Sa 17:7). The shaft is graded against the heaviest known wooden beam; the iron point is fixed at six-hundred-shekel mass. Of Goliath the Gittite slain at Gob in David's later wars: "Elhanan the son of Jari the Beth-lehemite slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam" (2Sa 21:19) — the same weaver's-beam description re-applied to a second Gath-lineage giant, marking the oversized spear as the signature arm of the Philistine giant-class warrior.

Mustered Spear-and-Shield Forces

The chronicler's musters rate Israel's tribal levies by their competence with spear and shield as a paired weapons-set. The Gadites who defect to David at the wilderness stronghold are graded as "mighty men of valor, men trained for war, who could handle shield and spear; whose faces were like the faces of lions, and they were as swift as the roes on the mountains" (1Ch 12:8). Asa's two-tribe army is broken out by weapon: "Asa had an army that bore bucklers and spears, out of Judah three hundred thousand; and out of Benjamin, that bore shields and drew bows, 280,000: all these were mighty men of valor" (2Ch 14:8) — the buckler-and-spear Judahite infantry distinguished from the shield-and-bow Benjaminite force. Amaziah's muster repeats the rating: "three hundred thousand chosen men, able to go forth to war, that could handle spear and shield" (2Ch 25:5).

The same hand-stretched, weapon-brandished battle-image carries forward in Sirach's praise of Joshua: "How glorious he was when he stretched forth his hand, And brandished his javelin against the city" (Sir 46:2) — the city-besieging javelin-bearing battle-figure remembered as the glory-frozen warfare-image of the conquest.

The Tabernacle Arsenal

Spears are also fixtures of the temple armory. At the moment Jehoiada arms the captains for Joash's coronation muster, the David-stored arsenal is brought out: "And Jehoiada the priest delivered to the captains of hundreds the spears, and bucklers, and shields, that had been king David's, which were in the house of God" (2Ch 23:9). The house-of-God arsenal supplies the spears, the bucklers, and the shields that arm the coronation guard.

Siege Engines That Cast Javelins

In the late-Israelite era the javelin appears as siege-engine ammunition, hurled against the sanctuary itself. As the Seleucid army turns against the temple, "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 hand-thrown javelin of the muster-roll has become a stone-and-javelin-casting engine in the Seleucid siege-train.

The Spear Broken, Reforged, and Reforged Again

The prophetic and psalmic registers do not leave the spear in the hand of warriors. In the Korahite oracle Yahweh himself unmakes the weapon: "He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in sunder; He burns the shields in the fire" (Ps 46:9) — the world-wide war-cessation effected not by a treaty but by the divine destruction of bow, spear, and shield.

Isaiah and Micah both project the same weapon-conversion image into the latter-days settlement: "they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore" (Isa 2:4; cf. Mic 4:3, "they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks"). The named war-thrust is positively re-forged into orchard-tooling, paired with the sword-to-plowshare conversion as the doubled disarmament image.

Joel inverts the same picture for the day of mustering judgment: "Beat your⁺ plowshares into swords, and your⁺ pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong" (Joel 3:10). The pruning-hook is hammered back into a spear, the latter-days direction is reversed for the day of war, and the plural-you is addressed to the nations called to battle.

Sirach files the spear under a different comparison. Set against the question of what avails against an enemy, the sage writes: "Better than a mighty shield and a heavy spear Will this avail you against an enemy" (Sir 29:13) — the heavy spear named as the maximum-offensive baseline that the alms-store is graded as exceeding in availability against an enemy.

The Spear in the Side

The spear's last appearance in UPDV is at the cross. After the soldiers have broken the legs of the others and found Jesus already dead, "nevertheless one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and immediately there came out blood and water" (John 19:34). The named weapon produces the immediate flow of blood and water from the wound.

The piercing is taken up in the Zechariah oracle: "And I will pour on the house of David, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they will look to me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and will be in bitterness for him, as one who is in bitterness for his firstborn" (Zech 12:10). And in the Apocalypse the same piercing-language is set in the coming-with-the-clouds verdict: "Look, he comes with the clouds; and every eye will see him, and those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. Even so, Amen" (Rev 1:7). The spear-thrust at the crucifixion stands behind the looking-on-the-pierced-one of the prophet and the every-eye-shall-see-him of the Apocalypse.