Steel

"Steel" is an archaic English rendering inherited from older translations. The underlying Hebrew word nechosheth designates a copper alloy, not steel. UPDV consistently renders it as "bronze," and the verses traditionally indexed under "steel" appear there as bronze bows or bronze in lists with iron.

Bows of Bronze

Three parallel passages picture a warrior whose hands are trained for war and whose arms are strong enough to bend a metal bow. In David's song of deliverance: "He teaches my hands to war, So that my arms bend a bow of bronze" (2Sa 22:35). The Psalter parallel doubles the line: "He teaches my hands to war; So that my arms bend a bow of bronze" (Ps 18:34). In Job's discourse on the fate of the wicked, the bronze bow is a weapon of judgment: "He will flee from the iron weapon, And the bow of bronze will strike him through" (Job 20:24).

In each case the metal of the bow is bronze. The picture is of a heavy cast or wrought-bronze fitting on the bow — a strength image (the arms can draw it) or, in Job, a piercing image (the wicked cannot escape it).

Strength of Bronze

The fourth passage uses bronze alongside iron in a saying about whether resistance can break what is strongest: "Can one break iron, even iron from the north, and bronze?" (Jer 15:12). The verse pairs iron with bronze as a figure for what is unbreakable.

The four texts together present bronze (the older "steel") in two registers — bronze as the metal of the warrior's bow, and bronze as a figure of strength alongside iron.