The Weapons of Our Warfare

In The Empty Men, his study of the heroic theme in the Bible, Gregory Mobley catalogs some of the odd weapons used by biblical warriors:

“In Judges and 1 Samuel, the relative inferiority of the weapons of the biblical heroes is emphasized. Shamgar ben Anat is lauded for killing six hundred Philistines with a malmad habbaqar, probably a wooden pole with a nail at the end, a cattle prod (Judg 3:31). In the prose version of the battle in the Jezreel Valley, the militia units of Naphtali and Zebulun, inspired in a sacred grove by the prophet Deborah and led on the field by the warrior Barak, must content against Canaanite infantry and, as constantly underlined through repetition, a huge chariot corps (Judg 4:3, 7, 13, 15, 16). Both the prose and poetic versions of this battle reach their climax when Jael, a Kenite woman in league with the Israelite clans, dispatches the Canaanite general Sisera with a hammer and tent peg (Judge 4:21; 5:26)” (56).

Samson fights with the jawbone of a donkey, David with a few stones in a sling. As Mobley summarizes, “Agricultural implements, domestic tools, ritual paraphernalia, wadi stones: the biblical heroes in Judges and Samuel are portrayed as artisans and pastoralists who, at best, beat plowpoints into swords, jerry-rigging victory against outfitted, diversified armies through a mixture of divine favour, tactical ingenuity, and resourcefulness” (59). Biblical heroes, in short, are not heroes in a classical sense at all. The weapons of their warfare are the weapons of productive work, domesticity, art. There’s a lesson in that.

Now, compare Iliad, Book 19.