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“swears” by Himself. To Abraham after his test involving His command to sacrifice his
son Isaac, God said: “By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done
this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee
…” (Gen. 22:16-17; cf. Isa. 45:23; Jer. 22:5). God also “swears” by His holiness (Amos
4:2).
The root for “to swear” and the root for “seven” are the same in Hebrew, and since
the number seven is the “perfect number,” some have conjectured that “to swear” is to
somehow “seven oneself,” thus to bind oneself with seven things. Perhaps this is
paralleled by the use of “seven” in Samson’s allowing himself to be bound by seven fresh
bowstrings (Judg. 16:7) and weaving the seven locks of his head (Judg. 16:13). The
relationship between “to swear” and “seven” is inconclusive.
SWORD
A. Noun.
(
, 2719), “sword; dagger; flint knife; chisel.” This noun has cognates in
several other Semitic languages including Ugaritic, Aramaic, Syriac, Akkadian, and
Arabic. The word occurs about 410 times and in all periods of biblical Hebrew.
Usually
represents an implement that can be or is being used in war, such as a
“sword.” The exact shape of that implement, however, is not specified by this word.
Presentday archaeology has unearthed various sickle swords and daggers from the
earliest periods. Sickle swords are so named because they are shaped somewhat like a
sickle with the outer edge of the arc being the cutting edge. These were long one-edged
“swords.” This is what
refers to when one reads of someone’s being slain with the
edge of the “sword”: “And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the
sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house …” (Gen. 34:26). The first biblical
occurrence of the word (Gen. 3:24) probably also represents such an implement: “… And
he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned
every way.…”
The precise meaning of
is confused, however, by its application to what we
know as a “dagger,” a short two-edged sword: “But Ehud made him a dagger which had
two edges, of a cubit [eighteen to twenty-four inches] length …” (Judg. 3:16).
The sickle sword was probably the implement used up to and during the conquest of
Palestine. About the same time the Sea Peoples (among whom were the Philistines) were
invading the ancient Near East. They brought with them a new weapon—the long two-
edged “sword.” The first clear mention of such a “sword” in the biblical record appears in
1 Sam. 17:51: “Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine [Goliath], and took his
sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him.…” Perhaps Saul also used the
highly superior Philistine armor and “sword” (1 Sam. 17:39), but this is not clear. It is
also possible that the angel who confronted Balaam with a drawn “sword” wielded a long
two-edged “sword” (Num. 22:23). Certainly this would have made him (humanly
speaking) a much more formidable sight. By the time of David, with his expertise and
concern for warfare, the large two-edged “sword” was much more prominent if not the
primary kind of “sword” used by Israel’s heavy infantry.
This two-edged “sword” can be compared to a tongue: “… Even the sons of men,
whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword” (Ps. 57:4). This usage
tells us not only about the shape of the “sword” but that such a tongue is a violent,