363. Stone Bows

Narrator: Chris Genthree
1 Chronicles 12:2  •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 9
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1 Chronicles 12:2. They were armed with bows, and could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow.
It will be noticed that the words hurling and shooting have been supplied by the translators. Without them the reading would be, “could use both the right hand and the left in stones and arrows out of a bow.” This has led some to think that there was in use among the Hebrews a kind of bow for shooting stones as well as arrows; an instrument corresponding to the stone-bow in use in the Middle Ages. These stone-bows of David’s men may have suggested the invention, two hundred and fifty years’ later, of the heavier instruments of a similar character to be used in sieges. See note on 2 Chronicles 26:15 (#370).