555. Spears Scale Armor

Narrator: Chris Genthree
Duration: 2min
 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 11
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1. Romach is rendered “spear” in Judges 5:88They chose new gods; then was war in the gates: was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel? (Judges 5:8) and in several other texts; “javelin,” in Numbers 25:77And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand; (Numbers 25:7); “buckler,” in 1 Chronicles 12:88And of the Gadites there separated themselves unto David into the hold to the wilderness men of might, and men of war fit for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the mountains; (1 Chronicles 12:8); (in the plural) “lancets,” in 1 Kings 18:2828And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. (1 Kings 18:28). It is thought to have been a spear used by heavy-armed troops. Colonel Smith, in Kitto’s Cyclopaedia, (s. v. “Arms,”) says, “Probably the shepherd Hebrews, like nations similarly situated in northern Africa, anciently made use of the horn of an onyx, or a leucoryx, above three feet long, straightened in water, and sheathed upon a thorn-wood staff. When sharpened, this instrument would penetrate the hide of a bull, and, according to Strabo, even of an elephant; it was light, very difficult to break, resisted the blow of a battle-ax, and the animals which furnished it were abundant in Arabia and in the desert east of Palestine. At a later period the head was of brass, and afterward of iron.” These horn spears were probably the original type from which the various kinds of spears were subsequently produced. Precisely how the romach differed from the other heavy spear, the chanith (see note on 1 Sam. 17:77And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him. (1 Samuel 17:7), #253) we cannot say.
2. Siryon (“brigandine” in the text, and in Jeremiah 51:33Against him that bendeth let the archer bend his bow, and against him that lifteth himself up in his brigandine: and spare ye not her young men; destroy ye utterly all her host. (Jeremiah 51:3)) was a coat of scale armor; the same as shiryon, which is rendered “coat of mail” in 1 Samuel 17:55And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass. (1 Samuel 17:5), where see the note (#251).