arrow: the pointed shaft shot from a bow, and by extension anything that strikes and wounds from a distance.
At its core this is a plain object: the arrow a hunter or soldier fits to a bowstring and lets fly. Most of its uses are literal, from Jonathan shooting arrows past a boy to mark a warning, to a besieged city bracing for the enemy's volleys.
Because an arrow wounds suddenly and from far off, before its target can react, the writers reach for it again and again as a picture of any unseen blow. The most charged version of that picture is God's own arrows: when the Bible says God draws his bow, the arrows are his judgments, his lightning, his plagues, striking the wicked or chastening his people. The same image runs the other way too, naming human cruelty, a slandering tongue, a false witness, a treacherous friend, each one an arrow loosed in secret.
The one warm use of the picture turns it on its head: children are arrows in a warrior's hand, a man's strength sent out into the future. Whether the arrow brings harm or honor, the constant is its reach: it touches what the hand cannot.