a bow: the handheld weapon that shoots arrows, used in war and hunting
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This is the word's literal and most common sense: the wooden bow, strung and bent to drive an arrow. It belongs to the hunter who brings home game and to the soldier who fights at a distance, and it travels through the Old Testament as the standard piece of long-range weaponry, often paired with the sword and the spear.
The same word covers the bow as an object you carry, draw, string, and break, and the bow as a unit of an army's equipment. When the texts count bows alongside shields and arrows, or describe men skilled at handling the bow, the noun still names the physical weapon; the surrounding words supply the action of shooting or the role of the archer.
Nuances
1athe bow used in hunting, to bring down game
Gen 21:16Gen 27:3
1bthe bow as a weapon of war, carried, drawn, and shot in battle
the bow as a picture of fighting strength, the power that war is won or lost by
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Because the bow was the reach and force of an ancient army, the word came to stand for military might itself. To break someone's bow is to break their power to make war; to have one's bow stay strong is to keep one's vigor. The bow here is not a literal object being snapped in two but a way of naming strength, the way English can speak of breaking an enemy's sword arm.
This figure runs through the prophets and the Psalms. God breaks the bow and burns the chariot to end war; he shatters the bow of the mighty; the proud man's bow abides in strength while his power lasts. The same image lets a nation's defeat be announced simply by saying its bow is broken.
Nuances
2amilitary strength itself, especially as something broken to end a power
2bpersonal vigor or staying power, pictured as a bow that holds its strength
Gen 49:24*Job 29:20Psa 78:57Hos 7:16
3
the rainbow: the arc of color God set in the clouds as the sign of his covenant
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
Hebrew has no separate word for the rainbow; it is simply the bow, the same noun used for the weapon, now seen as a great arc stretched across the sky. After the flood God places his bow in the clouds as the sign that he will never again destroy the earth by water, and every time the bow appears he remembers the promise.
The picture is striking precisely because it is the war bow: the weapon of judgment is hung up in the sky, pointed away from the earth, turned into a pledge of peace. The prophet Ezekiel reaches for the same image to describe the radiance around God's glory, like the look of the bow in the cloud on a rainy day.
Nuances
3athe rainbow as the covenant sign after the flood
Gen 9:13Gen 9:14Gen 9:16
3bthe rainbow as an image of surrounding radiance and glory
Ezk 1:28
4
arrow: in the phrase "son of the bow," a poetic name for the bow's missile
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyStrong
In one poetic line the bow names not the weapon but what it launches. Hebrew can form a vivid kind of name by calling a thing the son of its source, so the arrow becomes the son of the bow. In Job, even this son of the bow cannot drive the great beast away.
This is a fixed figure of speech rather than a separate everyday meaning of the word. It is gathered here so that the verse is not forced under the literal weapon sense, where the bow itself would be in view rather than the arrow it sends.
the one Hebrew word covers both the weapon and the rainbow, so the flood sign is literally the warrior's bow hung in the cloudsGen 9:13
it can stand for fighting strength itself, so to break the bow is to break a nation's power to make warPsa 46:9
Both
both name the strung weapon that shoots arrows in war and the hunt1Sa 31:3
Only bow
English bow is split across unrelated things (a weapon, a knot, a bend of the body), and the reader must be told which is meant; it does not naturally carry the sense of military might
Is the launcher, the weapon a warrior carries, draws, and bends. It is taken up, strung, and held, and a fighter is identified by it: skilled archers reckoned by the bows in their hand.Gen 27:31Ch 8:40Psa 18:34
Carries meanings the missile never can: the bow as a standing image of military strength that God can break, and the very same word for the rainbow set in the clouds as a sign of the covenant.Psa 46:9Gen 9:13
Both
The two work as one weapon system and are routinely named together, the bow that is bent and the arrow that is set to it, so that to draw the bow is to send the arrow.2Ki 13:15
Together they stand for ranged attack as a whole, the archers and their volleys, whether of an advancing army or of the wicked who shoot from the shadows at the upright.Isa 5:28Psa 11:2
Is the missile itself, the thing that flies and strikes. It is shot, falls, and lodges in a target, and it pictures a sudden, piercing blow: God's arrows sunk into a sufferer, a wound, or a word that wounds like an arrow.Job 6:4Psa 38:2Pro 25:18
Stands in for a near or distant signal that can be aimed at a person, as when Jonathan shoots arrows past David as a coded warning.1Sa 20:201Sa 20:36
חֶרֶבthe sword, the close-range weapon often paired with the bow as the two halves of an army's arms
Is the ranged weapon, the launcher that strikes from a distance: bent, drawn, and shot, the mark of the archer rather than the foot soldier who closes in.Gen 27:32Ki 9:24Psa 18:34
Carries a meaning the blade never can: the very same word names the rainbow set in the clouds as a sign of the covenant, the war bow laid aside in peace.Gen 9:13Ezk 1:28
Both
Both are core weapons of the warrior, regularly paired to cover the whole armory at once, the blade for close combat and the bow for distance.Gen 48:22
Together they stand for war itself, which God can abolish by breaking both, snapping the bow and shattering the sword so that the land lies down in safety.Hos 2:18
Is the close-quarters blade, used hand to hand: drawn from its sheath, fallen upon, and turned against a neighbor at arm's length, the weapon of the man who comes right up to his enemy.Exo 32:27Num 22:23Jos 5:13
Becomes the standing word for war and slaughter in general, and even an everyday cutting tool, so that a whole population can be struck down by the edge of the blade, or a stone altar must not be shaped by an iron one.Jos 6:21Exo 20:25Lev 26:25
qeshet in the other biblical languages
τόξονGreek“bow”the Greek word for bow; in Revelation the rider on the white horse carries one, the only New Testament occurrence
Ranges across the whole Old Testament as both the literal weapon a warrior draws and a settled image of military might that God can break.Gen 27:3Psa 18:34Psa 46:9
Carries a meaning the Greek word never does here: the very same Hebrew word names the rainbow set in the clouds as the sign of God's covenant after the flood.Gen 9:13Gen 9:16
Both
Both name the bow as a weapon of war and an emblem of conquest, the Greek word standing where the Hebrew word's military sense would: a bow taken up to go out and prevail.Jer 49:35Rev 6:2
Appears just once in the New Testament, and there it is purely an image of conquest: the rider on the white horse holds a bow and goes out to conquer, with no rainbow or covenant overtone in view.Rev 6:2
What scholars say about qeshet
The standard lexica treat qeshet as a single noun, the bow, whose range runs from the literal weapon of war and the hunt to the rainbow and to figurative military strength. BDB and HALOT list the war/hunting bow, the rainbow of Genesis 9 and Ezekiel 1, and the metonymic use for strength (the breaking of the bow), and note the kenning ben-qeshet in Job 41:28 for the arrow. DCH catalogues the same spread of uses across the corpus. TDOT discusses the bow as a chief instrument of war and the theological turn by which the weapon of judgment becomes the covenant sign in the flood narrative.