a spear or lance: a long-shafted weapon tipped with a metal point, used for thrusting or braced against a charge rather than thrown.
This is one of several Hebrew words for a spear, and it leans toward the heavy thrusting lance: a long wooden shaft with a metal blade, gripped for stabbing at close quarters or set to meet an oncoming attack, not hurled from a distance.
In the histories it appears almost every time an army is being equipped, and it is nearly always paired with the shield. Kings arm their soldiers "with shield and spear" (2 Chronicles 11:12; 14:8; 25:5), and the men rebuilding Jerusalem's wall keep a tool in one hand and a spear ready in the other (Nehemiah 4:16, 21). The two words together came to mean simply "fully armed for war."
The prophets reach for the same object. Joel reverses the famous picture of peace, ordering a people to beat their farm tools into spears for a coming battle (Joel 3:10). Jeremiah shows Egypt's troops polishing their spears (Jeremiah 46:4), and Ezekiel foresees a defeated army's spears burned as firewood for years (Ezekiel 39:9).
Hebrew keeps other weapon-words apart from this one: the ordinary spear an individual warrior carries (חֲנִית), and the lighter javelin that is brandished or thrown (כִּידוֹן). This word points to the long lance of massed ranks.