weapon: something sent or wielded against an enemy, of no one particular kind
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
This noun is built straight off the common verb "to send" (שָׁלַח). A weapon named this way is simply a thing you send out, whatever leaves your hand toward an enemy, which is why older English Bibles often render it "dart" or "missile". By the time it appears in the Bible it has already widened past thrown weapons and covers whatever arm a person happens to be holding.
Where it appears shapes what it pictures. Three of its verses put it in one man's hand while he stands guard: in the temple courtyard on the day Joash is crowned, and on the wall while Nehemiah's builders work with one hand and grip a weapon with the other. Two more look at weapons in quantity, with Hezekiah turning them out in bulk for a city about to be besieged and Joel's locust army pouring straight through a line of them without breaking stride.
Two lines in Job take a further step, using the weapon for the death rather than the tool: God is said to hold a man back from passing away by the weapon. Those two lines are genuinely hard to read, because the same spelling can also name a water channel, and translations divide over which is meant.
Nuances
1aa weapon held in a person's hand, of whatever kind
2Ch 23:10Neh 4:17(11)Neh 4:23(17)*
1bweapons in quantity: the arms a city turns out or an attacking force runs into
2Ch 32:5Jol 2:8
1cthe weapon standing for a violent death, in Elihu's warnings about how a life ends
CertaintyContested
Job 33:18*Job 36:12*
Job 33:18
Whether the noun in Job 33:18 names a weapon or is a designation of the channel or river of the underworld.
majorityIt names a weapon, so the line is about being kept back from a violent death.; BDB, s.v. שֶׁלַח; HALOT, s.v. שֶׁלַח
minorityIt names the channel or river of the underworld, so the line is about being kept back from crossing over to the realm of the dead; the reading rests on Ugaritic parallels and on the same root naming the water conduit at Jerusalem.; Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15 (Doubleday)
Job 36:12
Whether the noun in Job 36:12 names a weapon or is a designation of the channel or river of the underworld that the dead cross.
majorityIt names a weapon, so the line says the unheeding perish by it.; BDB, s.v. שֶׁלַח; HALOT, s.v. שֶׁלַח
minorityIt names the channel or river of the underworld, so the line says they cross over into the realm of the dead; the reading rests on Ugaritic parallels and on the same root naming the water conduit at Jerusalem.; Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15 (Doubleday)
2
shoots: the new growth a plant sends out
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyContested
The same idea of sending sits behind this use, only here the sender is a plant. What a garden pushes out, its shoots and young branches, can be called what it sends. English versions render it "shoots", "plants", or "branches".
The word is used this way once, in the Song of Songs, where the beloved is a locked garden whose shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruit. Because it occurs here only once, and because the surrounding lines are full of water, a well and a flowing stream, some readers take the word as the garden's water channels instead of its shoots, since the same root names the channel that fed the pool at Jerusalem. Most translations keep the growing sense, and the picture of a fruitful garden holds either way.
Sng 4:13*
Disputed
Whether the word in Song of Songs 4:13 names the garden's shoots or its irrigation channels.
majorityIt names the shoots or plants the garden sends out, matching the orchard imagery of the verse.; BDB, s.v. שֶׁלַח; HALOT, s.v. שֶׁלַח
minorityIt names the garden's water channels, on the analogy of the conduit at Jerusalem named from the same root and the water imagery in the following verses.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (Doubleday)
the Hebrew names the object by what is done with it, something sent out, which is why it can be used of a thrown missile and of an arm held in the hand alike2Ch 32:52Ch 23:10
Both
both cover any implement carried or used to fight, without saying which kind it isNeh 4:17Jol 2:8
Only weapon
the English "weapon" is a flat, colorless term that gives no hint of the sending idea behind the Hebrew, and it sounds modern and military in a way the Hebrew does not
nothing in the Hebrew word says the weapon was a blade, so choosing "sword" adds a detail the text does not giveJob 33:18
Both
both can stand in for a violent death rather than the object itselfJob 36:12
Only sword
the English "sword" pictures one specific weapon, and Hebrew has its own very common word for that
“dart”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“javelin”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“missile”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“shoots”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“plants”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How shelaḥ differs from similar Hebrew words
נֶשֶׁקthe collective word for war equipment, the arms and gear of an army taken together, where this word points at the single weapon a person sends or holds.
Belongs to one person and sits in that person's own hand. Each man of the guard at Joash's crowning stands with his weapon in his hand, Nehemiah's builders carry loads with one hand and grip the weapon with the other, and the men keep their own weapon on them without changing clothes.2Ch 23:10Neh 4:17Neh 4:23
Can name the death a weapon deals rather than the object. Elihu says God holds a person back from passing away by the weapon, and warns that those who will not listen pass away by it. Some scholars hear a name for the river of the dead in these two lines instead.Job 33:18Job 36:12
Both
Neither word tells you what kind of weapon is in view. When a passage wants a sword or a bow or a shield named, it has to add those words alongside: Ezekiel lists the individual arms next to the weaponry he is burning, and Hezekiah's output is described as weapons in quantity plus shields.Ezk 39:92Ch 32:5
Both can name what a city keeps on hand against a siege. Judah looked to the weapons stored in the House of the Forest when its defenses were tested, and Hezekiah turned out weapons in quantity while he rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem.Isa 22:82Ch 32:5
Both can name the armed line an attacker runs up against. The war horse charges out to meet the weaponry, and Joel's advancing swarm falls right through the weapons without breaking stride.Job 39:21Jol 2:8
Counts as a category of property in a list of a kingdom's goods. Solomon's yearly tribute arrives as silver, gold, garments, weaponry, spices, horses and mules, and Jehu's letter tallies chariots, horses, a fortified city and weaponry as the assets Samaria's leaders still hold.1Ki 10:252Ch 9:242Ki 10:2
Works as an umbrella term that particular arms fall under. Ezekiel says Israel will burn the weaponry and then itemizes what that heap contains, shield and body shield and bow and arrows and hand club and spear, before the next verse goes back to calling the whole pile the fuel for the fire.Ezk 39:9Ezk 39:10
Stretches from the arms to the place that holds them: Jerusalem's wall repairs are measured from the ascent to the armory.Neh 3:19
Stands in for the fighting itself, so that the phrase rendered "the day of weapons" simply means the day of battle.Psa 140:7
חֶרֶבthe sword, by far the most common Hebrew weapon word, naming a specific blade; this word names no particular kind of weapon.
Says only that the thing is a weapon and never says which kind. Hezekiah turns them out in quantity along with shields (2 Chronicles 32:5), the guard around the boy king each stand holding one (2 Chronicles 23:10), and Nehemiah's builders keep one gripped in the free hand while the other hand works (Nehemiah 4:17). In none of these can a reader tell whether a blade, a spear, or a bow is meant.2Ch 32:52Ch 23:10Neh 4:17
It is rare, only a handful of places in the whole Hebrew Bible, and it clusters in the rebuilding and defense scenes of the later histories, where the point is that everyone was armed rather than what they were armed with (Nehemiah 4:23,2 Chronicles 32:5).Neh 4:232Ch 32:5
In Job it is the bare instrument of death in a picture of a life cut short, and English versions there almost always print "sword" even though the Hebrew has not said blade: a life held back from passing away by the weapon (Job 33:18), and those who will not listen passing away by it (Job 36:12). Readers who meet this word in Job should know the "sword" is the translator's choice, not the text's.Job 33:18Job 36:12
Its vagueness is exactly what makes the locust picture work in Joel: the swarm pours straight through whatever is thrown at it and keeps going unbroken (Joel 2:8), which reads as armament in general rather than one named blade.Jol 2:8
The same spelling also names something with no weapon in it at all, the young shoots of a garden, where a bride's growth is described as an orchard of pomegranates (Song of Songs 4:13). The word for a sword never stretches that way.Sng 4:13
Both
Both name something a person has in hand when danger is close: an angel standing in the road with a drawn blade (Numbers 22:23), and every man of the temple guard posted around the king holding his weapon (2 Chronicles 23:10).Num 22:232Ch 23:10
Both can be the thing a person dies by, standing for lethal force itself: Moses and Aaron fear God will strike the people with plague or with the blade (Exodus 5:3), and Job's friend warns that those who refuse to listen pass away by the weapon (Job 36:12).Exo 5:3Job 36:12
Both count as war material a nation stockpiles or is denied: no metalworker was left in Israel who could make one for the army (1 Samuel 13:19), and Hezekiah manufactures them in bulk while fortifying Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 32:5).1Sa 13:192Ch 32:5
Names one particular object, a blade with a cutting edge, so it shows up in work that has nothing to do with battle: the flint blades made for circumcision (Joshua 5:2), the iron tool whose touch would ruin an altar of uncut stone (Exodus 20:25), and the sharp blade a prophet uses as a barber's razor on his own head and beard (Ezekiel 5:1).Jos 5:2Exo 20:25Ezk 5:1
Because it is a definite thing with a shape, the text can do definite things with it: sharpen it until it flashes (Deuteronomy 32:41), strap it under a cloak against the right thigh (Judges 3:16), fall on it to die rather than be captured (1 Samuel 31:4).Deu 32:41Jdg 3:161Sa 31:4
Stands on its own as a figure for war and slaughter, listed beside plague and famine as one of the ways a nation is destroyed (Leviticus 26:25,Ezekiel 5:12), and it is what the prophets picture being hammered into farm tools on the day war stops (Isaiah 2:4,Micah 4:3).Lev 26:25Ezk 5:12Isa 2:4Mic 4:3
This is the ordinary, everywhere word, running from the blazing blade that guards the way back into the garden (Genesis 3:24) to Goliath's own weapon drawn from its sheath and used against him (1 Samuel 17:51). In Nehemiah's building crew it is specifically what a man wears buckled at his side (Nehemiah 4:18), a detail the vaguer word for a weapon cannot supply.Gen 3:241Sa 17:51Neh 4:18
כִּידוֹןthe javelin or short spear, a named thrown weapon, where this word is the general term for whatever is sent against an enemy.
This is the catch-all term for whatever a man happens to be armed with. Palace guards, wall builders, and their servants each hold one, and the text never says what kind of weapon it is.2Ch 23:10Neh 4:17Neh 4:23
It also covers armaments in bulk, the supply a king turns out in quantity alongside shields while he is bracing a city for attack.2Ch 32:5
In poetry it stands for violent death itself. To pass away "by the weapon" simply means to be killed, with no particular weapon in view.Job 33:18Job 36:12
Both
Both name something an armed man grips in his hand when trouble comes, and both appear in scenes where the weapon is up and in use rather than stored away.Jos 8:182Ch 23:10
Both belong to a nation's war stores: one is what a raiding army grips as it rides out, the other is what a defending king produces in quantity before the attack lands.Jer 6:232Ch 32:5
Names one particular piece of gear, so a writer can list it beside other named weapons: it stands next to the sword and the spear in a warrior's challenge, and next to the bow in two descriptions of an invading army.1Sa 17:45Jer 6:23Jer 50:42
The text treats it as a solid object you could pick up and weigh: made of bronze and slung between a giant's shoulders, and noisy enough in flight that a fearless creature is pictured laughing at the clatter of it.1Sa 17:6Job 41:29
It can be a single identifiable object held out as a battlefield signal, stretched toward a town and kept pointed there until the fighting is finished.Jos 8:18Jos 8:26
יוֹנֶקֶתthe tender young shoot or sucker of a plant, a specific bit of new growth, where the plant sense of this word is the growth a garden puts out generally.
In every verse but one it is not a plant at all but a weapon: the thing a guard holds in his hand, the gear a builder keeps beside him, the line of arms an attacking swarm pours straight through.2Ch 23:10Neh 4:17Jol 2:8
Its one growing use looks at a whole cultivated garden and prizes it for what it yields, an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruit and fragrant spices, rather than at one sprig on a tree.Sng 4:13
Because that growing use turns up only once, its reading is unsettled: some scholars take the word there as the garden's water channels instead, since the same root names the channel that fed the pool at Jerusalem.Sng 4:13
Both
Both name the new growth a plant sends up, the shoots rather than the root or the trunk they come from, and English versions render both of them "shoots".Job 14:7Sng 4:13
In both, that growth stands for someone rather than for actual gardening: the shoot spreading over a garden pictures a man's life in Job, and the garden's shoots picture the bride being praised in the Song.Job 8:16Sng 4:13
This is the tender growth a tree puts out from its own wood, the sprig that comes up off a stump that has been cut down or is cropped from the very top of a cedar.Job 14:7Ezk 17:22
It carries a note of fragility. The same slender growth is the proof that a felled tree is still alive, and it is the first thing a flame dries up.Job 14:7Job 15:30
It is the standard image for a family line or a nation carrying on: a vine that reaches its runners all the way to the river, a people whose growth spreads wide again, a tender twig taken from the treetop and replanted on a high mountain.Psa 80:11Hos 14:6Ezk 17:22
Every one of its verses is about a plant. The word has no second, unrelated use, and its meaning is not in doubt anywhere it appears.Job 8:16Job 14:7Hos 14:6
שֶׁלַחShelah is a biblical name written exactly like שֶׁ֫לַח, the common Hebrew word grouped here.
שֶׁלַחShelah; Shiloah is a biblical name written exactly like שֶׁ֫לַח, the common Hebrew word grouped here.
shelaḥ in the other biblical languages
ὅπλονGreek“weapon”the general Greek word for a weapon or implement of war, which in the New Testament mostly turns up as a picture of the weapons a believer fights with.
The Hebrew word can stand for the violent death itself rather than for the object, in Elihu's warnings that a life is either held back from ending by the weapon or lost to it.Job 33:18Job 36:12
It names the single weapon in one man's hand while he stands watch or works, gripped in one hand while the other keeps busy.2Ch 23:10Neh 4:23
The same Hebrew spelling doubles as a garden word for the new growth a plant sends out, so a reader meeting it has to decide whether a weapon is in view at all.Sng 4:13
Both
Each is its language's plain, general term for a weapon, naming no particular kind: the builders on the wall simply hold a weapon, a swarm pushes straight through weapons that should have stopped it, and the party that comes to arrest Jesus carries weapons alongside its lanterns and torches.Neh 4:17Jol 2:8Jhn 18:3
Both widen from one item to the armament of a whole force: Hezekiah turns out weapons in quantity for a city about to be besieged, and Paul speaks of the weapons belonging to the campaign he is waging.2Ch 32:52Co 10:4
In the New Testament this word is nearly always a picture rather than a real weapon: Paul asks readers to hand over the parts of their bodies as weapons for wrongdoing or for right living, and calls the arms of his own campaign weapons that are not made of flesh.Rom 6:132Co 10:4
It reaches beyond what is swung or thrown to the gear a fighter wears, so it can be put on like clothing as the "armor of light", and can be split between the striking hand and the shielding one.Rom 13:122Co 6:7
The New Testament always speaks of these weapons in the plural, the whole kit a fighting man carries rather than the one item in his grip.Jhn 18:3Rom 13:12
βέλοςGreek“arrow”the Greek word for an arrow or thrown missile, closer to the narrow original idea of something launched, where the Hebrew word had already broadened to any weapon.
Had already widened past thrown weapons to whatever arm a person happens to be gripping, which is the opposite end of a fight from an arrow in flight. Guards ring the young king in the temple courtyard each with his weapon in hand, Nehemiah's builders work with one hand and hold a weapon with the other, and his men keep that weapon on them even when they go for water.2Ch 23:10Neh 4:17Neh 4:23
Is counted in bulk, as the stock of arms a city turns out or as the line of weapons an attacking force runs into. Hezekiah makes them in quantity alongside shields before a siege, and Joel's locust army pours straight through them without breaking stride.2Ch 32:5Jol 2:8
Can stand for the violent death itself rather than for the object, in Elihu's warnings that a man is held back from passing away by it, though scholars are divided over whether these two lines speak of a weapon at all.Job 33:18Job 36:12
Both
Both name the weapon by what is done with it rather than by its shape. The Hebrew word is built on the verb "to send" and the Greek word on the verb "to throw", so each one amounts to a thing let fly at somebody.2Ch 32:5Eph 6:16
Both sit in a scene of an attack that has to be held off rather than merely described: the Hebrew word for the weapons a swarming army throws itself against, and the Greek word for the burning arrows a shield of faith puts out.Jol 2:8Eph 6:16
Older English Bibles reach for the same rendering, "darts", for both, which hides the real difference: the Greek word is an arrow coming at you, while the Hebrew word can be any weapon at all, including one held in the hand.2Ch 32:5Eph 6:16
Keeps the narrow idea of something launched at a target from a distance. In its one New Testament appearance the weapons are already in flight toward a person who has to stop them behind a shield, so this word never names the arm someone is holding.Eph 6:16
Turns up only as a picture of unseen attack rather than as a piece of battlefield equipment: the burning arrows of the evil one, which trust in God is held up to put out.Eph 6:16
What scholars say about shelaḥ
The lexica derive the noun from the verb שׁלח "to send" and gloss it "missile, weapon", a term that names the object by its function rather than its shape; BDB carries the plant sense of Song 4:13 as a second sense of the same noun, while HALOT and DCH prefer to separate a homonym meaning "shoot, sprout". Two loci are contested. In Job 33:18 and 36:12 the construction with עבר has been read, on the basis of Ugaritic parallels and of the water conduit at Jerusalem named from the same root, as crossing "the Channel" of the underworld rather than perishing by a weapon, and modern versions divide accordingly (NRSV renders Job 33:18 "traversing the River"). Song 4:13 is likewise read either of the garden's shoots or of its irrigation channels, the water imagery of vv. 12 and 15 being cited for the latter. Nehemiah 4:23 (Hebrew 4:17) is a textual crux whose closing words resist construal, though the sense of the noun there is not in question, and the same holds for the difficult preposition in Joel 2:8.
Where scholars disagree about shelaḥ
Whether the weapon word and the plant word are one noun with a wide range or two nouns that happen to share a spelling.
contestedOne noun from the verb "to send", covering both a weapon and the growth a plant sends out.; BDB, s.v. שֶׁלַח
contestedTwo separate nouns, listed apart, that happen to be spelled alike.; HALOT, s.v. שֶׁלַח; DCH, s.v. שֶׁלַח
Sources
HALOT, s.v. שֶׁלַחlexicon
BDB, s.v. שֶׁלַחlexicon
DCH, s.v. שֶׁלַחlexicon
TDOT, s.v. שָׁלַחtheological-dictionary
Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15 (Doubleday)commentary
Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (Doubleday)commentary
H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, Word Biblical Commentary 16commentary
Hans Walter Wolff, Joel and Amos, Hermeneia (Fortress)commentary