to throw, cast, or fling something or someone with a decisive, often forceful action
This verb covers the full range of throwing and casting, from the physical act of hurling an object or person to the figurative gesture of casting something away permanently. The common thread is a decisive, directed movement that removes something from where it was.
In its most literal uses, the verb describes throwing physical objects: Moses hurling the stone tablets to the ground, Aaron casting his staff before Pharaoh, Hagar laying her child under a bush, God hurling hailstones on Israel's enemies. The objects can be rods, stones, rings, food, a millstone, a dead branch, whatever the action calls for.
When people or bodies are the object, the action often carries a social or moral dimension: throwing a living person into a pit, leaving a corpse in the open field, casting the slain into a cave. These uses shade into the third sense, where the physical action becomes a metaphor for abandonment and rejection.
The most theologically charged uses are figurative: God casting a nation away from his presence like a discarded object; people throwing God's law behind their backs as a gesture of contempt; the call in Psalm 55 to cast one's burden on the LORD; Micah's promise that God will hurl all Israel's sins into the depths of the sea. These are not a separate meaning but vivid extensions of the same casting motion, grounded in the physical image.