2686. The fact that a bow is true theology can be seen from its symbolism. Wherever the Word describes or mentions wars, the only kind of wars it symbolizes on an inner level are spiritual ones (§1664). The ancient church also had some books titled The Wars of Jehovah, as you can see in Moses (Numbers 21:14, 15, 16). Written in a prophetic mode, they had an inner meaning and focused on the struggles and trials of the Lord, of the church, and of the people in the church. This can be seen from the fact that Moses quoted from those books, and also from some other books of the same church called The Books of the Prophetic Utterances. These books are mentioned in Numbers 21:27, 28, 29, 30, which uses almost the same words as a passage in Jeremiah; compare Numbers 21:28 and Jeremiah 48:45. These facts lead to the conclusion that the ancient church had both narrative and prophetic writings that were divine and inspired. In an inner sense these writings dealt with the Lord and his kingdom, and they were his Word to those people, just as the narrative and prophetic books are to us, dealing as they do in a literal sense with Jews and Israelites but in an inner sense with the Lord and whatever is his.

[2] In the Word, as in the books of the ancient church, war symbolized spiritual war. Consequently, all weapons'sword, spear, shield, buckler, arrows, darts, and bow'symbolized particular tools of war understood in a spiritual sense. The specific symbolism of each weapon will be given elsewhere, by the Lord's divine mercy. Here that of a bow will be given. A bow symbolizes true theology, because of its arrows, which are the doctrines that form the instruments and tools of battle, especially in the hands of people who are spiritual. At one time such people were therefore called archers.

[3] The following passages show that a bow symbolizes true theology. In Isaiah:

Jehovah's arrows are sharp, and all his bows are bent; the hooves of his horses are considered to be like rock, and his wheels, like windstorms. (Isaiah 5:28)

This has to do with theological truth. The arrows are spiritual truth; the bow is theology; the horses' hooves are earthly truth; the wheels are theology based on that truth. They are said to be Jehovah's because they symbolize these things, although they can be described as his only in a spiritual sense. Otherwise the words would be meaningless and inappropriate. In Jeremiah:

The Lord bent his bow like an enemy. His right hand stood like a foe, and he killed everything that was desirable to the eye in the tent of Zion's daughter. He poured his anger out like fire. (Lamentations 2:4)

The bow stands for true theology, which seems inimical and foelike to people ruled by falsity. The Lord cannot be described as having any other kind of bow. In Habakkuk:

Jehovah, you ride on your horses; your chariots are salvation. Your bow will be completely bared. (Habakkuk 3:8, 9)

Here too the bow is theology that is good and true. In Moses:

They will vex him and shoot arrows; the archers will hate him. He will sit in the firmness of his bow, and his arms and hands will be strengthened by the hands of mighty Jacob, from whom comes the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel. (Genesis 49:23, 24)

This is about Joseph. The bow stands for theology that is good and true.

[4] In John:

I looked, when there! A white horse! And one sitting on it, having a bow, who was given a crown. (Revelation 6:2)

The white horse stands for wisdom. The one sitting on it stands for the Word, as it says explicitly in Revelation 19:13, where the white horse appears again. Since the one sitting on the horse is the Word, clearly the bow is true theology. In Isaiah:

Who has stirred justice up from the east? Called that one to follow him? Yielded up the nations before him, and made him rule over monarchs? Made them like dust with his sword, like straw driven by his bow? (Isaiah 41:2)

This is speaking of the Lord. The sword stands for truth; the bow, for theology that comes from him. In the same author:

I will put a mark on them and send some of them–escapees–to the nations Tarshish, Pul and Lud (drawing the bow), Tubal and Javan. (Isaiah 66:19)

Those drawing the bow stand for people teaching theology. For the symbolism of Tarshish, see §1156. For that of Lud, 1195, 1231. For that of Tubal, 1151. For that of Javan, 1152, 1153, 1155.

[5] In Jeremiah:

Because of the sound of a rider and of one shooting a bow, the whole city is fleeing. They have entered fogs, and onto crags they have climbed. The whole city has been deserted. (Jeremiah 4:29)

The rider stands for people who say what is true. The bow stands for true doctrine, which people given to falsity flee from, or are afraid of. In the same author:

Draw up a battle line against Babylon all around. All you who bend the bow, shoot at [the city]; do not spare the arrow, because it has sinned against Jehovah. (Jeremiah 50:14, 29; 51:2, 3)

People shooting and bending the bow stand for people who speak and teach true theology.

[6] In Zechariah:

"I will cut the chariot off from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem,"" and the war bow will be cut off, and he will speak peace to the nations. (Zechariah 9:10)

Ephraim stands for the church's understanding of truth; the bow, for theology. In Samuel:

David lamented a lament over Saul and over Jonathan his son and said, "to teach the children of Judah the bow." (2 Samuel 1:17, 18)

This is not about a bow but about religious doctrine. In Ezekiel:

The Lord Jehovih has said, "This is the day of which I spoke, and the residents of Israel's cities will go out and kindle and burn weapons, and buckler and shield, bow and arrows, and handstaff and spear. And they will kindle them with fire for seven years." (Ezekiel 39[8,] 9)

The weapons named here are all weapons of spiritual war. The bow with its arrows stands for theology and its truth.

In the other world, truth itself, separated from anything good, also looks like arrows, when it is presented visually.

[7] Just as a bow symbolizes true theology, in a negative sense it symbolizes false theology. (In many places it has been said and shown that the same object in the Word usually has two opposite meanings.) In Jeremiah, for example:

Look: a people is coming from the north, and a large nation will be stirred up from the flanks of the land. Bow and spear they grasp. It is a cruel [nation], and they will not show mercy. Their voice will be boisterous like the sea; they will ride on horses. [Each] is equipped as a man for war against you, daughter of Zion. (Jeremiah 6:22, 23)

The bow stands for false theology. In the same author:

Look: a people coming from the north, and a large nation; and many monarchs will be stirred up from the flanks of the land. Bow and spear they hold; they are cruel and will not show mercy. (Jeremiah 50:41, 42)

Likewise. In the same author:

They bend their tongue; their bow is a lie and is not for truth. They are very strong in the land, because they have marched out from evil to evil; and they do not know me. (Jeremiah 9:2, 3)

[8] Obviously the bow is false theology, because it says that they bend their tongue and that their bow is a lie and is not for truth. In the same author:

Jehovah Sabaoth has said, "Here, now, I am breaking the bow of Elam, the beginning of its might." (Jeremiah 49:35)

In David:

Go observe the works of Jehovah, who makes barrens on the earth, stopping wars all the way to the end of the earth. The bow he breaks; he chops off the spear; wagons he burns with fire. (Psalms 46:8, 9)

In the same author:

God is known in Judah; in Israel his name is great, and his tabernacle will be in Salem, and his dwelling place, in Zion. There he broke the bow's flaming arrows, the shield, and the sword, and war. (Psalms 76:1, 2, 3)

In the same author:

Look: the ungodly bend the bow; they ready their arrows on the string, to shoot in darkness those who are upright in heart. (Psalms 11:2)

The bow and arrows clearly stand for false doctrines.

1664. The wars here symbolize nothing else on an inner level than spiritual battles or trials, as stated above in the preliminaries [§§1651, 1659]. So do other battles mentioned in the Word, especially in the prophets. Human wars have no importance on the inner planes of the Word, since they are not spiritual or heavenly and the Word contains only what is spiritual and heavenly.

The following passages (and many others as well) point to the symbolism of wars in the Word as fights with the Devil or, to put it another way, with hell. In John:

They are spirits of demons, working signs [of their intent] to go out to the monarchs of the earth and of the whole inhabited world, to gather them for the war on that great day of God Almighty. (Revelation 16:14)

Anyone can see that no other type of war on the great day of God Almighty is meant in this verse.

[2] In the same author:

The beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war. (Revelation 11:7)

The abyss here is hell. In the same author:

The dragon was enraged against the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her seed — those who were keeping God's commands and who possess Jesus Christ's testimony. (Revelation 12:17)

It was granted to [the beast] to make war with the godly. (Revelation 13:7)

All these wars are the kinds of fights we face in times of trial. The wars of the southern and northern monarchs and so on in Daniel 10 and 11 have no other meaning. Neither do the things said of Michael in Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1; Revelation 12:7.

[3] The other prophets also provide evidence that wars symbolize nothing else. In Ezekiel, for example:

You have not gone up into the breaches or built a wall for the house of Israel, to stand fast in war on the day of Jehovah. (Ezekiel 13:5)

This is addressed to the prophets. In Isaiah:

They will beat swords into hoes and their spears into scythes; nation will not lift sword against nation, and they will not learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4)

It is obvious here that no other kind of war is meant, and as a result that the weapons mentioned in the Word — swords, spears, shields, and so on — truly do mean the implements of such war.

[4] In the same author:

Bring water to meet the thirsty, you who live in the land of Tema; approach the wanderers with bread for them; for they will wander in the face of swords, in the face of an outstretched sword and of a strung bow and of the weight of war. (Isaiah 21:14-15)

In Jeremiah:

Shepherds and their flocks will come to the daughter of Zion. They will fix their tents near her all around. They will each graze their space. Consecrate war against her. Rise and let us go up at noon. (Jeremiah 6:3, 4, 5)

No other war is meant here, because it is a war against the daughter of Zion, that is, against the church.

[5] In the same author:

In what way have they not abandoned the city of praise, the city of my joy! Therefore its youths will fall in its streets and all the men of war will be cut off on that day. (Jeremiah 49:25-26)

The city of praise and joy stands for attributes of the church. The men of war stand for people who put up a fight.

[6] In Hosea:

I will strike a pact with them on that day — with the wild animal of the field, and with the bird in the heavens and the creeping animal of the ground. And bow and sword and war I will break off from the earth, and I will make them lie down securely. (Hosea 2:18)

Again, just as war stands for personal struggles, the different weapons here stand for the implements of that spiritual struggle, which are broken when our obsessions and distorted thinking die down and we come into a time of peace and quiet.

[7] In David:

Observe the works of Jehovah, who makes wastelands on the earth, stopping wars all the way to the end of the earth. The bow he breaks, and he lops off the spear; chariots he burns with fire. (Psalms 46:8-9)

Likewise. In the same author:

In Salem is God's dwelling place, and his abode is in Zion. There he broke the bow's flaming arrows, the shield, and the sword — and war. (Psalms 76:2-3)

Because priests represented the Lord, who does all the fighting for us, their function is described as military service ¹ in Numbers 4:23, 35, 39, 43, 47.

[8] We do not see that Jehovah alone — the Lord — fights and overcomes the Devil in us during our spiritual struggles, and yet it is the unchanging truth. Evil spirits cannot lift a finger against us without permission, and angels cannot ward off the least threat except by the Lord's power. So the Lord alone is the one who carries the weight of every battle and wins. This was represented in various places by the wars the children of Israel waged against the surrounding nations. ² The statement that the Lord is the only one to do this also appears in Moses:

Jehovah your God, walking in front of you, he will fight for you. (Deuteronomy 1:30)

In the same author:

Jehovah your God is walking with you, to fight for you with your enemies to save you. (Deuteronomy 20:4)

Joshua contains such statements as well, as in 23:3, 5.

[9] All the wars there against the idolatrous residents of the land of Canaan represented battles carried on with hell by the Lord and therefore by his church and people in his church. This idea accords with the following words in Isaiah, too:

As the lion roars — and the young lion — over its prey, when an abundance of shepherds race up against it, ³ by whose voice [the lion] is not dismayed and by whose commotion it is not distressed; so Jehovah Sabaoth will come down to do battle on Zion's mountain and on its hill. (Isaiah 31:4)

[10] So Jehovah (the Lord) is also called a man of war, as in Moses:

Jehovah is a man of war; Jehovah is his name. (Exodus 15:3)

In Isaiah:

Jehovah will go forth as a hero; as a man of wars he will rouse his zeal. He will shout, even bellow; over his enemies he will prevail. (Isaiah 42:13)

That is why many activities of war are also attributed to the Lord, like the shouting and bellowing here.

[11] Spirits and angels appear as men of war too, when they are representing [the Lord]. In Joshua, for instance:

Joshua raised his eyes and looked, and here, now, a man standing opposite him, and his sword was unsheathed in his hand. He said to Joshua, "I am the leader of Jehovah's army." And Joshua fell on his face to the earth. (Joshua 5:13-14)

The scene appeared this way because it was representative. So Jacob's descendants called their wars Jehovah's wars. ⁴

[12] The ancient churches did the same, since they had books likewise named Jehovah's Wars, as is evident in Moses:

It is said in the book Jehovah's Wars ... (Numbers 21:14-15)

These wars were written about in the same way as the wars mentioned in the current chapter, but they were purely symbolic of the church's battles. This method of writing was well known in ancient times because the people of that day were deeper and their thinking loftier. ⁵

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