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Weapons Of The Bible: The Ox Goad
What the heck is an ox goad? And can you kill with it?
The modern English bible contains 31,102 verses. Those verses cover everything from salvation, to ritual cleaning practices of ancient Judaism, to the history of the Levant and what people were eating and drinking. However, every once in a while you stumble across a verse that makes you scratch your head. One such verse comes from the book of Judges.
Judges 3:31 reads:
After Ehud came Shamgar son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad[sic]. He too saved Israel.
The verse is speaking about the judges of Israel who rose up to defeat their foes in the times before the kings. The judge Shamgar gets only one verse to describe his exploits and it is a doozy.
Shamgar’s father was Anath and he killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad. That is all we get to learn about ole Shamgar. This begs the question, what the heck is an ox goad?
An Ancient Farming Implement
A goad was a tool used to prod large animals. Today, most people think of cattle prods, the circular tubes that contain an electric end used to move cows. Before the advent of high voltage electricity, people had to prod things the old fashioned way — with a pointy end.
An ox goad is simply a goad designed to prod oxen. They were usually long pieces of fire-hardened wood that came to a sharp point. The ancient Jews did not have well-developed blacksmithing capabilities so many of their tools simply had wooden ends but if you could buy a goad from a nearby nation with iron working facilities you could get a goad with a metal end.
Think of a long spear used for poking cattle rather than impaling enemies and you have yourself a goad.
The use of prods and goads were so common that we still use those words today. Instead of using prod and goad for animals, we use those words to describe how people try and influence each other. But both the word prod and goad come from ancient language depicting…
