Hammer

A hammer appears in the Bible as a builder’s tool and as a picture of strength. Solomon’s temple was built of stone prepared beforehand, so that no hammer or axe was heard in the house while it rose. Isaiah describes craftsmen at work, one smoothing metal while another strikes the anvil. God’s own word is compared to a hammer in Jeremiah 23:29: “Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” Jeremiah 50:23 turns the picture around, saying even the hammer of the whole earth, Babylon, has been broken.

4 verses

1 Kings

1 Kings 6:7

And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.

Isaiah

Isaiah 41:7

So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved.

Jeremiah

Jeremiah 23:29

Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?

Jeremiah 50:23

How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!

From Easton's Bible Dictionary

Matthew George Easton, 1897

(1.) Heb. pattish, used by gold-beaters (Isa. 41:7) and by quarry-men (Jer. 23:29). Metaphorically of Babylon (Jer. 50:23) or Nebuchadnezzar.

(2.) Heb. makabah, a stone-cutter’s mallet (1 Kings 6:7), or of any workman (Judg. 4:21; Isa. 44:12).

(3.) Heb. halmuth, a poetical word for a workman’s hammer, found only in Judg. 5:26, where it denotes the mallet with which the pins of the tent of the nomad are driven into the ground.

(4.) Heb. mappets, rendered “battle-axe” in Jer. 51:20. This was properly a “mace,” which is thus described by Rawlinson: “The Assyrian mace was a short, thin weapon, and must either have been made of a very tough wood or (and this is more probable) of metal. It had an ornamented head, which was sometimes very beautifully modelled, and generally a strap or string at the lower end by which it could be grasped with greater firmness.”

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