A Faulty Bow

Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bows and arrows are not as common as they once were, so when in Psalm 78:57 Asaph says of God's people Like their ancestors they were disloyal and faithless, as unreliable as a faulty bow or when in Hosea 7:2a the prophet says of them They do not turn to the Most High; they are like a faulty bow it may not be immediately clear what is being said. A little investigation, however, reveals that bows in ancient times could prove faulty in a number of ways.

For example, a bow may have an unpredictable aim. A warped bow will fail to respond to the archer as it should and when he shoots an arrow, it may veer off course unpredictably. Or the wood of the bow can lose its tension and elasticity so that arrows shot from it lack the force necessary to reach the target. If the bow is completely wrecked then it will actively frustrate the user because it cannot perform the basic job it was built for.

In a similar way, we can become faulty, not heading in the direction or heading in the right general direction but lacking the power to live as we should because we are not depending on the Lord as we should. Some are so completely out of sorts that there is no way that the Lord can use them.

Several commentators point out that the faulty bow looks fine hanging on the wall. It is when you come to use it that the problems become evident. It is a little like the story of Jesus and the cursing of the fig tree. The fig tree looks fine. It is covered in leaves. But when Jesus goes to look, there is no fruit. Hence its cursing. Israel's history again and again was such that they looked like a magnificent bow or a luxuriant fig tree but then proved to be useless to the Lord, firing erratic or inaccurate shots or producing no fruit.

In Isaiah 29:13 we read The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. Earlier in Psalm 78, in verses 35-37, Asaph says of God's people They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer. But then they would flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues; their hearts were not loyal to him, they were not faithful to his covenant.

Even today it is tempting for professing believers to think that lip service is enough. Showing a lack of true loyalty to the Lord and expecting him to use us is like our taking an apparently trusty bow from the wall and trying to use what turns out to be a faulty bow.