hammer

Four different Hebrew words are used for types of hammers.

  1. Hebrew: pattish, used by gold-beaters (Isaiah 41:7) and by quarry-men (Jeremiah 23:29)

    This word was used metaphorically of Babylon (Jeremiah 50:23) or Nebuchadnezzar.

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

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

  4. Hebrew: mappets, rendered “battle-axe” in Jeremiah 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.”