To be near unto God - pagina 101

ground or in hiding behind breastworks. But even when David wrote the Psalms archers were few and fighting was done by man against man at the close range of eye to eye, of foot touching foot, and clashing of swords. And such combats could not end until one of the two assailants was bathed in his own blood. In such times the shield was one's life. Without a shield no man could meet another in battle who carried one. Among the nations of antiquity a shield therefore was the main thing. Even as to this day it covers the African savage when he makes an assault with his assagai. For the shield catches the arrow, breaks the blow of the lans and parries the stroke of the sword. When many thousands in Jerusalem, who in their day had used the shield and had saved their lives thereby, joined in the songs of Zion and gloried in Jehovah as the shield of their confidence, they felt in singing, as we can never fully appreciate: What it is, and what it means, to glory in God as a shield.

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shield was a cover for the body. It was not carried by another in front of the combatant, but was carried by the combatant himself. It was held with the left hand. It rested on the arm and was really nothing else than a broadening of the same. He who attacked with a gun involuntarily raises his arm, with which, at the risk of having it wounded, he covers his face and his heart. And not to expose the arm in such encounters, and to protect the larger part of the body, desire to save life invented the shield. First the long shield, which covered the entire length of the body, and then the short shield, or buckler, with which to parry the 93

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