The Bronze Bow

by

Elizabeth George Speare

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Themes and Colors
Love vs. Vengeance Theme Icon
Trust, Dependence, and Friendship Theme Icon
Leadership: Power vs. Service Theme Icon
Earthly Hopes vs. Heavenly Values Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Bronze Bow, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love vs. Vengeance Theme Icon

In The Bronze Bow, Daniel bar Jamin, a first-century Jewish Galilean, lives under oppressive Roman occupation. Daniel has a black-and-white view of the situation in Palestine: Romans are enemies to be fought, and Jews are victims to be avenged. However, because of his inflexible outlook, Daniel fails to see either Romans or Jews as human beings; instead, they become just symbols of occupation and subjugation in his mind. This symbolic view blinds Daniel to concrete realities of life in Palestine, including the harmful consequences of his vengeful perspective. But when Daniel gets to know a strange traveling teacher named Jesus, his vengeful outlook is challenged and eventually shattered. Through Daniel’s encounter with Jesus, The Bronze Bow suggests that revenge is a dead end, and that loving real people, instead of fighting for abstract vengeance, is the only way to peace.

A fighter for Israel’s freedom from Rome, Daniel’s life revolves around revenge—meaning that both the Romans and, ultimately, their Jewish victims become mere objects in his eyes. Other Jews don’t always share Daniel’s sharply polarized view of the Romans. When Daniel sees city dwellers going about their everyday lives, the people’s apparent indifference to Roman oppression upsets him: “Everywhere, the Jews went about their business, paying no attention. The boy who had lived for five years in the solitude of the mountain, nursing his hatred and keeping it ever fresh, could not credit his own eyes. […] Where was their pride? Had they forgotten altogether?” For years, Daniel has thought of nothing but vengeance against the Romans. Therefore, when he sees his fellow Jews living alongside their oppressors, he’s infuriated. After living with freedom fighters for years, isolated from ordinary life in Palestine, Daniel doesn’t understand either the Romans or the Jewish people he wants to avenge.

Daniel gathers a group of village boys around him, and they carry out raids for rebel leader Rosh, often harassing and robbing wealthier Jews. “For none of these victims did the boys feel the slightest pity. Any traitor who sold his goods to the Romans did so at his own risk. Those who flaunted their wealth or patronized a Roman theater were fair prey. And every cruse of oil, every silver talent” would support a future army of Israel. The boys don’t see their victims primarily as human beings; they see them as symbols of Rome’s oppression and therefore fair game. Perceiving this, Daniel begins to feel misgivings about what, if anything, revenge really accomplishes.

Jesus teaches Daniel that abstract revenge is a dead end because it locks people into a cycle of violence, and the only way out is to love real people. Daniel leads an ambush to rescue his friend Joel, who has been captured by the Romans. Rattled after the ambush only narrowly succeeds, Daniel reflects, “‘They who live by the sword will perish by the sword.’ At first he could not recall where he had heard these words. […] Then he remembered. Jesus had spoken them […] To live by the sword was the best life he knew […] But something he had not reckoned on had happened. […] [His friends’] deaths were on his head. And freedom was farther away than before.” Because Daniel has based his life on fighting for Israel’s political freedom, he’s never questioned the connection between revenge and freedom. But Jesus’s words, and the loss of people Daniel loves, make him question whether revenge is leading him anywhere, much less to freedom from Rome.

When Daniel speaks with Jesus alone, Jesus directly refutes Daniel’s past commitment to killing by arguing that love is the only alternative to revenge. Daniel asks Jesus, “‘Should I love the Romans who killed [his friend Samson]?’ […] Jesus smiled. […] ‘Can’t you see, Daniel, it is hate that is the enemy? Not men. Hate does not die with killing. It only springs up a hundredfold. The only thing stronger than hate is love.’” Jesus argues that hate only generates more killing, which generates more hate—a never-ending cycle. Though Daniel can’t imagine loving a Roman enemy, Jesus teaches that such concrete love is the only thing that can overcome the cycle of hate. In the end, overcoming hate is the only thing that leads to lasting freedom—fighting can’t achieve that.

At the very end of the book, after Jesus heals Daniel’s sister Leah from her illness, a Roman soldier lingers worriedly outside Daniel’s house. Daniel hates this Roman, who had secretly befriended Leah, and until now has forbidden them to see each other. After long hesitation, Daniel finally approaches the soldier and invites him into his house to see Leah. After witnessing Jesus’s love for others firsthand and being a beneficiary of it, he feels able to offer love in place of hatred. This outreach to the individual solder suggests that Daniel’s hatred for Romans as a whole will soften, too.

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Love vs. Vengeance ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Love vs. Vengeance appears in each chapter of The Bronze Bow. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Love vs. Vengeance Quotes in The Bronze Bow

Below you will find the important quotes in The Bronze Bow related to the theme of Love vs. Vengeance.
Chapter 5 Quotes

Everywhere, the Jews went about their business, paying no attention. The boy who had lived for five years in the solitude of the mountain, nursing his hatred and keeping it ever fresh, could not credit his own eyes. How could these city people endure to be reminded on every hand of their own helplessness? More shameful still, he saw merchants joking with the soldiers. He could not understand. Where was their pride? Had they forgotten altogether? If Rosh were here he would open their eyes. Why did that Jesus do nothing?

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin, Jesus, Rosh
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“God is my strong refuge,
and has made my way safe.
He made my feet like hinds’ feet,
and set me secure on the heights.
He trains my hands for war,
so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”

“It couldn't really be bronze,” said Daniel, puzzled. “The strongest man could not bend a bow of bronze.”

“No,” Thacia spoke. “I think it was really bronze. I think David meant a bow that a man couldn't bend—that when God strengthens us we can do something that seems impossible.”

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin (speaker), Joel bar Hezron (speaker), Malthace (Thacia) (speaker)
Related Symbols: Bronze Bow
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

The other mighty ones had lived and fought in distant ages. But Judas had lived in a time like his own, not two hundred years ago, when Israel was helpless, as it was now, under the foot of the heathen. Judas, with his heroic father and brothers, had dared to rise up and defy the oppressor, and for a time Israel had breathed the free again. […] This time—! There were young men everywhere who longed for such a chance again. Together, he and Joel would find them.

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin, Joel bar Hezron
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

[Daniel] was almost at the point of tears. Yet in the same instant such a fierce resentment sprang up in him that he dared not look his friend in the face. […] Everyone—the doctor, Leah, the neighbors, and now Simon, took it for granted that he had come home to stay. […] What about his life on the mountain? What about Rosh and Samson, and the work that must be done in the cave? Wasn’t that more important than a few farmers who wanted their wheels mended? Everything he loved […] the irresponsible life, the excitement of the raids, rose up and fought off the shackles that Simon held out to him in kindness.

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin, Leah, Rosh, Samson, Simon the Zealot
Page Number: 121
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

He lay filled with meat and wine, his old comrades stretched out beside him. It was all just as he had imagined it on those endless steaming nights in the town. Yet sleep did not come. He turned over, twisting his shoulders to fit a hump in the rocky ground. In these few weeks his body had forgotten the feel of pebbles. In the same way, his mind shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a resting place […].

All at once he thought of Leah’s little black goat. Would some child in the village be hungry because of tonight's feast?

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin, Leah, Rosh
Page Number: 157
Explanation and Analysis:

Where did he himself belong?

The fire in Simon’s forge had almost gone out. He raked back the ashes, blew on the coals and coaxed it back to life. Then he opened the inner door to the house. Leah looked up at him, her blue eyes as lifeless as the fire. She had not combed her hair or bothered to get herself breakfast. With irritation he saw that the water jar was empty and that he would have to stand in line at the well with the snickering women. He bent and picked up the jar, and the bars of his cage slid into place around him.

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin, Leah
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

“Do the people—crowd together and push each other?”

“It’s all you can do to stay on your two feet sometimes.”

She was silent so long that he thought she had stopped thinking about it. Then she asked, “Are there children, too? […] Jesus wouldn’t let them hurt the children, would he?”

“He won't even let them send the children away when they’re a nuisance. He insists on talking to them, and finding out their names, and listening to their foolishness. It makes some of the men furious—as though he thought children were important.”

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin (speaker), Leah (speaker), Jesus
Page Number: 169
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

“Daniel, what makes you and Joel so sure that Jesus means to make war?”

“He says that the kingdom is at hand. What else can he mean?”

“Did you ever think he might mean that the kingdom will come some other way? Without any fighting? […] You see, Jesus has made me see that we don’t need to wait for God to care for us. He does that now. […] If everyone understood that—every man and woman […] Suppose—the Romans too could understand?”

He stopped in the road and stared at her. “Romans? You think God loves the Romans?”

Thacia sighed. “That’s impossible, I suppose.”

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin (speaker), Malthace (Thacia) (speaker), Jesus
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:

With a snap of his finger he indicated the two packs. […]

Black anger rose in Daniel. He knew well enough the law that allowed a Roman to command that a Jew carry his burden for one mile. But the man didn’t live who could make him shoulder a Roman pack! He looked squarely at the soldier. Then he spat, deliberately. The blow across his mouth came instantly and staggeringly, but he did not lower his head. […]

There was a stifled gasp. Then Thacia very quietly stepped forward and lifted one of the packs.

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin, Malthace (Thacia)
Page Number: 179
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

In the darkness the same words echoed over and over. “They who live by the sword will perish by the sword.” […] Jesus had spoken them on a hot summer morning under a blue sky. Daniel had not questioned the words. To live by the sword was the best life he knew. To take the sword for his country’s freedom and to perish by it—what better could a man hope for? But something he had not reckoned on had happened. He had taken the sword, but Samson, instead, had perished by it, who had no freedom to gain, and Nathan, who had left behind a bride. Their deaths were on his head. And freedom was farther away than before.

Related Characters: Jesus (speaker), Daniel bar Jamin, Samson, Nathan
Page Number: 213
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“[Samson] did not give you vengeance. He gave you love. There is no greater love than that, that a man should lay down his life for his friend. Think, Daniel, can you repay such love with hate?”

“It’s too late to love Samson. He is probably dead.” Then, as Jesus waited, “Should I love the Romans who killed him?” he asked with bitterness.

Jesus smiled. “You think that is impossible, don’t you? Can’t you see, Daniel, it is hate that is the enemy? Not men. Hate does not die with killing. It only springs up a hundredfold. The only thing stronger than hate is love.”

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin (speaker), Jesus (speaker), Samson
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

Unable to endure that smile, Daniel bent his head. Suddenly, with a longing that was more than he could bear, he wanted to stop fighting against this man. He knew that he would give everything he possessed in life to follow Jesus.

Even his vow?

He tried to cling again to the words of David that had always strengthened him. He trains my hands for war—

But Jesus said that the Victory was God’s promise. He called men to make ready their hearts and minds instead.

Was it possible that only love could bend the bow of bronze?

Related Characters: Daniel bar Jamin, Jesus
Related Symbols: Bronze Bow
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis: