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Genesis 9 and the opening of the Iliad both describe deities with bows, reflecting a common ancient Near Eastern and Greek tradition of storm deities. In Genesis, God hangs his bow in the sky after the flood, while Apollo shoots his from the clouds.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Homer, Iliad 1.43-52
Classical
40 fulfil for me this prayer: let the Danaans pay for my tears by your shafts.” So he spoke in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him. Down from the peaks of Olympus he strode, angry at heart, bearing on his shoulders his bow and covered quiver. 45 The arrows rattled on the shoulders of the angry god, as he moved; and his coming was like the night. Then he sat down apart from the ships and let fly a shaft: terrible was the twang of the silver bow. The mules he assailed first and the swift dogs, 50 but thereafter on the men themselves he let fly his stinging arrows, and struck; and always the pyres of the dead burned thick. For nine days the missiles of the god went throughout the host, but on the tenth Achilles called the folk to the place of gathering, for so had the goddess, white-armed Hera, put it in his heart;
Genesis 9:13
Hebrew Bible
11 I confirm my covenant with you: Never again will all living things be wiped out by the waters of a flood; never again will a flood destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, “This is the guarantee of the covenant I am making with you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all subsequent generations: 13 I will place my bow35 in the clouds, and it will become a guarantee of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the bow35 appears in the clouds, 15 then I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures of all kinds. Never again will the waters become a flood and destroy all living things.
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Notes and References
"... The Babylonian chief god, Marduk, appears to fashion his own arms—a bow, arrow, club, net, lightning, and winds—with which he rides to meet the monstrous Tiamat in his storm chariot, drawn by a team of four creatures. The tendency in many of the traditions was for a figure originally associated with rain to evolve into a storm god, then into an armed storm god, and finally into a war god. Yahweh is an armed storm god/warrior (hanging up his bow after he destroys the world with a flood in Genesis 9:13), as is the Greek Apollo, who showers the Greeks with his arrows of plague: “Apart from the ships / he halted and let fly, and the bowstring slammed / as the silver bow sprang, rolling in thunder away” (Homer, Iliad) ..."
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