History: Although the four brothers were hunting together, apparently only the loss of Nephi’s bow was a serious problem. We learn later (v. 21) that the other bows had “lost their spring.” In other words, although the men had bows, Nephi’s was the only (or last remaining) bow with sufficient power to kill at a significant distance, a characteristic which might be required to kill such speedy game as antelope or gazelles. The family had been traveling through the “more fertile parts” which are clearly fertile due to the more frequent and abundant presence of water. As they move away from that area they enter an area that would be drier yet. This climatic change may lie behind the story of the broken bow.
Solid steel bows are known from India and medieval Europe, but date no earlier than the fourteenth century A.D. What, then, of Nephi’s steel bow? The most common problem in dealing with cultural material in the Book of Mormon is forgetting that Joseph Smith actively participated in the translation. Assuming that each word in the English text matches precisely with a word on the plate text requires a level of accuracy rarely achieved in any translation. As I argue throughout this commentary, the evidence strongly suggests no absolute connection between English and a word on the plates. Nephi’s bow is one of the places where there is probably a disjunction between the English term and the actual object. However, it is not a translation error without precedent. Indeed, the precedent may be the cause of this particular translation.
Note the following passages from the King James Version of the Bible:
He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through. (Job 20:24)
He teacheth my hands to war; so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms. (2 Sam. 22:35)
The translators of the King James Version have used “steel” anachronously. The underlying words, nechushah/nechosheth should be translated as “bronze.” I hypothesize that Joseph Smith was influenced by the description in 2 Samuel of a steel bow breaking, because it fits the pattern of Joseph’s reliance on biblical passages throughout the Book of Mormon text. Joseph was following a known model that he accepted as true, even though it was a mistranslation in terms of the material being used.
What was the King James Version’s “steel” bow like? William J. Hamblin, a professor of history at Brigham Young University, tells us:
From archaeological remains, it is clear that the Hebrew “bronze bow” was not made entirely of bronze but was a term that, as Roland de Vaux notes, “refers to the metal coverings of certain bows.” Nephi’s “steel bow” could thus likely be Joseph Smith’s Jacobean English translation of an original Hebrew “bronze bow,” referring to an ordinary wooden weapon decorated or reinforced in certain parts (usually the upper limb, nock, and grip) with bronze. This explanation is supported by the fact that Nephi’s “steel” bow is said to have broken, a good indication that Nephi was not referring to a pure steel bow of the fourteenth-century-A.D. type, which would be essentially impossible to break by human muscle power alone.”
Still, how does such a reinforced bow break? Remember that the brothers’ presumably wooden bows simply lose their springs while Nephi’s “steel” bow actually breaks. Hamblin continues:
Obviously both self bows [made from a single piece of wood] and composite bows can break under a number of circumstances. However, composite bows have a specific structural problem that leaves them susceptible to changes in temperature and climate, which may cause the bow to warp and break. Taybugha, a fourteenth-century Arab master-archer, advised that “an archer should never neglect his bow for a single moment, and in extremes of temperature he should inspect it day and night, hour by hour.” Such care in protecting a composite bow from warping is necessary because “the neck has a natural tendency to lateral displacement.… Should side-warping of this kind not be detected and the bow be drawn the defective limb will be subjected to a most severe twisting strain and possibly break.”
Lehi and his family have passed from the more temperate Palestine, where the bow was probably made, to the more arid climate of the Arabian Peninsula, which would dry out the wood of the bows. They have recently left the “more fertile parts” and entered an area that was even drier. This changing humidity would produce the very conditions that Hamblin suggests would warp a bow, creating the structural weakness that would cause Nephi’s bow to break.