Axe

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

AXE. —This word occurs twice in the Gospels ( Matthew 3:10,  Luke 3:9), each time in the report of the preaching of the Baptist. The old familiar tool of peace and weapon of war ( 1 Kings 6:7,  Psalms 74:5,  Jeremiah 51:20) has become a metaphor for the ministry of men with a mission of reform. This suits the spirit of one who, like John the Baptist, is filled with the teaching of the OT. For the axe gleams in its histories and flashes in its songs, while in prophetic mood the tool is changed to the person—the wielder is himself the weapon ( Isaiah 10:33 f.,  Daniel 4:14,  Jeremiah 51:20). All this is the forerunner’s inherited world of ideas on this implement of industry and weapon of attack. He is a part of all that his race has been. He sees the men of old times ‘as men that lifted up axes upon a thicket of trees’ ( Psalms 74:5). The Messiah, the Coming One, is the last of the line. Nor are all in that line of the lineage of the house of David. ‘As the Assyrian axe in the days of old, so now the Roman axe was laid at the root of Israel’ ( Philochristus , ch. 4). Thoroughly as these powers had done their part, yet more drastic was to be the work of the future (‘every tree,’  Matthew 3:10). Under this image of the axe, the road-maker ( Matthew 3:3) has his vision of the wood-cutter and his effectual working ( Matthew 3:10).

But ‘God fulfils Himself in many ways.’ And when the Carpenter laid aside the axe of the workshop in Nazareth, the wood-cutter, ‘thoroughly furnished unto every good work, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,’ was already prepared for going up against the trees. Jesus had been tempered by waiting, in solitude and temptation. And the stroke of His axe, when it fell, was deliberate, radical, universal (cf.  Hebrews 4:12 f.). Men and institutions, the priests, the temple felt it. He would save the tree of humanity, even ‘as a tree whose stock remaineth when they are felled’ ( Isaiah 6:13). Therefore He struck at the root of the evil in man and nature—sin. And because the strokes were meant to be regenerating and reforming, they were clean, swift, sharp, and stout ( John 2:17;  John 8:1 ff.,  Luke 13:1 ff.).

Finally, the axe is not only the sign-manual of the mission of the forerunner and the Fulfiller, it is that of reformers in general. As the axe of the backwoodsman has been tempered in fire and water past the useless state of brittleness and beyond the extremity of hardness, so the tempering of the reformer is done, on the one hand, in a series of Divine and delicate processes in the personality of him who is being touched to fine issues by the Spirit, for the service of God and man, and, on the other hand, in a parallel series of providential dispensations in the mind and environment of the people, the race, or the institution with which he has to deal.

Literature.— Ecce Homo , ch. 1; Reynolds, John the Baptist , Lecture 4; Tennyson, Idylls of the King , ‘The Coming of Arthur,’ ap. fin.  ; Morley, Life of Gladstone , ii. 252.

John R. Legge.

Fausset's Bible Dictionary

Hebrew Kardom , "sharp"; large, for telling trees ( Judges 9:48;  Jeremiah 46:22); Garzen , "cutting", as "hatchet" from "hack," Securis from Seco ; Barzel ,"iron " Garzen sometimes means the "adze." The head was fastened to the handle by thongs, and so was liable to slip off ( Deuteronomy 19:5;  2 Kings 6:5). For "axe" in  Isaiah 44:12 margin;  Jeremiah 10:3, Ma'Atzad , others trans. a "knife" or "chisel," such as a carver of wood idols would use. But KJV is good sense and good Hebrew; the "axe" is meant as the instrument to cut down the tree in the forest. Μappeetz ( Jeremiah 51:20), "battle axe," a heavy mace or maul, whence Charles Martel was designated. Κasshil occurs only once,  Psalms 74:6, a large axe.

Vine's Expository Dictionary of NT Words

1: Ἀξίνη (Strong'S #513 — Noun Feminine — axine — ax-ee'-nay )

"an axe," akin to agnumi, "to break," is found in  Matthew 3:10 , and  Luke 3:9 .

Easton's Bible Dictionary

 Deuteronomy 19:5 20:19 1 Kings 6:7 Isaiah 10:34 Judges 13:20,21 Psalm 74:5 2 Kings 6:5  Isaiah 44:12 Maatsad   Jeremiah 10:3 Jeremiah 51:20  Psalm 74:6  Matthew 3:10 Luke 3:9

Webster's Dictionary

(1): Alt. of Axeman

(2): (n.) A tool or instrument of steel, or of iron with a steel edge or blade, for felling trees, chopping and splitting wood, hewing timber, etc. It is wielded by a wooden helve or handle, so fixed in a socket or eye as to be in the same plane with the blade. The broadax, or carpenter's ax, is an ax for hewing timber, made heavier than the chopping ax, and with a broader and thinner blade and a shorter handle.