Bolt
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible [1]
BOLT . See House, § 6 .
King James Dictionary [2]
BOLT,n. L. pello.
1. An arrow a dart a pointed shaft.
2. A strong cylindrical pin, of iron or other metal, used to fasten a door, a plank, a chain, &c. In ships, bolts are used in the sides and decks, and have different names, as rag-bolts, eye-bolts, ring-bolts,chain-bolts, &c. In gunnery, there are prise-bolts, transom-bolts, traverse-bolts, and bracket-bolts.
3. A thunder-bolt a stream of lightning, so named from its darting like a bolt.
4. The quantity of twenty-eight ells of canvas.
BOLT, To fasten or secure with a bolt, or iron pin, whether a door, a plank, fetters or any thing else.
1. To fasten to shackle to restrain.
2. To blurt out to utter or throw out precipitately.
I hate when vice can bolt her arguments.
In this sense it is often followed by out.
3. To sift or separate bran from flour. In America this term is applied only to the operation performed in mills.
4. Among sportsmen, to start or dislodge, used of coneys.
5. To examine by sifting to open or separate the parts of a subject, to find the truth generally followed by out. "Time and nature will bolt out the truth of things." Inelegant.
6. To purify to purge. Unusual.
7. To discuss or argue as at Gray's inn, where cases are privately discussed by students and barristers.
BOLT, To shoot forth suddenly to spring out with speed and suddenness to start forth like a bolt commonly followed by out as, to bolt out of the house, or out of a den.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia [3]
bōlt ( נעל , nā‛al , "to bind up"): The ancient Hebrews had fastenings of wood or iron for the doors of houses ( 2 Samuel 13:17 , 2 Samuel 13:18; Song of Solomon 5:5 ), city gates ( Nehemiah 3:3 , Nehemiah 3:6 , Nehemiah 3:13-15 ), prison doors, etc. ( Isaiah 45:2 ), which were in the form of bolts. These were sometimes pushed back from within; but there were others which, by means of a key, could be unfastened and pushed back from without ( Judges 3:23 ). These were almost the only form of locks known. See Bar; Locks .
In Habakkuk 3:5 , resheph (a poetic word for "flame") is rendered "fiery bolts" (the King James Version "burning coals"). It seems to denote "the fiery bolts, by which Yahweh was imagined to produce pestilence or fever" (Driver, Deuteronomy , 367).
