The "sword of mouths" (Judges-III,16; Psalms-CXLIX,6; Proverbs-V,4): A metaphor and its ancient Near-Eastern context (Supporting the image and notion of orality in biblical archaeology and philology)

The term "double- (or, multi-) edged sword" appears three times in the Hebrew Bible (Jud. iii 16; Prov. v 4; Ps. cxlix 6), and in the Christian Bible (Heb. iv 12; Rev. i 16; ii 12), and once each in the Apocrypha (Sir. xxi 3) and in the Pseudepigrapha (Ahiqar, col. vii 100b). Whether in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, the term reads in all of these texts, literally, "a sword of mouths". While the word "herev" stands as a trope for the potency of speech in only some of its 500 instances in the Hebrew Bible, the "sword of mouths" does so in seven of its occurrences, across several bodies of literature, while the eighth occurrence offers a slight variation on the theme. Archaeological and philological evidence is brought in support of the notion of the orality of the image of the sword.