Bar

Bar in Scripture refers to several different objects depending on context. As a wooden or iron beam, it was the means by which a gate or door was secured (Nehemiah 3:3, 6, 13–15; Isaiah 45:2). In Job 38:10 God asks whether Job decreed the sea's bars and doors — the bars here being the limits set on the ocean's boundaries. Jonah 2:6 uses the image of earth's bars closing over the prophet in the depth of the sea as a figure of entombment from which God raised him.

The bar also appears as a structural element of the tabernacle and its frame — horizontal poles (Hebrew beriach) that held the boards of the tabernacle together (Exodus 26:26–29). Isaiah 45:2 speaks of God cutting in sunder the bars of iron as a figure of removing all obstacles before Cyrus. Amos 1:5 pronounces judgment by breaking the bar of Damascus. In each case the bar represents the system that holds things shut or together — whether a city gate, the ocean's bounds, or an empire's defenses.