Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"Two hundred targets of gold" (1 Kings 10:16) sounds like Solomon made two hundred golden objects for archery practice.
A 'target' in the KJV is a small shield, not something you aim projectiles at.
1 Kings 10:16, in every translation this tool compares.
1 Kings 10:16 records that "king Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold: six hundred shekels of gold went to one target." These are ceremonial shields, made of gold rather than practical battle armor, kept in the royal armory. "Target" comes from the Old French targe, meaning a small round shield or buckler: for roughly three centuries in English, that's all the word meant.
The now-familiar sense (a mark to aim arrows or bullets at) only shows up around the mid-1700s, borrowed from the shape and concentric rings of an archery shield. So a modern reader picturing paper targets on an archery range has the image backwards: in Solomon's day, the "target" was the defensive shield, not the thing being shot at.
