Gorget

GORGET gor'-jet:

Appears only once in the King James Version (1 Samuel 17:6), being placed in the margin as an alternative to "target (of brass)" in the description of the armor worn by Goliath of Gath. The Hebrew word thus translated (kidhon) really means a "javelin," and is so rendered in the Revised Version (British and American) and the American Standard Revised Version here and in 1 Samuel 17:45 ("Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a javelin"). See ARMOR, sec. I, 4, (3). Gorget, though so rarely used in Scripture and now displaced in our revised versions, occurs not infrequently and in various senses in English literature. In the meaning of "a piece of armor for the gorge or throat" which seems to have been in the mind of King James's translators, it is found in early English writers and down to recent times. Spenser has it in Faerie Queene, IV, iii, 12:

"His weasand-pipe it through his gorget cleft";

Scott, Marmion, V, ii:

"Their brigantines and gorgets light";

and Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, III, 47:

"The gorget gave way and the sword entered his throat."

T. Nicol.

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Bibliography Information

Orr, James, M.A., D.D. General Editor. "Entry for 'GORGET'".  "International Standard Bible Encyclopedia".  1915.