"Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terror.
"He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men.
"He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword.
"The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield.
"He walketh the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
"He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting."
In another passage an allusion is made to the courage of the Horse, and its love for the battle. "I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? Every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle." (Jer. viii. 6.) Even in the mimic battle of the djereed the Horse seems to exult in the conflict as much as his rider, and wheels or halts almost without the slightest intimation.
The hoofs of the Arab Horses are never shod, their owners thinking that that act is not likely to improve nature, and even among the burning sands and hard rocks the Horse treads with unbroken hoof. In such a climate, indeed, an iron shoe would be worse than useless, as it would only scorch the hoof by day, and in consequence of the rapid change of temperature by day or night, the continual expansion and contraction of the metal would soon work the nails loose, and cause the shoe to fall off.
A tender-footed Horse would be of little value, and so we often find in the Scriptures that the hardness of the hoof is reckoned among one of the best qualities of a Horse. See, for example, Isa. v. 28: "Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind." Again, in Micah iv. 13: "Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people." Allusion is here made to one mode of threshing, in which a number of Horses were turned into the threshing-floor, and driven about at random among the wheat, instead of walking steadily like the oxen.
In Judges v. 22 there is a curious allusion to the hoofs of the Horse. It occurs in the Psalm of Thanksgiving sung by Deborah and Barak after the death of Sisera: "Then were the horse-hoofs broken by the means of the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones." It is easy now to see that these words infer a scornful allusion to the inferiority of the enemy's Horses, inasmuch as the hoofs of the best Horses would be "counted as flint," and would not be broken by the prancings.