The Hebrew barad means hail or hailstones — frozen precipitation that falls as a divine weapon of judgment in biblical narrative. It appears primarily in contexts of theophany, divine warfare, and plague.
Barad is one of the ten plagues on Egypt (Exodus 9:18–26) and a recurring instrument of YHWH's judgments. Job, Psalms, and the prophets use hail as a metaphor for the terror of divine wrath: 'He unleashed against them his hot anger, wrath, indignation and hostility — a band of destroying angels' (Psalm 78:49). Apocalyptically, Revelation 16:21 picks up the motif: giant hailstones fall in the final judgment. Barad thus stands as a sign that creation itself is God's arsenal — he bends the natural order to accomplish his purposes. The warrior God who sent hail on Pharaoh is the same God who fights for his people in Joshua 10, where hailstones kill more enemies than swords.