condition as a slave and their killing of his family.

Daniel faces internal conflicts when he can’t decide whether to follow Rosh or Jesus.  He wants to be the one to fight for his family, but he also wants change.

Jesus is a calming and focusing influence on Daniel.  He helps give him something positive to focus on, rather than relying on the negative.

When Jesus asks Daniel what he vowed, he responds.

“To fight!”  Daniel stopped…trying to remember the exact words they had spoken…. “To live and to die for God’s victory.” (Ch. 21, p. 226)

Jesus responds that this is not a vow of hate.  He sees potential in David.  He knows that there is instability everywhere, and conflict everywhere, but violence and anger is not the answer.

The primary conflict in Elizabeth George Speare's novel The Bronze Bow is the internal conflict Daniel experiences with himself. He has become so consumed by hatred of the Romans and his desire for revenge that he cannot lead a normal life. Even an insignificant encounter with a Roman soldier can ruin his mood for days, and his exaggerated reaction to a soldier results in a serious wound that could have been fatal. His outburst at Leah when he learns she has taken a gift from a Roman soldier sends her plunging into mental and physical illness to the brink of death. And he throws away the chance he might have to marry Thacia because of his vow for vengeance.

Although Daniel thinks the Romans are to blame for the difficulties in his life, the fact is, his own hatred is what makes him miserable. Jesus is the one who shows him that love is the only thing stronger than hate; only love is strong enough to bend a bow of bronze. Daniel tells Jesus he will give him everything he has and will follow him, but Jesus asks him if he can give up his hate. Daniel thinks he cannot do that. But when Thacia calls Jesus to Daniel's home to heal Leah, Daniel experiences the love of Jesus toward himself, even after he has rejected Jesus, and he decides he wants to stop fighting and follow Jesus. He realizes that "to know Jesus would be enough," and "almost with the thought the terrible weight was gone." Daniel is able to give up his hate when he is touched by the love of Jesus and decides to follow him.

A significant conflict develops between Daniel and Rosh. Though both are devoted to the cause of liberating Judea from the Romans, the two young men have completely different value systems. Rosh is something of a fanatic; for him, the end justifies the means. He's prepared to use the most ruthless methods to achieve his political goals, even if it means stealing from his own people.

For Daniel, such an approach is simply wrong; it defeats the whole purpose of what they're doing. The zealots are supposed to be fighting to liberate the Jewish people from Roman occupation. Yet in stealing from his own people, Rosh is treating them no better than the Romans treat them with their punitive taxation. Also, Daniel fights because he has to; Rosh, on the other hand, fights because he wants to. He actually enjoys leading the life of an outlaw with all the violence it entails. It is this difference in attitude toward physical force that ultimately sets Daniel on the path to following the way of Christ.

The most important theme is that of forgiveness and love. Daniel is entirely ruled by his emotions and his need for revenge; he is driven by anger and not thinking about the larger consequences of his actions. For example, when he and Rosh's bandits attack Roman forces, the Romans take it out on the villagers because they cannot find Rosh and his people. Over the course of the novel, both through his friendship with Joel and Thacia and through the teachings of the preacher Jesus, Daniel realizes that he cares about more than just himself; he needs to love and accept other people, even Romans, or his anger will destroy him.

Was it possible that only love could bend the bow of bronze?He sat trembling, glimpsing a new way that he would never see clearly or understand.
[...]
Almost with the thought the terrible weight was gone. In its place a strength and sureness, and a peace he had never imagined, flowed around him and into his mind and heart.
(Speare, The Bronze Bow, Google Books)

This theme can be clearly seen as Daniel tries to reconcile his own feelings of anger with the clear leadership he feels when he meets Jesus. In Daniel's eyes, the preacher is the perfect leader for a revolution, and he cannot understand why Jesus is not leading the rebellion. It is only later that Daniel realizes Jesus means to change people through their hearts, not through the sword, and that this is ultimately a more effective method of rebellion.

The main conflict in the book is Daniel's internal struggle between the destructive hatred he feels for the Roman occupiers of his land and the love of Jesus, which is stronger than that hate.

Daniel struggles throughout the novel for power. An orphaned, enslaved Jew, the son of a rebel, Daniel is weak in terms of the social order. He tries to gain strength through his hatred and desire for revenge. The words of Rosh, who is obsessed with violently expelling the Romans from his homeland, speak to Daniel. Rosh believes that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” an ethic that Daniel embraces, believing that violence is the most potent form of power.

At this point, Daniel is no different from the Romans he hates, who put their faith in violence. He doesn't yet realize that you can't dismantle the master's house using the master's tools. Daniel's hate and embrace of violence does nothing but hurt him and those he cares about. It isolates him from others. His desire to beat the Romans using violence is doomed to failure, because that is the game they are best equipped to win. Daniel's internal conflict only begins to be resolved when he hears the words of Jesus and embraces his own humanity, learning that love is the only force powerful enough to defeat the Romans.

One major theme is the importance of family and friends. Daniel starts the novel isolated from everyone he knew, set apart from his village and without any ties to his former life. Through his deepening friendship with Joel and Thacia, Daniel discovers that his former life not only mattered, but that he possessed a deeper connection to it than he ever realized.

"You thought I had forgotten," he said. "But I remember how it used to be when Leah and I first came to live with you. Your hair was still so black, Grandmother. You worked in the ketzah field that summer. But at night you used to tell us stories."
(Speare, The Bronze Bow, Google Books)

After this scene, in which Daniel reconnects with his sister as their grandmother dies, Daniel discovers that he cannot return to his life with the bandits as he had lived it before. His heart has been reborn into caring about his family, and his friendship with Thacia has reminded him -- although he resists it -- that people are not meant to live alone. By the end of the novel, Daniel has realized that his life with his family and the villagers is more important than revenge, and that forgiveness is a more powerful tool than violence.