Joel 3:10

Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears,.... Let not only soldiers, and such as have been trained up in military discipline, appear in the field on this occasion; but

Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Beat your plowshares into swords.

Beat your ploughshares into swords: here is a prediction of war, and such as should continue, with some intermissions, through many years; as, on the contrary, when swords were to be beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, it was a prediction of peace, : lay aside your husbandry in ploughing and sowing. And your pruning-hooks into spears; and let gardeners, vinedressers, and planters think of getting spears instead of pruning-hooks. Let the weak, either of body, through sickness or natural weakness, or else weak of mind, fearful and cowardly, say, I am strong: put on strength and valour greater than he hath, let none be absent from this war.

Joe 3:10 Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I [am] strong.Ver. 10. Beat your ploughshares into swords] Come with the best preparation you can make, that ye may seem (as they say of a travelling Turk) to be so many walking armouries. Let the weak say, I am strong] Come forth full and whole, young and old, weak and strong, all that are able to bear arms, without excuse. It is an ancient custom in Scotland, in cases of importance, to command the fire cross to be carried, that is, two firebrands set in fashion of a cross, and pitched upon the point of a spear, and proclamation is thereupon made that all men over sixteen years of age and under sixty, shall come into the field to oppose the enemy. Those were desperate boys in Ket’ s conspiracy, that at the battle near Norwich pulled the arrows out of their own flesh, and delivered them to be shot again by the archers on their side: and those other wounded and weakened, no less desperately resolved, who being disabled almost to hold up their weapons, would strive what they could to strike their enemies; others being thrust through the body with a spear, would run themselves further on, to reach those that wounded them deadly. The enemies of the truth will make hard shift, but they will bear arms against Christ; and though feeble, yet will say, "I am strong," a Satana impulsi et armati, saith Mercer here, as being pricked on, armed and agitated by the devil, that old manslayer; according to that of Bernard, Seest thou thy persecutor outrageous, marvel not; but know that the devil rides him, makes him run, Scito quia ab ascensore suo daemone perurgetur.

(10) Beat your plowshares . . .—When the contest was over, and the victory of the Lord achieved, Micah foresaw the reversal of this order: the weapons of offence were once more to resume their peaceful character. “They “—i.e., the nations—“shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Micah 4:3).

10. The nations are to put forth all their strength: the implements of peace are to be transformed into weapons of war; even the weak is to take courage, and feel himself a warrior, “as is wont to happen when martial enthusiasm seizes a whole people” (Hitz.). Beat, &c.] comp. Isaiah 2:4 (= Micah 4:3), where the opposite process to that which is here commanded is instanced as a feature of the future ideal reign of peace. spears] lances (1 Kings 18:28), not the word (ḥ ?ǎ ?nîth) used in Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3 (which is the ordinary one for spear), but one with Aramaic affinities, and otherwise found chiefly either in North-Israelitish writings (Judges 5:8; 1 Kings 18:28), or in late authors (1 Chronicles 12:8; 1 Chronicles 12:24; 2 Chronicles 11:12; 2 Chronicles 14:7; 2 Chronicles 25:5; 2 Chronicles 26:14; Nehemiah 4:7; Nehemiah 4:10; Nehemiah 4:15 [A.V. 13, 16, 21]: otherwise only Numbers 25:7; Jeremiah 46:4; Ezekiel 39:9). The word being an uncommon one, its use gives a distinctive colouring to the verse of Joel, which ought, if possible, to be preserved in a translation. I am strong] a mighty man, a warrior: the same word which is used in Joe 3:9.

Beat your plowshares into swords - Peace had been already promised, as a blessing of the gospel. “In His days,” foretold Solomon, “shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace, so long as the moon endureth” Psalms 72:7.

9-16. After this condemnation of the bitterest enemies of the chosen people the prophet returns to the announcement broken off in Joe 3:3.