Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior.”
Joel 3 shows God gathering all nations into the valley of Jehoshaphat. Verse 10 belongs to a call to arms — but who gives the order, and why would God tell the world to beat its farm tools into weapons?
A challenge, not advice
One writer hears the order as God daring His enemies to test their strength against Him.
W. TrotterIn solemn irony God challenges His enemies to the battle. He calls on them to summon all their forces, and to muster all their strength.
The promise of peace run backwards
A plowshare is the blade that cuts the furrow; a pruning hook is the curved knife used on vines. Here both are hammered into weapons. One writer points to the day when the change runs the other way.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinToday nations turn their plowshares into swords. Some day they will do the opposite, and change their swords into plowshares. Righteousness and peace will surely kiss each other. Creation's curse and birth pains will end.
Why every peace effort collapses first
So the world does not disarm little by little before the day of the Lord. One writer says the drift runs the other way.
William KellyPeace will not come before the day of Jehovah. Instead, the world will see a gathering for war on a scale it has never seen yet. The desire to do great things, impatience of obligations, and lust of conquest and military glory will soon give men such a taste for war that no restraint will be enough to hold them back. Restraint will be harder still, because jealousy of each other will have led them to pile up vast stores for military use.
The same writer traces war past treaties and peace campaigns to its root in man himself.
William KellyMeanwhile, every effort of peace movements is at best a pleasant illusion, at worst an unbelieving confidence in man, and always ignorance of God's word... Wars certainly have their roots in the passions and desires of man. To escape the bad fruit, you must first make the tree good.
God's own mighty ones
God tells the weakest man to call himself a warrior. Every human scheme for improving the world must answer the same call — and then a different army comes down.
William KellyBefore that day comes, the utter failure of charitable and other schemes for improving the world will be plain... They must soon answer the prophet's ironical call: "wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up"... "Bring Your mighty ones down there" to meet the world in its might. For in that day there will be, so to speak, a pitched battle between the powers of God and those of evil. No one can doubt how it ends.
The place the muster leads to
The nations arm and march to a valley. Its name settles the outcome before the fighting starts.
J. N. DarbyThis is the judgment of the nations. That judgment must happen, to vindicate God's rights concerning His oppressed people, and to show the nations what He is in His government of the earth... The word "Jehoshaphat" means "the judgment, or the sceptre, of Jehovah." There, in judgment, He pleads with the nations for His people, whom they had scattered, and for His land, which they had divided.
Summary
- Speaker — The order to forge weapons is God's challenge to His enemies. He speaks "in solemn irony," calling them to muster all their strength.
- Reversal — Today nations "turn their plowshares into swords." In that day they will "change their swords into plowshares."
- Reason — Human effort will not bring peace. "Wars have their roots in the passions and desires of man," so the tree must be made good first.
- Mismatch — Both sides answer a summons. Man wakes his mighty men; God brings down His mighty ones, and no one can doubt how it ends.
- Verdict — The armies gather in the valley of Jehoshaphat, "the judgment of Jehovah." There God pleads with the nations for His scattered people and His divided land.