482. Plowshares

From: Manners and Customs of the Bible By: James M. Freeman

• 1 min. read • grade level: 12

See also Joel 3:10¹⁰Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. (Joel 3:10), and Micah 4:3³And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Micah 4:3). in the passage in Joel the expression is reversed: “Beat your plowshares into swords.” Commentators are divided as to the meaning of ittim, variously rendering it “plowshares,” “spades,” “hoes,” “mattocks.” The word refers to instruments for stirring up the soil in some way, and, so far as concerns capability of conversion to swords, these may as well have been plowshares as anything else. The plowshare was a small piece of iron, which somewhat resembled a short sword, and might easily have been beaten into one, and with equal facility a sword could have been changed into a plowshare.