Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears. — Joel 3:10.
Reading today’s verse, I wondered how do I reconcile Joel with the verses in Micah 4:3 and Isaiah 2:3-4 where we are to beat our swords into plowshares. The core tension is not merely a contradiction, but a paradox that highlights the difference between two distinct moments in prophetic time.
The prophecy of Joel focused on the Day of the Lord—a time of imminent, divine judgment and immediate confrontation. The context is that God is preparing to gather the nations in the Valley of Jehoshaphat to judge them for wrongs committed against Israel (dividing the land, enslaving the people).
Joel’s call to transform agricultural tools into weapons is a direct, urgent command to prepare for battle. It is a temporary reversal of the peace mandate, signaling an unavoidable necessity for military action. It essentially says: The time for planting is over; the time for accountability is at hand. When the judgment of God is being executed, tools of peace are inadequate; tools of war are required.
Conversely, the vision shared by Isaiah and Micah describes the ultimate, final state of existence when the Kingdom of God is fully established and recognized by all nations. This is not a call for a temporary cease-fire, but a permanent transformation of humanity’s nature. The command to turn weapons into tools of production (swords into plowshares) signifies the complete redundancy of warfare. In this era, God himself will be the ultimate arbiter, judge, and source of governance, negating any future need for armies or defense. It is the end of history as we know it, where violence is not just avoided, but rendered obsolete.
We live in the tension between two poles — The ideal and the reality. The ideal guides our prayer and diplomacy, urging us toward the Micah/Isaiah outcome. The reality necessitates the cautionary preparation of Joel, knowing that evil can still only be restrained by force when all diplomatic efforts fail.
I do remember the late 60’s when our country was torn apart of Vietnam, and many of my friends were drafted into service to fight a war they didn’t support. I also remember how my father and his friends felt it was their duty to join the armed services during WWII and Korea. Many of those same men wanted their sons to have no part in any form of another war. My memory illustrates the tension between the ideal and reality: the duty felt by the WWII generation versus the dissent of the Vietnam generation. Both groups sought peace, but they differed on the means to achieve it.
The older generation saw military duty as a necessary evil required to secure the ideal of lasting world peace by defeating tyranny. The younger generation saw the war itself as the obstacle to peace, believing that continued conflict—even for ostensibly good reasons—was moving the world further away from Isaiah/Micah’s vision.
We must work tirelessly to prevent the need for militarization. These efforts are the practical fulfillment of the Isaiah/Micah vision in the present day. When we intervene to alleviate starvation, disease, and poverty, we are not just helping our neighbors; we are dismantling the very root causes of conflict—the instability, desperation, and injustice—that force nations to contemplate beating plowshares back into swords.
Leave a Reply +