Ploughshares Into Swords
Posted by Archer on March 21, 2008
Someone thinks this image is clever. Within its context, I suppose I get it, but outside of that it is, from my perspective, sad.
The term “Swords into Ploughshares” and its opposite, as with so much else both good and bad, has a biblical source:
“Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say “I am strong.”— Joel 3:10
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3
Russian sculptor Evgeniy Vuchetich had a different idea from the illustrator above and his work “Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares”, was given by the Soviet Union to the United Nations in 1959. (yeah, I know)
A guitar, besides being a musical instrument and often a fine work of art in its own right, is also a symbolic representation of Swords to Ploughshares as the the neck of the guitar is a sword and the body a shield, forged together so that none may bring harm to another ever again, just as the musician (ideally) is a warrior who has turned away from all forms of unnecessary violence.
