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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
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.