Swords and Spears. Signs and Songs.
וְכִתְּתוּ חַרְבוֹתָם לְאִתִּים וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם לְמַזְמֵרוֹת
Ve’chitu charvotam le’itim ve’chanitoteichem le’mazmeirot
“Crush their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
(Isaiah 2:4/Micah 4:3)
This prophetic teaching offers a practice for transforming violence into compassion.
A popular song inspired by the prophets exclaims, “I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside.” But our original verse doesn’t use the passive verb “to lay down.”
וְכִתְּתוּ/CHITU means to crush, pound, smash, break down. We begin by dismantling, deconstructing, and recontextualizing the sword.
חַרְבוֹתָם/CHEREV. “Their swords.” A sword is a two-sided blade, something sharp. The same root letters are used to spell חרב/Horeb, a synonym for Mount Sinai, the location of revelation. Both the sword and theophany are decisive. Edges that simultaneously reveal and conceal. Cuts that bind, slices that join.
Revelation isn’t static. Or historical.
Can we turn the sword of separation back upon itself? Can we break down the tools that sever, deweaponizing division? Can we develop a crush on what has long been soul-crushing and build a friction fire that refines? Smelt metals into feral elements; shatter simple solids into glittery complexity; refract razor edges in infinite rivulets…
לְאִתִּים/LE’ITIM. What’s a “plowshare” anyway? A spade, a shovel. Something that loosens the top layer, prepares the soil and helps us go deeper. This word appears only here, only once. An hapax legomenon. These same letters seed the word את/AIT which is very common throughout the Torah. It is built by the very first and the last symbols of the aleph-bet. When Jesus said “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (even though I don’t think he spoke Greek) he was identifying with the Beginning and the End — and Everything in Between [merism]. The Hebrew את/AIT is usually an untranslated grammatical term; a sign of the definite direct object. It’s the third word of Genesis: “God created [ ].” This same insight was articulated by Nisargatta and other Advaita Vedanta teachers as “I Am That”/Tat Tvam Asi.
Read this way, our verse so far teaches us to “break down concepts that usually divide until they are refined into elements that join.”
וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם/VECHANITOTEICHEM. “Their spears.” Unlike a sword, a spear is single-pointed; it penetrates, it thrusts. Unlike a sword, which is always held by the attacker, a spear can be thrown or launched from a distance. A sword cuts from the side; a spear plunges deep; parks itself (חנה/CHANAH) in the damage site.
Spears are here re-engineered into מַזְמֵרוֹת/MAZMEIROT, “pruning hooks.” Pruning is removal for the sake of strengthening what remains. We prune fruiting trees and our neuroplastic brains, repurposing the superfluous.
Our verse has spoken throughout in the third person. Whose swords are these? Whose spears? The verse talks about “them, theirs.” Are we discussing some external aggressor? Have we internalized weapons of oppression within our own consciousness?
The ancient providence of the text and the mythopoetic in general give us the psychological distance we need to examine how these processes happen within each and every one of us.
Whether straight-edged or single-pointed we frequently wield a violent certainty, a relentless posture of defensive protection. What might it be like to transform our awareness in ways that loosen impenetrable crusts and creates space for new growth? To transform the tools of encapsulation and self-preservation into vehicles of engagement and self-expression?
We can go even further homiletically with ITIM and MAZMEIROT.
אִתִּים/ITIM are signs, wonders, miracles. Written with an ע/AYIN (but still a homophone), עתים/ITIM are moments, meeting places in time, sacred appointments. By altering our grip of the same minds that divide and blind, we can also abide in timeless bright arrival. Isaiah’s transformation of the sword seems to teach what Albert Einstein wrote, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
We can also read מַזְמֵרוֹת/MAZMEIROT as songs. לזמר/LEZAMEIR is to sing, to prune away all possible other notes, and pick out a melody from the vine of endless sky.
Internalized weapons of war arrayed against a misattuned world can transform into resources of repair, tools for cultivating an inner and endless field of unutterably miraculous melody.
