Beat your plough-shares into swords— He bids them turn all such of their instruments as they used in times of peace, into instruments of war: so Virgil,
———Non ullus aratro Dignus honos: squalent abductis arva colonis, Et curvae rigidum falces constantur in ensem.
Dishonour'd lies the plough; the banish'd swains Are hurried from th' uncultivated plains; The sickles into barbarous swords are beat. GEOR. I. ver. 506. WARTON.
Times of peace are on the contrary described thus; They shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: Isaiah 2:4.