How do peace and Babylonian deliverance appear together?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The mountain vision and gathered remnant lead into labor grief, redemption and threshing images.

Chapter breakdown

The heading interprets the vision as Christ’s church and Gentile conversion, and announces Babylonian captivity and deliverance. In the last days God’s house-mountain is prepared atop mountains, high above hills, and peoples flow to it. Many nations hasten there to learn God’s ways and walk his paths; law and word go from Sion and Jerusalem. Judgment and rebuke among distant strong nations precede swords becoming ploughshares and spears spades, with no more warfare or learning war. The edition interprets Christ’s law as peace and qualifies his true subjects’ keeping peace as as much as lies in them.

Each man sits under vine and fig tree without fear. Other peoples walk in their gods’ names while the speakers resolve to walk in God’s name forever. God gathers the halting, cast-out and afflicted, makes a remnant and mighty nation, and reigns in Sion forever. First power and kingdom come to the cloudy tower of the flock and daughter of Jerusalem.

Questions about king and counselor accompany labor-like grief. Sion is to leave the city, dwell in the country and come to Babylon, where God redeems her from enemies. Nations gathered against her call for her stoning but do not understand God’s counsel: he gathers them like hay on a floor. Sion is summoned to tread, with an iron horn and brass hoofs, breaking peoples and immolating spoils and strength to God. These images do not furnish a named human military decision or an exact chronological account of every promise.

The story inside

Spears become spades. The peace note includes a qualification. Nations do not understand God’s counsel.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Spears become spades.
2
The peace note includes a qualification.
3
Nations do not understand God’s counsel.

Test your recall

Where is Sion told she will be redeemed?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 101700–101713
4:1. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared in the top of the mountains, and high above the hills: and people shall flow to it. 4:2. And many nations shall come in haste, and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob: and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth out of Sion, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. 4:3. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into spades: nation shall not take sword against nation: neither shall they learn war anymore.
Lines 101715–101724
Neither shall they learn, etc.... The law of Christ is a law of peace; and all his true subjects, as much as lies in them love and keep peace with all the world. 4:4. And every man shall sit under his vine, and under his fig tree, and there shall be none to make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken. 4:5. For all people will walk every one in the name of his god: but we will walk in the name of the Lord, our God, for ever and ever.
Lines 101726–101736
4:6. In that day, saith the Lord, I will gather up her that halteth: and her that I had cast out, I will gather up: and her whom I had afflicted. 4:7. And I will make her that halted, a remnant: and her that had been afflicted, a mighty nation: and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Sion, from this time now and forever. 4:8. And thou, O cloudy tower of the flock, of the daughter of Sion, unto thee shall it come: yea the first power shall come, the kingdom to the daughter of Jerusalem.
Lines 101738–101746
4:9. Now, why art thou drawn together with grief? Hast thou no king in thee, or is thy counselor perished, because sorrow hath taken thee as a woman in labour. 4:10. Be in pain and labour, O daughter of Sion, as a woman that bringeth forth: for now shalt thou go out of the city, and shalt dwell in the country, and shalt come even to Babylon, there thou shalt be delivered: there the Lord will redeem thee out of the hand of thy enemies.
Lines 101748–101758
4:11. And now many nations are gathered together against thee, and they say: Let her be stoned: and let our eye look upon Sion. 4:12. But they have not known the thoughts of the Lord, and have not understood his counsel: because he hath gathered them together as the hay of the floor. 4:13. Arise, and tread, O daughter of Sion: for I will make thy horn iron, and thy hoofs I will make brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many peoples, and shalt immolate the spoils of them to the Lord, and their strength to the Lord of the whole earth.