Horses and chariots in the ancient world of course had to do with armaments, the city filled with arms, instruments of self-securing, and there is no end to this either, because the arms must increase to match our increasing greed and our increasing anxiety. Many of the horses and chariots in the end, of course, are no longer to be used against external enemies but to patrol and guard the internal inequity, to keep the disadvantaged from appearing in their odd way to take a share.
-Walter Brueggemann, Using God’s Resources Wisely: Isaiah and Urban Possibility (1993).
David W. Swanson 