Yahweh’s word that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel.
Hear this, you elders, And listen, all you inhabitants of the land. Has this ever happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
Tell your children about it, and have your children tell their children, and their children, another generation.
What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten. What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten. What the grasshopper has left, the caterpillar has eaten.
Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
For a nation has come up on my land, strong, and without number. His teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a lioness.
He has laid my vine waste, and stripped my fig tree. He has stripped its bark, and thrown it away. Its branches are made white.
Mourn like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth!
The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from Yahweh’s house. The priests, Yahweh’s ministers, mourn.
The field is laid waste. The land mourns, for the grain is destroyed, The new wine has dried up, and the oil languishes.
Be confounded, you farmers! Wail, you vineyard keepers; for the wheat and for the barley; for the harvest of the field has perished.
The vine has dried up, and the fig tree withered; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all of the trees of the field are withered; for joy has withered away from the sons of men.
Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God’s house.
Sanctify a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders, and all the inhabitants of the land, to the house of Yahweh, your God, and cry to Yahweh.
Alas for the day! For the day of Yahweh is at hand, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.
Isn’t the food cut off before our eyes; joy and gladness from the house of our God?
The seeds rot under their clods. The granaries are laid desolate. The barns are broken down, for the grain has withered.
How the animals groan! The herds of livestock are perplexed, because they have no pasture. Yes, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.
Yahweh, I cry to you, For the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field.
Yes, the animals of the field pant to you, for the water brooks have dried up, And the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–20 I proceed now to explain The Prophet Joel. The…
I proceed now to explain The Prophet Joel. The time in which he prophesied is uncertain. Some of the Jews imagine that he exercised his office in the time of Joram, king of Israel, because a dreadful famine then prevailed through the whole land, as it appears evident from sacred history; and as the Prophet record a famine, they suppose that his ministry must be referred to that time. Some think, that he taught under Manasseh, but they bring no reason for this opinion; it is, therefore, a mere conjecture. Others think that he performed his office as a teacher not only under one king, but that he taught, at the same time with Isaiah, under several kings.
But as there is no certainty, it is better to leave the time in which he taught undecided; and, as we shall see, this is of no great importance. Not to know the time of Hosea would be to readers a great loss for there are many parts which could not be explained without a knowledge of history; but as to Joel there is, as I have said, less need of this; for the import of his doctrine is evident, though his time be obscure and uncertain. But we may conclude that he taught at Jerusalem, or at least in the kingdom of Judah. As Hosea was appointed a Prophet to the kingdom of Israel, so Joel had another appointment; for he was to labor especially among the Jews and not among the Ten Tribes: this deserves to be particularly noticed.
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Now the sum of the Book is this: At the beginning, he reproves the stupidity of the people, who, when severely smitten by God, did not feel their evils, but on the contrary grew hardened under them: this is one thing. Then he threatens far more grievous evils; as the people became so insensible under all their punishments, that they were not humbled, the Prophet declares that there were evils at hand much worse than those they had hitherto experienced: this is the second thing. Thirdly, he exhorts the people to repentance, and shows that there was required no common evidence of repentance; for they had not lightly offended God, but by their perverseness provoked him to bring on them utter ruin: since, then, their obstinacy had been so great, he bids them to come as suppliants with tears, with sackcloth, with mourning, with ashes, that they might obtain mercy; for they were unworthy of being regarded by the Lord, except they thus submissively humbled themselves: this is the third subject. The fourth part of the Book is taken up with promises; for he prophesies of the Kingdom of Christ, and shows, that though now all things seemed full of despair, yet God had not forgotten the covenant he made with the fathers; and that therefore Christ would come to gather the scattered remnants, yea, and to restore to life his people, though they were now lost and dead.
This is the sum and substance. But we shall see, as we proceed, that the chapters have been absurdly and foolishly divided. He thus begins —
The word of Jehovah which came to Joel, the son of Pethuel. He names here his father; it is hence probable that he was a man well known and of some celebrity. But who this Pethuel was, all now are ignorant. And what the Hebrews hold as a general rule, that a prophet is designated, whenever his father’s name is added, appears to me frivolous; and we see how bold they are in devising such comments. When no reason for any thing appears to them, they invent some fable, and allege it as a divine truth. When, therefore, they are wont thus to trifle, I have no regard for what is held by them as a rule. But yet it is probable, that when the Prophets are mentioned as having sprung from this or that father, their fathers were men of some note.
Now what he declared by saying, that he delivered the word of the Lord, is worthy of being observed; for he shows that he claimed nothing for himself, as an individual, as though he wished to rule by his own judgment, and to subject others to his own fancies; but that he relates only what he had received from the Lord. And since the Prophets claimed no authority for themselves, except as far as they faithfully executed the office divinely committed to them, and delivered, as it were from hand to hand, what the Lord commanded, we may hence feel assured that no human doctrines ought to be admitted into the Church. Why? Because as much as men trust in themselves, so much they take away from the authority of God. This preface then ought to be noticed, which almost all the Prophets use, namely, that they brought nothing of their own or according to their own judgment, but that they were faithful dispensers of the truth intrusted to them by God.
And the word is said to have been to Joel; not that God intended that he alone should be his disciple, but because he deposited this treasure with him, that he might be his minister to the whole people. Paul also says the same thing, — that to the ministers of the Gospel was committed a message for Christ, or in Christ’s name, to reconcile men to God, (2 Corinthians 5:20;) and in another place he says, ‘He has deposited with us this treasure as in earthen vessels,’ (2 Corinthians 4:7.) We now understand why Joel says, that the word of the Lord was delivered to him, it was not that he might be the only disciple; but as some teacher was necessary, Joel was chosen to whom the Lord committed this office. Then the word of God belongs indeed indiscriminately to all; and yet it is committed to Prophets and other teachers; for they are, so to speak, as it were trustees (depositarii — depositories.)
As to the verb היהeie, there is no need of philosophizing so acutely as Jerome does: “How was the word of the Lord made?” For he feared lest Christ should be said to be made, as he is the word of the Lord. These are trifles, the most puerile. He could not, however, in any other way get rid of the difficulty but by saying that the word is said to be made with respect to man whom God addresses, and not with respect to God himself. All this, as ye must see, is childish; for the Prophet says here only, that the word of the Lord was sent to him, that is, that the Lord employed him as his messenger to the whole people. But after having shown that he was a fit minister of God, being furnished with his word, he speaks authoritatively, for he represented the person of God.
We now see what is the lawful authority which ought to be in force in the Church, and which we ought to obey without dispute, and to which all ought to submit. It is then only that this authority exists, when God himself speaks by men, and the Holy Spirit employs them as his instruments. For the Prophet brings not forward any empty title; he does not say that he is a high priest of the tribe of Levi, or of the first order, or of the family of Aaron. He alleges no such thing, but says that the word of God was deposited with him. Whosoever then demands to be heard in the Church, must of necessity really prove that he is a preacher of God’s word; and he must not bring his own devices, nor blend with the word any thing that proceeds from the judgment of his own flesh.
But first the Prophet reproves the Jews for being so stupid as not to consider that they were chastised by the hand of God, though this was quite evident. Hence they pervert, in my judgment, the meaning of the Prophet, who think that punishments are here denounced which were as yet suspended; for they transfer all these things to a future time. But I distinguish between this reproof and the denunciations which afterwards follow. Here then the Prophet reproaches the Jews, that having been so severely smitten, they did not gain wisdom; and yet even fools, when the rod is applied to their backs, know that they are punished. Since then the Jews were so stupid, that when even chastised they did not understand that they had to do with God, the Prophet justly reproves this madness. “Hear”, he says, “ye old men; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land, and declare this to your children”. But the consideration of this passage I shall put off till tomorrow.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 20 He calleth the Jews to the consideration of God’s…
He calleth the Jews to the consideration of God’s judgments, who had now plagued the fruits of the ground for the space of four years, which was for their sins, and to call them to repentance.
Signifying the Princes, the Priests and the governors.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–20 Joe 1:1 The word of the LORD that came…
Joe 1:1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
Ver. 1. The word of the Lord that came, &c.] See the note on Hos 1:1, with whom Jerome and some other interpreters make this prophet a contemporary, for the likeness of argument; and that common canon of the Jewish doctors, that the prophet who sets not down his time is to be held of the same time with him that is placed before him. The Seventy set him not only after Hosea, but also after Amos and Micah: and the ancient Hebrew Chronicle, called Sedar Olam, affirmeth that Joel prophesied together with Nahum and Habakkuk, the days of King Manasseh; which Drusius would prove out of Joe 3:5. Others, with more show of reason, out of 2Ki 21:10; 2Ki 23:26. Joel might very well be one of those prophets that denounced God’s heavy judgments against Judah, for the sins and abominations of Manasseh, whom some make to be his convert. For although at first the Lord spake to Manasseh, and to his people, but they would not hearken, {2Ch 33:10} yet the rod might set the word to work afterwards; for Manasseh, when he was in affliction, besought the Lord, and humbled himself greatly, {2Ch 33:12} and Joel might very well be to him a son of Pethuel, or of God’s persuasion: God, by his ministry, might speak to his heart, Hos 2:14, set before him an open door (another Etymology of the name Pethuel, ostium Dei mouth of God), Rev 3:8, minister unto him an entrance farther and farther into Christ’s everlasting kingdom, 2Pe 1:11. If any think it more likely that Joel prophesied under Josiah, king of Judah, when that great famine occured which is described in like terms by Jeremiah, Jer 14:1-2 cf. 2Ki 23:26, I shall not strive with him. But that this Joel was the son of Samuel (here called Pethuel, a persuader of God, because what he asked of God he obtained), as R. Salomon would carry it, I cannot imagine: for that Joel was not a prophet, but a corrupt judge, 1Sa 8:1-5.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–20 Joel; supposed to be of the posterity of Reuben,…
Joel; supposed to be of the posterity of Reuben, therefore could not be (as the Jews suppose) Samuel's son, nor will his time fit to 1Ch 5:4,8; but of what tribe soever, we know he came from God, and with his authority, and is so cited by the apostle, Act 2:16.
The son of Pethuel: more of this man I know not, and it is possible he might be, as the Jews suppose, very eminent, because he is named; however, it is an honour to be reported a prophet's father. The time of his prophesying, though not demonstrable, is with greatest probability laid about the latter end of Jeroboam the Second's reign over Israel, and in the days' of Uzziah over Judah.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 14 It is a foolish fancy which some of the…
It is a foolish fancy which some of the Jews have, that this Joel the prophet was the same with that Joel who was the son of Samuel (Sa1 8:2); yet one of their rabbin very gravely undertakes to show why Samuel is here called Pethuel. This Joel was long after that. He here speaks of a sad and sore judgment which was now brought, or to be brought, upon Judah, for their sins. Observe,
I. The greatness of the judgment, expressed here in two things: - 1. It was such as could not be paralleled in the ages that were past, in history, or in the memory of any living, Joe 1:2. The old men are appealed to, who could remember what had happened long ago; nay, and all the inhabitants of the land are called on to testify, if they could any of them remember the like. Let them go further than any man's memory, and prepare themselves for the search of their fathers (Job 8:8), and they would not find an account of the like in any record. Note, Those that outdo their predecessors in sin may justly expect to fall under greater and sorer judgments than any of their predecessors knew. 2. It was such as would not be forgotten in the ages to come (Joe 1:3): "Tell you your children of it; let them know what dismal tokens of the wrath of God you have been under, that they make take warning, and may learn obedience by the things which you have suffered, for it is designed for warning to them also. Yea, let your children tell their children, and their children another generation; let them tell it not only as a strange thing, which may serve for matter of talk" (as such uncommon accidents are records in our almanacs - It is so long since the plague, and fire - so long since the great frost, and the great wind), "but let them tell it to teach their children to stand in awe of God and of his judgments, and to tremble before him." Note, We ought to transmit to posterity the memorial of God's judgments as well as of his mercies.
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II. The judgment itself; it is an invasion of the country of Judea by a great army. Many interpreters both ancient and modern understand it of armies of men, the forces of the Assyrians, which, under Sennacherib, took all the defenced cities of Judah, and then, no doubt, made havoc of the country and destroyed the products of it: nay, some make the four sorts of animals here names (Joe 1:4) to signify the four monarchies which, in their turns, were oppressive to the people of the Jews, one destroying what had escaped the fury of the other. Many of the Jewish expositors think it is a parabolic expression of the coming of enemies, and their multitude, to lay all waste. So the Chaldee paraphrast mentions these animals (Joe 1:4); but afterwards (Joe 2:25) puts instead of them, Nations, peoples, tongues, languages, potentates, and revenging kingdoms. But it seems much rather to be understood literally of armies of insects coming upon the land and eating up the fruits of it. Locusts were one of the plagues of Egypt. Of them it is said, There never were any like them, nor should be (Exo 10:14), none such as those in Egypt, none such as these in Judah - none like those locusts for bigness, none like these for multitude and the mischief they did. The plague of locusts in Egypt lasted but for a few days; this seems to have continued for four years successively (as some think), because here are four sorts of insects mentioned (Joe 1:4), one destroying what the other left; but others think they came all in one year. We are not told, in the history of the Old Testament, when this happened, but we are sure that no word of God fell to the ground; and, though a devastation by these insects is primarily intended here, yet it is expressed in such a language as is very applicable to the destruction of the country by a foreign enemy invading it, because, if the people were not humbled and reformed by that less judgment which devoured the land, God would send this greater upon them, which would devour the inhabitants; and by the description of that they are bidden to take it for a warning. If this nation of worms do not subdue them, another nation shall come to ruin them. Observe, 1. What these animals are that are sent against them - locusts and caterpillars, palmer-worms and canker-worms, Joe 1:4. We cannot now describe how these differed one from another; they were all little insects, any one of them despicable, and which a man might easily crush with his foot or with his finger; but when they came in vast swarms, or shoals, they were very formidable and ate up all before them. Note, God is Lord of hosts, has all creatures at his command, and, when he pleases, can humble and mortify a proud and rebellious people by the weakest and most contemptible creatures. Man is said to be a worm; and by this it appears that he is less than a worm, for, when God pleases, worms are too hard for him, plunder his country, eat up that for which he laboured, destroy the forage, and cut off the subsistence of a potent nation. The weaker the instrument is that God employs the more is his power magnified. 2. What fury and force they came with. They are here called a nation (Joe 1:6), because they are embodied, and act by consent, and as it were with a common design; for, though the locusts have no king, yet they go forth all of them by bands (Pro 30:27), and it is there mentioned as an instance of their wisdom. It is prudence for those that are weak severally to unite and act jointly. They are strong, for they are without number. The small dust of the balance is light, and easily blown away, but a heap of dust is weighty; so a worm can do little (yet one worm served to destroy Jonah's gourd), but numbers of them can do wonders. They are said to have teeth of a lion, of a great lion, because of the great and terrible execution they do. Note, Locusts become as lions when they come armed with a divine commission. We read of the locusts out of the bottomless pit, that their teeth were as the teeth of lions, Rev 9:8. 3. What mischief they do. They eat up all before them (Joe 1:4); what one leaves the other devours; they destroy not only the grass and corn, but the trees (Joe 1:7): The vine is laid waste. There vermin eat the leaves which should be a shelter to the fruit while it ripens, and so that also perishes and comes to nothing. They eat the very bark of the fig-tree, and so kill it. Thus the fig-tree does not blossom, nor is there fruit in the vine.
III. A call to the drunkards to lament this judgment (Joe 1:5): Awake and weep, all you drinkers of wine. This intimates, 1. That they should suffer very sensibly by this calamity. It should touch them in a tender part; the new wine which they loved so well should be cut off from their mouth. Note, It is just with God to take away those comforts which are abused to luxury and excess, to recover the corn and wine which are prepared for Baal, which are made the food and fuel of a base lust. And to them judgments of that kind are most grievous. The more men place their happiness in the gratification of sense the more pressing temporal afflictions are upon them. The drinkers of water need not to care when the vine was laid waste; they could live as well without it as they had done; it was no trouble to the Nazarites. But the drinkers of wine will weep and howl. The more delights we make necessary to our satisfaction the more we expose ourselves to trouble and disappointment. 2. It intimates that they had been very senseless and stupid under the former tokens of God's displeasure; and therefore they are here called to awake and weep. Those that will not be roused out of their security by the word of God shall be roused by his rod; those that will not be startled by judgments at a distance shall be themselves arrested by them; and when they are going to partake of the forbidden fruit a prohibition of another nature shall come between the cup and the lip, and cut off the wine from their mouth.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–20 The word of the Lord that came to Joel…
The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. Who this Pethuel was is not known; Jarchi takes him to be the same with Samuel the prophet, who had a son of this name, Sa1 8:2; and gives this reason for his being called Pethuel, because in his prayer he persuaded God; but the long span of time will by no means admit of this, nor the character of Samuel's son agree with Joel; and therefore is rightly denied by Aben Ezra, who observes, however, that this man was an honourable man, and therefore his name is mentioned; and gives this as a rule, that whenever any prophet mentions the name of his father, he was honourable. Perhaps, it is here observed, to distinguish him from another of the same name; and there was one of this name, Joel, a high priest in the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, according to Seder Olam Zuta (i) and Abarbinel (k); in whose time Joel is by some thought to prophesy.
(i) Fol. 104. (k) In Meyer. Anotat. in ib. p, 626.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 The unheard of judgment of caterpillars and locusts, ver.…
The unheard of judgment of caterpillars and locusts, ver. 1-7. All sorts us people are called on to lament it, ver. 8-13. And to humble themselves before God, 14-20.
Came to Joel - Probably in the latter end of Jeroboam the second's reign over Israel and in the days of Uzziah, over Judah.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 Chronological Notes relative to the commencement of Joel's
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JOEL
Chronological Notes relative to the commencement of Joel's
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prophesying, upon the supposition that this event took place
about six hundred and ninety years before the commencement of
the Christian era.
-Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3314.
-Year of the Julian Period, 4024.
-Year since the Flood, 1658.
-Year from the foundation of Solomon's temple, 322.
-Year since the division of Solomon's monarchy into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, 285.
-Year since the extinction of the kingdom of Israel by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, 31.
-Third year of the twenty-second Olympiad.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to the Varronian computation, 64.
-Year before the vulgar era of Christ's nativity, 690.
-Cycle of the Sun, 20.
-Cycle of the Moon, 15.
-Third year of Eryxias, the last decennial archon of the Athenians.
-First year of Anaxidamus, king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Proclidae.
-Thirty-fifth year of Eurycrates I., king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Eurysthenidae.
-Eleventh year of Deioces, the first king of the Medes.
-Fortieth year of Perdiccas I., king of Macedon.
-Twenty-ninth year of Gyges, king of Lydia.
-Ninth year of Manasseh, king of Judah.
CHAPTER I
This and the beginning of the next chapter contain a double
prophecy, applicable in its primary sense to a plague of
locusts which was to devour the land, and to be accompanied
with a severe drought and famine; and in its secondary sense
it denotes the Chaldean invasion. Both senses must be admitted:
for some of the expressions will apply only to the dearth by
insects; others to the desolation by war. The contexture of
both is beautiful and well conducted. In this chapter the
distress of every order of people is strongly painted; and not
only does the face of nature languish when the God of nature
is displeased, 1-19;
but the very beasts of the field, by a bold figure, are
represented as supplicating God in their distress, and
reproaching the stupidity of man, 20.
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. The word of the Lord that came to Joel] See the introduction for some account of this prophet, whose history is very obscure. Bishop Newcome thinks that he prophesied while the kingdom of Judah subsisted, and refers to Joe 2:1; Joe 2:15, (see also Joe 1:14, and the note there,) but not long before its subversion as his words, Joe 3:1, seem to imply that its captivity was approaching. See 2Kg 21:10-15. He therefore favours the conjecture of Drusius, that this prophet lived under Manasseh, and before his conversion, 2Ch 33:13; that is, some time from before Christ 697 to (suppose) 660.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19 Joe 1:1-3. Hear this, ye old men — Ye…
Joe 1:1-3. Hear this, ye old men — Ye that have seen and remember many things. Hath this been in your days, &c. — Give attention; and when you have heard and considered, say whether any thing like the calamities which I am about to denounce hath ever happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers. In this way the prophet shows how great and unparalleled this dearth, which he fore-tels, would be. Tell ye your children — Let these prophecies be handed down to distant generations, and also an account of the events; that, the events being compared with the prophecy, it may be seen how exactly they were foretold.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–20 The word of the Lord that came to Joel…
The word of the Lord that came to Joel - Joel, like Hosea, mentions the name of his father only, and then is silent about his extraction, his tribe, his family. He leaves even the time when he lived, to be guessed at. He would be known only, as the instrument of God. “The word of the Lord came to” him (see the note at Hos 1:1), and he willed simply to be the voice which uttered it. He was “content to live under the eyes of God, and, as to people, to be known only in what concerned their salvation.” But this he declares absolutely, that the Word of God came to him; in order that we may give faith to his prophecy, being well assured that what he predicted, would come to pass. So the Saviour Himself says, ““My words shall not pass away” Mat 24:35. For truth admits of nothing false, and what God saith, will certainly be. For “He confirmeth the word of His servant, and performeth the counsel of His messengers” Isa 44:26. The prophet claimeth belief then, as speaking not out of his own heart, but out of the mouth of the Lord speaking in the Spirit.” Joel signifies, “The Lord is God.” It owns that God who had revealed Himself, is alone the God. The prophet’s name itself, embodied the truth, which, after the miraculous answer to Elijah’s prayer, all the people confessed, “The Lord He is the God, The Lord He is the God.” Pethuel signifies, “persuaded of God.” The addition of his father’s name distinguished the prophet from others of that name, as the son of Samuel, of king Uzziah, and others.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 Planted. Septuagint, "Bathuel." He was born in the tribe…
Planted. Septuagint, "Bathuel." He was born in the tribe of Gad, at Bethaven, the town which Herod styles Livias, Josue xiii. 27. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1
THE PROPHET JOEL
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PART FIRST
THE JUDGMENT AND CALL TO REPENTANCE
Joe_1:1 to Joe_2:17
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SECTION I
Complaint of the Desolation of Judah by Locusts and Drought
Joel 1
1 The word of Jehovah which came to1 Joel, the son of Pethuel.
2 Hear this, ye2 old men,
And give ear3 all ye inhabitants of the land!
Hath such4 a thing been in your days,
Or even in the days of your fathers?
3 Tell it5 to your children,
And your children to their children,
And their children to another generation.
4 What the palmer worm6 hath left, the locust hath eaten,
And what the locust hath left, the beetle hath eaten,
And what the beetle hath left, the caterpillar hath eaten.
5 Awake7 ye drunkards,8 and weep,
And cry out9 all ye drinkers of wine
On account of the new wine (or must),10
For it is cut off (removed) from your mouth.
6 For11 a people12 hath invaded13 my land,14
Mighty and numberless;
Their teeth are the teeth of a lion,
And they have the jaw teeth of a lioness.
7 They have laid waste my vine,15
And barked (or broken) my fig trees;
They have made it quite bare,16 and cast it away;
Its branches are made white.
8 Lament17 like a bride18
Girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
9 Cut off is the meat offering and the drink offering from the house of Jehovah;
The priests mourn
The ministers19 of Jehovah.
10 The field is wasted,20
The land mourneth,21
For the corn is destroyed,
The new wine is dried up,
The oil22 fails.
11 Be ashamed ye husbandmen,
Howl ye vine-dressers,
For the wheat and for the barley23;
Because the harvest of the field hath perished.
12 The vine is dried up,
And the fig tree faileth,
The pomegranate, also the palm, and the apple tree (quince),
All the trees of the field are withered,
So that joy is dried up24 from the sons of men.
13 Gird yourselves and lament, ye priests,
Cry out ye ministers of the altar;
Come, lie all night in sackcloth
Ye ministers of my God,
For the meat offering and the drink offering
Are withheld from the house of your God.
14 Sanctify a fast,
Appoint a solemn assembly,
Gather the elders,
And all the inhabitants of the land
In the house of Jehovah your God;
And cry unto Jehovah.
15 Alas for the day!
Because the day of Jehovah is at hand;
It will come like25 a tempest from the Almighty (Shaddai).26
16 Is not the food cut off before our eyes?
Joy and gladness from the house of our God?
17 The grains27 (seeds) are rotten27 under their clods,27
The garners are destroyed,
The barns27 are broken down,
Because the corn is withered.
18 How the beasts groan!
The herds of cattle are perplexed,
Because they have no pasture;
Even the flocks of sheep perish.
19 Unto Thee, O Jehovah, will I cry,
For the fire hath devoured all the pastures of the plain,
And the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.
20 Even28 the beasts of the field29 cry nnto Thee
For the streams of water are dried up,
And the fire hath devoured the pastures of the plain (wilderness).
EXEGETICAL
Joe_1:2-4. (Hear this ye old men,—) the caterpillar hath eaten. A call is made upon the inhabitants of Judah, and especially the old men, to testify that an unheard-of thing had happened,—an event to be told to their posterity, namely, the complete desolation of the land by successive swarms of locusts.
Joe_1:2. (Old men.) They are named because their memory goes back the farthest. The calamity might well be deemed extraordinary if they could recall nothing like it. Inhabitants of the land, i. e., of Judah, as is evident from what follows Joe_1:14; Joe_2:1. זאֹת refers to what is stated in Joe_1:4. In Joe_1:2-3 there is an allusion to Exo_10:2-6, where the plague of locusts in Egypt is spoken of.
Joe_1:4. Swarms of locusts come, each one devouring what its predecessor had left. This, however, is not described in a dry, prosaic way. As the locusts appear four times, they bear four distinct names. Their proper name is אַרִבֶּה, the others are poetic ones. These names are not used simply to denote the changes which the locusts undergo, nor their invasion of the land during successive years, as this would not consist with the statement that what one kind had left, another had eaten. The preterite אָבַל is to be taken in its proper sense. The whole chapter speaks of something that has actually happened. The desolation is described in detail, one feature of it after another being depicted in such a way as to arouse those affected by it to earnest prayer.
Joe_1:5-7. Awake ye drunkards.—Its branches are made white. The drunkards are called upon to mourn, to show poetically how complete is the desolation of the vineyards. At the same time, this is to be regarded as a punishment for the sins of the people, who are summoned to repent, though this last idea is not yet explicitly expressed.
Joe_1:6. The locusts are represented under the figure of a hostile army. They are not to be regarded as a type of such an army, as if the passage was simply allegorical. Yet the idea of enmity to Israel implied in the word גוֹי—a heathen people,—must not be lost sight of, for these locusts actually ravage the land of Israel. Hence there is no ground for taking עָלַה otherwise than as a preterite, nearly in the sense of a future, as predicting something to come. אַרְצי is the land of the prophet as speaking in the name of the people. Jehovah himself does not speak directly, comp. Joel 5:13. The arms of these invaders are their teeth, which grind like those of a lion. The jaw-teeth of the lioness protecting or avenging her young are added by way of climax.
Joe_1:7. The vine and fig tree. These are added because they are among the most valuable of fruit trees, comp. Hos_2:14. לִקִצָפָה is properly that which is broken off, i. e., a fragment of wood, splinter, chip. הֲשָׂפָה, made bare, by barking or paring, so as to peel off. The bark is thrown away; and the whole vine is made white or blanched by the barking of it.
Joe_1:8-10. (Lament like a bride,—the oil fails.) The lamentation of the drunkards is simply a prelude to what follows. It would be a mistake to suppose that sensual pleasures and enjoyments alone are meant. The thing at stake was so much greater than these, that the whole land had cause to mourn.
Joe_1:8. Judah is here regarded as a wife, and hence the fitness of comparing this lamentation to that of a young bride mourning the husband of her youth. Certainly no judgment could be more severe than one that made it impossible to present “the meat and drink offerings.” Hence the priests had reason to mourn; and Judah, in danger of losing the visible emblems of the presence of his God, is fitly compared to the young wife who had lost her husband. These offerings could not be presented because everything was destroyed. [The corn, wine, and oil were essential ingredients of these offerings, and every sacrifice would be imperfect without them. The locusts and the drought combined must also have caused a great dearth of the animals used in sacrifice.—F.]
Joe_1:11-12. Be ashamed, ye husbandmen,—from the sons of men. The husbandmen and vine-dressers are next addressed. The worst feature of the desolation, already mentioned, is not again noticed until we come to Joe_1:13. In Joe_1:11, הֵילִילוּ ,הֹבישׁוּ are imperfects. הֹבִישׁ, from בוּשׁ (perhaps to distinguish it from הוֹבִיש the Hiphil of יָבֵשׁ, here without the ו which precedes and follows it), to be ashamed, to grow pale. Going into their fields and finding nothing there, they are ashamed.
Joe_1:12 adds the reason for their lamentation. Besides the vine and the fig, other noble trees are mentioned which may have been under the special care of the vine-dresser; as well as the trees of the field generally. הֹבִיש שׁשׂוֹן here also the Hiph. of בוּש, to grow paler. Joy becomes, as it were, ashamed; she withdraws herself, and is no more seen.
Joe_1:13-17. Gird yourselves and lament ye Priests,—the corn is withered. The discourse returns to what had been complained of in Joe_1:9, as the worst feature of the calamity, namely, the inability to offer sacrifices. Here (Joe_1:13) the priests are again called upon to lament the want of materials for the temple service. “Gird yourselves,” i. e., with sackcloth or hair-cloth “Pass the night,” i. e., even in the night-time their lamentations on this account should continue. [They should weep between the court and the altar. See 1Ki_21:27. There was nothing strange in this direction, for there was no intermission in the temple service by day or night. See Psa_134:1.—F.] “Ministers of my God,” the God whose prophet I am. [The suffix of the first person shows that the prophet, on the one hand, stood apart from the priests, and on the other, stood in a very near relation to God as his organ, and therefore elevated far above all other ranks and conditions of men.—Wünsche.30 F.] The phrase “your God,” is immediately afterward used, and repeated in Joe_1:14, hence it must not be supposed that the prophet intended, or was obliged to separate himself wholly from the priests. There must be fasting as well as lamentation. This was to be observed not by the priests alone; on the contrary, the whole people must be assembled in the temple, and there in the midst of these masses the priests should cry unto the Lord. “Sanctify a fast,” because fasting was held to be, in the popular estimation, a holy, religious service. קִרְאוּ עַצָרָה. The word שצָרָה ordinarily denotes a religious assembly, one to observe a great festival. Fürst thinks that it comes from עָצַר, to fix, to settle, i. e., a fixed time,31 hence to proclaim a fast day. The “old men,”—not the elders in the official sense of the term, as one might perhaps infer from the E. V.—who had been called upon (Joe_1:2) to testify that no such calamity had ever before happened, must be present in this assembly, as well as those who are to hear their testimony, זָעַק, to cry out as an expression of want, or distress. The substance of this “cry,” or complaint, is presented in the verses that immediately follow. This complaint probably extends as far as Joe_1:17, in which the desolation of the land is set forth as the ground of the lamentation. Joe_1:18 seems to begin a new section, in which the cries of the lower animals are represented as mingled with the complaints of men.
Joe_1:15. Alas for the day, i. e., the present time of desolation. This cry of distress is caused by the nearness of the day of the Lord. The character of this day may be learned from its results. It is close at hand; it is coming as a desolating scourge from the Almighty, and its effect will be such as to show that it could come only from Him. That this terrible state of things had already begun is evident from Joe_1:16. The meat is cut off; the voice of joy and gladness is no longer heard in the temple. Why? Because it is not possible to present there the usual thank-offerings. Besides the invasion of the locusts which had eaten up every green thing, there was an unusual drought (Joe_1:18) which had greatly intensified the calamity that had befallen Judah. In consequence of these things the granaries were empty, the barns had gone to ruin, for the corn had failed. The question arises, how is the passage from Joe_1:13 and onwards to be viewed. It is commonly taken to be a new section, the subject of which is the call to repentance. Keil thus explains its connection with the preceding context: “Lamentation and mourning alone will not bring release from the calamity: with these must be conjoined repentance and prayer to Jehovah, who can avert every evil.” But though this view seems to be favored by Joe_1:14-15, it really mistakes the prophet’s train of thought. The call to repentance does not come formally into view until Joe_2:12, though the way had been prepared for it, Joe_2:1. Now the description of the day of the Lord in Joe_2:2 has a relation to what is said in Joe_1:15, so that the call to repentance may be said to have its root and nothing more, in this earlier section. The special design of Joel 1 is to lay a foundation for what is to follow, by exhibiting the magnitude of Judah’s distress, and the special reason for repentance. The intensity of the mourning showed the magnitude of the judgment. The priests (Joe_1:13) and the people at large (Joe_1:15) are alike called upon to recognize the judgment, and to return to God who had sent it. This passage and Joe_2:15 seem to be exactly alike in purport, but there are differences between them which should not be overlooked. They differ in regard to the motive and the object of the proposed fasting and humiliation. In Joe_2:15 the priests are charged to call a solemn assembly, because in this way they might hope for God’s mercy. In Joe_1:14 the ground of lamentation is the suspension of sacrifices, which not only affected the public worship of God in the temple as conducted by the priesthood, but also the immediate interests of the people themselves. They also differ in the object proposed. In Joe_2:15 the priests in the people’s name and behalf beseech the mercy of the Lord. In Joe_1:14-15 they cry to Him, “Alas.” They bring their complaint before the Lord, because this great calamity bears upon their relation to Him as his ministers, depriving them of the means for carrying on divine service, and hence they cry out, “the day of the Lord is near.” So thorough is the desolation that one may well say “the day of the Lord is at hand.” Things have this look. But as yet there is no word about repentance, confession of sin, and return to God. The calamity, in its unequaled magnitude, and far-reaching effects, just now fills the prophet’s mind. He naturally regards it as coming from God’s hand, but he here says nothing about the cause of it. The reason for deeming it a divine infliction is only implied in the connection between the devastation and what the day of the Lord would bring.
Joe_1:17-18 show that the prophet is not yet exhorting the people, but is still describing the great calamity. It would be strange, therefore, for him to introduce in Joe_1:13 a topic so entirely new, as repentance. Nor do we find in these verses the proper motives for such an exercise. Logically, then, these two passages are quite distinct, the one being a call to lamentation, and the other a call to repentance. When the prophet, in Joe_1:14 and Joe_2:15, exhorts the priests to appoint a fast and call a solemn assembly, he does not mean that this should be done twice, at two different times. The one call is simply a repetition of the other, but in a different sense. He wishes the people to fast, and to meet in the temple, to mourn there with the priests, and that they should also manifest their penitence by prayer for mercy offered by the priests as their representatives.
Joe_1:18-20. How do the beasts groan,—the pastures of the wilderness. The beasts of the field must suffer equally with men. This fact is used to illustrate the magnitude of the calamity. But as these dumb animals cannot describe their sufferings, the prophet himself becomes their interpreter, and as if sharing their distress, exclaims, To Thee, O Jehovah, do I cry—for help. That this appeal is in the name of the beasts of the field is evident from Joe_1:19. The flame, the fire, Joe_1:19-20 = the fierce heats that produced the drought. The beasts include domestic and wild animals.
THEOLOGICAL
1. We may here discuss the question whether the visitation of the locusts is to be regarded as an allegorical prediction of an invasion of the land by a hostile people, as most of the older expositors, and more recently Hengstenberg and Havernick take it to be. They think that the prophecy of the desolation of the land begins in chap. 1. If this be so, as there is no formal mention of the future, we must suppose that the prophet sees the approach of the calamity so vividly, that he pictures the future as a present reality. While this view may be admissible, it is not natural. On its face, the text describes not a future, but a present fact, and there is no exegetical necessity for assigning to it any other sense. We may also remark that the call to the old men to testify whether such a thing had happened in their day, and to the people generally to transmit the account of it to their children, would have no significance, if the event were a future one. Chap. 1 certainly describes a devastation that had actually happened, and as no foreign foe had as yet invaded the land, it must have been caused by locusts and drought. It needs no proof that the word “people” (Joe_1:6) does not necessarily denote a real nation. Again, the devastation caused by locusts would be an inadequate type of an invasion of the land, since one of the essential features of the latter would be wanting, namely, the shedding of blood. The picture of the calamity in no way suggests the terrors caused by an inroad of foreign foes. The chapter simply treats of the damage done to the products of the earth, and the complaints of men in consequence of it.—But as regards chap. 2, the question whether the visitation of locusts is to be taken in an allegorical sense, is not so easily settled. Here the coming of “the day of the Lord” is for the first time distinctly announced, and in this connection there is a renewed mention of the destruction caused by locusts and drought. That this latter event should be made the theme of a prophetic discourse, is no way surprising, because Holy Scripture teaches us that all public calamities are divine dispensations designed to awaken men to a sense of their sins, and to bring them to repentance. What more natural, then, than that the prophets should, in God’s name, threaten such calamities, and when they did come, interpret and apply them so as to arouse the people to penitence, so that they might escape still heavier judgments? A clear illustration of this is found in Amo_6:6, and as he closely follows Joel, we may regard it as settled that the latter prophet had these calamities before his mind. But the prophet is a poet as well as a preacher of repentance; and so he presents a most vivid poetic picture of the great misfortune which had befallen Judah. In its surpassing magnitude, God’s chastising hand was all the more manifestly displayed, and his voice was all the more distinctly heard calling his people to repent.
2. The memory of extraordinary events should be preserved in the popular mind. They thus become a tradition, or a history. Thus only can there be a continuous life in the case of individuals, of families, and of nations. This basis of history, namely, the remembrance of the experience of former generations, in the case of Israel is essentially a religious one. Here, events are manifestations of God,—of his mercy, or his judgment. As such they should never be forgotten, in order that the revelation of God to the consciousness of a nation may be maintained in an ever-living freshness.
3. Terrible as is the scourge which strikes at the means of subsistence in a land, in the prophet’s eye this is not its worst result. In this case, for example, the greatest evil produced by it was the loss of the sacrifices in the house of God. The Temple was the visible sign and pledge of God’s dwelling in the midst of Israel as his people. But it was such only while divine worship was kept up in it, according to the due order, by the priests as the representatives of the people. The daily morning and evening sacrifice formed an essential part of this service; and on its continuance depended the continuance of God’s covenant relation to his people [i. e, not really, but visibly.—F.]. The suspension of the one suspended the other. Hence no greater misfortune could happen to Israel than the inability, caused by famine, to supply the Temple with the materials for these sacrifices. Joel, realizing fully the necessity of these offerings for the purpose before named, turns to the priests, here and in chap, 2, entreating them to call upon God themselves and to endeavor to bring the people to repentance. Such, in any case, was their present duty. How it might be in the future will be disclosed in chap. 3. Meanwhile it is manifest that no merely formal service would meet the exigency. Only true repentance would avail.
HOMILETICAL
Joe_1:1-2. [Henry: The greatness of the judgment is expressed here in two things: (1.) It was such as could not be paralleled in the ages that were past; in history, or the memory of any living. Those that outdo their predecessors in sin, may justly expect to fall under greater and sorer judgments than any of their predecessors knew. (2.) It was such as would not be forgotten in the ages to come. We ought to transmit to posterity the memorial of God’s judgments as well as of his mercies.—F.]
Joe_1:3. How necessary it is that our children should be taught the will of God, and what his purpose is when He chastises us, so that the fear of his holy name may be deepened in our hearts.
Ver 4. Here we learn the omnipotence of God, and how vainly human power is arrayed against Him, since He can employ the smallest and meanest insect to do his will.
Joe_1:5. Ye drunkards who consume God’s kindly gifts in intemperance and sin, know that your sin carries a curse with it, and that God can easily cut off the wine from your mouths, and punish you with years of famine.
[Pusey: All sin stupefies the sinner. All intoxicate the mind, bribe and pervert the judgment, dull the conscience, blind the soul, and make it insensible to its own ills. God arouses those who will be aroused by withdrawing from them the pleasures wherein they offended Him. Weeping for things temporal may awaken the fear of losing things eternal.—F.].
Joe_1:6-8. The Christian Church is God’s vineyard. If at any time it yields not good fruit, but only wild grapes, it shall be laid waste.
[Robinson: Prevailing sins are often visited with corresponding judgments. The Lord in his righteous dealings withholds those gifts of his providence which have been abused. He takes from an ungodly people the means of gratifying their lusts, and leads them to repentance by afflictions which are not capriciously ordered, but with exactest wisdom are suited to their character. Be assured, the prosperity of the Church depends not on a grand ceremonial, or crowds of admiring devotees, or the countenance of the state, however desirable these things may be, but only on the favor of God, whose blessing, and whose Spirit will I be withdrawn, if we defile his sanctuary with superstitious rites.—F.]
Joe_1:9. No greater sorrow can befall the teachers and hearers of the Word, than the cessation of divine worship. Want of the means of livelihood must exert a very prejudicial influence on the public service of God. Under the old economy there would be, of necessity, a failure of tithes and offerings. So now, when people have a hard and constant struggle for the bare means of subsistence, they will be far behind others in knowledge of the truth, in the proper training of children, and in mutual love.
Joe_1:10. How quickly the Lord can turn all human joy into sorrow! How comes it then, O sinner, that thou cleavest so closely to temporal things which may be taken away at any moment? What reason have we to praise the goodness of the Lord, who gives us fruitful seasons, and fills our hearts with gladness?
Joe_1:11. Husbandmen are too apt to desire the blessings of the field through avarice, or for the sake of their own carnal enjoyment. Therefore God sometimes sends them a sad instead of a joyful harvest-time.
Joe_1:9-12. [Scott: We are so dependent upon God in everything, that no human wisdom or power can provide plenty when He pleases to send scarcity; without his rain, the seed even must perish, the trees of the field must wither, and all our temporal joys must sicken and die, and such judgments are emblems of the great day of retribution. How stupid then are sinners who are insensible under such judgments, or only mourn with a rebellious and unhumbled sorrow.
Pusey: The vine is the richness of divine knowledge, the fig the sweetness of contemplation and the joyousness in things eternal. Well is the life of the righteous likened to a palm, in that the palm below is rough to the touch, and in a manner enveloped in a dry bark, but above it is adorned with fruit, fair even to the eye; below it is compressed by the enfoldings of its bark, above it is spread out in amplitude of beautiful greenness. For so is the life of the elect,—despised below, beautiful above.—F.]
Joe_1:13-14. Who shall blame God’s ministers when they complain of the declension of religion? Who would not weep when he thinks of the miserable condition of many churches.
Fasting is one of the ways of deepening and manifesting repentance, sanctioned by Holy Scripture. When properly observed, the result will be to stimulate us to cry more earnestly to God. Under great calamities, men should be taught to look to God, not only in a general way, but they should be told to seek Him in special and appropriate exercises of penitence and prayer.
[Henry: They that are employed in holy things are therein God’s ministers, and on Him they attend. A people may be filling up the measure of their iniquity apace, and yet may keep up a course of external performances in religion. As far as any public trouble is an obstruction to the course of religion, it is to be on that account more than any other, sadly lamented, especially by the Lord’s ministers.
Pusey: The fast which the Lord approveth is that which lifteth up to Him hands full of almsdeeds, which is passed with brotherly love, which is seasoned with piety. What thou subtractest from thyself, bestow on another, that thy needy neighbor’s flesh may be recruited.—F.]
Joe_1:15-18. When God punishes, He seeks our improvement; but if this does not follow, He will utterly destroy.—The sufferings of the lower animals are caused by the sin of man.
[Henry. Though it is common for the heart not to rue what the eye sees not, yet that heart is hard indeed which does not humble itself when God’s judgments are before the eyes. If when God’s hand is lifted up, men will not see, when his hand is laid on they shall see.—The house of our God is the proper place for joy and gladness; when David goes to the altar of God, it is to God my exceeding joy; but when joy and gladness are cut off from God’s house, either by corruption of holy things, or the persecution of holy persons, when serious godliness decays, and love waxes cold, then it is time to cry to the Lord, time to cry Alas!—F.]
Joe_1:19-20. It is one of the special duties of a teacher of the Word to be constant in prayer to God.—God hears the cries even of dumb animals. Then, O my soul, trust Him in all thy troubles, and know that He will listen to thy cries as much more readily than to theirs, as thou art of more value than they. The prophet, in his appeal to God, is not ashamed to be found in fellowship with the beasts of the field. So the Divine Spirit, by way of arousing our faith, points us to the fact that God feeds the young ravens, and gives the cattle their food. Yet how readily can God turn all our joys into deepest griefs ! How unexpectedly can He do this, and by what feeble mean! How preposterous, then, for any to regard their earthly possessions as secure, and to boast of them! How plainly God shows us that we live only in and through his blessing, that everything we possess is his gift. How thankful we should be when He permits us to enjoy fully what He has bestowed upon us!
[Henry: The prophet stirs them up to cry to God.
(1) By his own example. He would not put them upon doing that which he would not resolve to do himself; nay, whether they would do it or no, he would.
Note.—If God’s ministers cannot prevail to affect others with the discoveries of divine wrath, yet they ought to be themselves affected with them; if they cannot bring others to cry to God, yet they must themselves be much in prayer. In times of trouble we must not only pray, but cry, must be fervent and importunate in prayer; and to God, from whom both the destruction is, and the salvation must be, ought our cry always to be directed
(2) By the example of the inferior creatures. The beasts of the field do not only groan, but they cry unto Thee. They appeal to thy pity, according to their capacity, and as if, though they are not capable of a rational and revealed religion, yet they had some dependence upon God by natural instinct. Much more will He put a favorable construction on the groanings of his own children, though sometimes so feeble, that they cannot be uttered.
Scott: God will hear the united prayers of the remnant of his servants, and often for their sakes will rescue a guilty nation from impending destruction.
Pusey: O Lord, to Thee will I cry. This is the only hope left, and contains all hopes. From the Lord was the infliction; in Him is the healing. The prophet appeals to God by his own Name, the faithful Fulfiller of his promises, Him who Is, and who had promised to hear all who call upon Him. Let others call to their idols, if they would, or remain stupid, the prophet would call unto God, and that earnestly.—F.]
Footnotes:
[1]Joe_1:1.—The preposition אֶל indicates direction, and like the Arab. ַב includes ordinarily the terminus oulquem. Sept. ὅς ἐγενηθη προς ʼΙωηλ.
[2]Joe_1:2.—הַזְקֵנִים. The Heb., unlike the Arab., has no proper vocative, and hence the simple noun with or with out the article takes its place.
[3]Joe_1:2.—הַיֲֹזִינוּ, denom. verb from אָזַן: it is stronger than שָׁמַע, but is only used in poetry.
[4]Joe_1:2.—The dagesh in the second זּא̇ה is the dag. forte conj.
[5]Joe_1:3.—עָלֶיהָ. The fem. suffix, which according to a peculiar Heb. idiom stands for the neut., has for its antecedent זאת. The prep. על denotes the object of the discourse; it is used like the lat. super, and Gr. ὑπέρ.
[6]Joe_1:4.—There is little difference of opinion in regard to the etymology of the names of the insects mentioned in this verse.—גָזָם from the same root = to cut off. אַרְבֶה, the most common name for locust, from רָבַה, to multiply. יֶלֶק from the same root, to lick up. חָסִל from חסל, to consume. Expositors are, however, very much divided as to whether these terms are names of the locust at different stages of its growth, or of different species of insect. Bp. Newcome renders them, the grasshopper; the locust, the devouring locust; the consuming locust. Hitzig, Keil, and others regard them as simply poetical epithets of one and the same species of locust. It is hardly possible to give their exact equivalents in English.
[7]Joe_1:5.—הָקִיצוּ from קוּץ, to cut off, to separate, then to arouse, or awaken; the opposite of the onomatopoetic word רָדַם to snore, to sleep heavily.
[8]Joe_1:5.—שִׁכּוֹרִים, from שָׁכַר, a strong drink made of honey, raisins, dates, and other fruits. Hence the word=notorious drunkards.
[9]Joe_1:5.—והילִילוּ, from the onomatopoetic יָלַל, to howl, complain.
[10]Joe_1:5.—עָסִים is the fresh sweet juice of the grape, and other kinds of fruit, as the pomegranate, Son_8:3, and is to be distinguished from תִּירושׁ, new wine, strictly so called. The former must have been a favorite drink of the old Hebrews.
[11]Joe_1:6.—כִי makes the connection between this and the preceding verse.
[12]Joe_1:6.—גוֹי denotes a heathen, hostile people, and differs from עִם, though the distinction between the two words is not always observed. See Text. notes on Obadiah, Joe_1:1.
[13]Joe_1:6.—עָלַה עַל, lit. gone up, upon, perhaps with reference to the fact that Palestine is higher than the countries around it; but the word is often used in the more general sense: to approach, to enter, etc., where the region is a level one.
[14]Joe_1:6.—“My land.” אַרצִי i. e., not the land of Jehovah, nor simply the native land of Joel, but the land with which he was allied as the prophet of the Lord.
[15]Joe_1:7.—גַפִנִי “my vine,”—not the vine of the Lord, but of the Prophet speaking in his name
[16]Joe_1:7.—חָשׂף lit., “peeling it have peeled it,” i. e., completely.
[17]Joe_1:8.—אֱלִי, imper. fem. of אָלַה, and ἅπ. λεγ., like the Chald. and Syr. ܙܥܐܱ The more usual form is הֵילִיל. Many expositors, without reason, take it as a denom. from אֵל God.
[18]Joe_1:8.—The proper Heb. word for virgin is עַלְמָה The word here used denotes a bride, i. e., a young woman espoused. See Isa_7:14; Mat_1:23.
[19]Ver 9.—משָרִתֵי. Ministers, from שָׁרַת, to serve. It denotes free and honorable service, e. g., of the temple, in contrast with עָבַד which denotes the enforced service of slaves.
[20]Joe_1:10.—שְׁדַד שָׁדִה. A paronomasia. The root שָׁדַד has in Kal first the intrans. sense to be strong, next the trans, sense, to use strength, i. e., to waste, to desolate. שָׁדֶה denotes specially wheat or barley fields, then woodland, field is where cattle folder; אַדָמָה, farmland generally.
[21]Joe_1:10.—אָבַלָה, the Sept. and Arab. versions take this as an imper., and render it “Mourn! O land.”
[22]Joe_1:10.—יִצְהָר, from the root צָהר, to be clear, i. e., the oil newly pressed and clarified; as distinguished from שֶמֶז, fat.
[23]Joe_1:11.—עַל־חִטָּה. The prep. על, as in Joe_1:5; Joe_1:7, marks the cause. חִטָה and שְעוֹרָה are the two kinds of דָּנָן; the one kind of grain being used as food by men, the other chiefly by cattle, though the very poor used both.
[24]Joe_1:12.—כִי־הֹבִישׁ. We have here what is called constructio pregnans = שׂשׂוֹן הֹבִישׁ וּבָרַח, joy has withered and fled away.
[25]Joe_1:15.—כִשֹׁד. The expression is regarded by some as a sort of proverbial one. כ is not pleonastic, nor the so-called כ veritatis, but indicates likeness in quality or degree.
[26]Joe_1:15.—“From Shaddai—the Almighty.” The Rabbins, Raschi, Abarbanel, and Maimonides see in this name a profound mystery, because it is a noun compounded of the insep pronoun, שׁ, with pattach notat, and דִּי, or דָיַי to hold. The rendering of the Sept., καὶ ως ταλαιπωρία εκ ταλαιπωρίας ἥξει, is wholly inadmissible.
[27]Joe_1:17.—The three ἅπαξ λεγομ. words in this verse, render it both as to etymology and grammar, one of the most difficult in the whole book. עָבְשוּ, according to Aben Ezra and Kimchi, means “rotted;” “perished,” New come; “dried up,” Pusey, Wünsche. Some light is cast on the sense of פְרֻדוֹת, by the Syr. seed, corn and the Chald. פָרָד, grain. In form the word is the Paûl participle of פָרַד. The third word, מֶגְרְפוֹת, is probably from the root גָרַףִ—found only in Jdg_5:21,—which in all the dialects has the sense of to bear or carry away The Arab. ܩܪܪܷܬܱܐ denotes the breaking up of the soil by the plough. מֶרְָפָה, therefore, may be a lump of soil, a clod, such as is thrown up by the plough. So the old Jewish expositors have understood it. In מַמִּגֻרוֹת we have another ἅπαξ λεγ.—yet there can be little doubt as to its meaning. The מ local is prefixed. Newcome renders it “store-houses.” Tregelles, “granaries, or cells for keeping grain.”
[28]Joe_1:20.—גַּם here as in Joe_1:13, marks an increase of the general calamity.
[29]Joe_1:20.—The construction of the fem sing. with the plur. noun is common in poetry, and is proper here because בַהֲמוֹת is used in a collective sense. This term denotes domestic cattle.—F.]
[30][Wünsche thinks that this circumstance shows that Joel could not have belonged to the priestly order. But this would be overstraining the sense of “my.”—F.]
[31][The etymology of the word is right, but the sense which Furst suggests is an arbitrary one. and does not accord with its evident meaning in the many passages in which it occurs. It has the same sense here as in Lev_23:3-6; Num_29:35; Deu_16:8; 2Ch_7:9; Neh_8:18—F.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–20 A spirited introduction calling attention.
A spirited introduction calling attention.
old men--the best judges in question concerning the past (Deu 32:7; Job 32:7).
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Hath this been, &c.--that is, Hath any so grievous a calamity as this ever been before? No such plague of locusts had been since the ones in Egypt. Exo 10:14 is not at variance with this verse, which refers to Judea, in which Joel says there had been no such devastation before.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 18 1. The title.
1. The title.
The word of Jehovah — A title similar to that in Hos_1:1; Mic_1:1; Zep_1:1 (see on Hos_1:1). Brevity and simplicity are in favor of authenticity, but that its “simplicity testifies to its great antiquity” (Hitzig) cannot be maintained (compare Nah_1:1; Hab_1:1; Mal_1:1). For names see Introduction, p. 125.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–20 1. The Title
1. The Title
1. The word of Jehovah that came unto] so Hos_1:1; Mic_1:1; Zep_1:1.
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came unto] lit. was (ἐγένετο) unto, a very common expression in connexion with Jehovah’s ‘word’: 1Sa_15:10; 2Sa_7:4; 1Ki_16:1; 1Ki_16:7; Jer_1:2; Jer_1:4; Jer_1:11, &c.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 (1) Joel.—Compounded of Jehovah—El, the composite title of the…
(1) Joel.—Compounded of Jehovah—El, the composite title of the God of Revelation and of Nature, which is the subject of Psalms 19. It was a favourite name among the Jews, and was borne by an ancestor of Samuel, who gave it to his elder son. There is nothing known of the personal history of Joel the prophet, except the name of his father, Pethuel, or—LXX.—Bethuel.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19 The word of the Lord that came to Joel…
The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. The name Joel signifies "Jehovah is God," or "whose God is Jehovah." We read in Scripture of several of the same name, but the prophet is distinguished as "the son of Pethuel," a name signifying "the sincerity of God," or "godly simplicity." We are not certain of the exact period at which Joel prophesied, but he is generally believed to have been the earliest prophetic writer of the southern kingdom, and one of the earliest of the twelve minor prophets, while Jonah is generally thought to have been the earliest prophetic writer whose book has found a place in the sacred canon. It is at least certain that Joel preceded Amos, who begins his prophecy with a passage from Joel. (comp. Joe_3:16 with Amo_1:2) and borrows from Joel another towards the close. (comp. Joe_3:18 with Amo_9:13) Besides, Joel speaks, in the second chapter, of the plague of locusts as yet future; while Amos, in the fourth chapter of his prophecy, refers to it as past. He likewise prophesied before Isaiah, who also borrows, in Isa_13:6, a sentence which occurs in Joe_1:15.
Ver. 1. The value of the Divine Word.
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The prophet gives us no intimation of the time when he wrote, nor of the tribe to which he belonged, nor of the family of which he was a member; he merely mentions the name of his father, probably for sake of distinguishing himself from others of the same name.
1. He is mainly occupied with the solemnity of the message which he had received, and the source whence it came; nor yet does he inform us of the mode in which the message reached him whether by an audible voice, or vision by day or dream by night. Information of this kind might gratify curiosity, but would not tend to edification. Certain he was that the word came from God, and he hastens to assure those whom he addressed of the same.
2. God speaks to us in many ways.
HOMILIES BY A. ROWLAND Ver. 1. The life-work of an obscure prophet.
The literary style of this book deserves the consideration of every student of Scripture. With the exception of Isaiah and (as some think) of Habakkuk, Joel surpasses all his brethren in sublimity. His pictures of the disasters following upon sin are marvellously vivid, and his promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit was still living in the memory of the Jews when Peter, on the day of Pentecost, declared that its fulfilment had come. The first half of the book describes the Divine judgments which were at hand, and the second half (beginning with the eighteenth verse of ch. 2.) unfolds the promise of Divine favour. Its readers pass from darkness to light, from grief to joy, from estrangement to reconciliation; and in this book, as in experience, the transition hinges on the penitential prayer to which it was the prophet"s mission to summon the people. We know scarcely more of Joel than the fact that he was the son of Pethuel. But the meaning of his name is God was suggestive; for it was none other than the cry of the people on Carmel, when fire came down from heaven in answer to Elijah"s prayer, and would therefore serve as a reminder to his auditors of their solemn acknowledgment of Jehovah"s supremacy and claims.
I THE PREPARATION WHICH JOEL RECEIVED FOR WORK is described in the single phrase, "The word of the Lord came to Joel." This was the one fact necessary to authenticate his message. If God was speaking through him, then whoever he might be the world was bound to listen to him; his word was a declaration from the Unseen. There is now a general forgetfulness of the possibility of such revelation. It is accepted by some as an axiom that the God who created the world and set it going cannot interfere further with his own handiwork; that if he exists at all, he lives at an infinite remove from mundane affairs, as did the god of Epicurus. If we speak of works done which cannot at present be accounted for by the laws we have deduced from observed ordinary phenomena, and urge that men have had glimpses of an outlying sphere of energy which surrounds what is visible, we are regarded as credulous enthusiasts. But in an earlier age there were men whom scientists would be the first to condemn, who, having never seen a comet blazing in the sky, nor heard of such a phenomenon, would have laughed to scorn its possibility. Yet the world now not only believes in the existence of comets, but has found out the law of their return, and has assigned them their own places in the planetary system with which once they appeared to have nothing in common. Is it not possible that the same process will take place in regard to what we now call supernatural? There are psychical phenomena still awaiting explanation which have convinced us that we have influence over each other, apart from physical contact; and if one human spirit can affect another, surely it is not incredible that the Father of spirits was able to touch the springs of thought and feeling in those ancient prophets. Indeed, this was not peculiar to them; it is an experience of to-day among the devout and prayerful, who obey the command of their Lord, "What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light.
II THE OBSCURITY OF WORK with which Joel was content. His was the spirit of John the Baptist, who was willing to remain only the "voice" of God. The world little thinks how much it owes to its silent workers in literature, in politics, and in religion. Many are living in quiet homes, or in poor lodgings, whose names are never heard, whose duties are not suspected, who by their pens are leading the nation in ways of righteousness. God"s most faithful servants are sometimes personally obscure. Some are patiently plodding away at monotonous work, and bear in the spirit of their Master many an injustice and cruel slight. Others in business stretch out the helping hand to weaker brethren who, but for such timely aid, would sink in a vortex of ruin. And ministering angels still venture into haunts of vice to seek and to save those who are lost. The Father who seeth in secret will hereafter bestow some of the highest places in his kingdom on those who all their life long have been without honour or applause.
III THE INFLUENCE OF JOEL"S WORK it would not be easy to overestimate. Several of the later prophets were indebted to him for suggestive thoughts and phrases. Peter quotes his prophecy about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; and John, in his Book of the Revelation, makes use of his image of the locusts. It is thus that God builds the temple of truth. We see its stately proportions and exclaim, "Behold what manner of stones and what buildings are here!" but how often we forget the quarries from which the stones were dug. and the workmen who did the first rough work of shaping them for the Master"s use! It is not so with God. We often admire the hero who, in advocacy of the truth, compels the world to listen; but the germs of his character may be traced to the nurture of a gentle mother, whose character and teaching, with God"s blessing, made her son what he is. He is the living witness of the issues flowing from her obscure work.
IV THE COURAGE AND HOPEFULNESS which Joel showed in his work. All was dark around him, and he knew things would be darker still before the sunshine came. He was living in a kingdom which, after the revolt of the ten tribes, was about equal in area to the county of Suffolk, and even with the addition of the district belonging to Benjamin was not so large as Yorkshire. Yet he boldly looks forward to a time when that kingdom would be the centre of light to the world. We talk of the "materialism of the old dispensation;" but here is faith in spiritual force which may put us all to shame. We ought not to be unduly discouraged by statistics which compare the numbers of Christians with the numbers of heathens. We should reflect that on the side of Christ are the leading nations of the world not those falling into decay, but those which are planting the future empires which will rule the future. Yet, with all our thankfulness for this, our confidence must be not in it, but in him who can and will work through these peoples till all the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of our God. A.R.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1-4. National calamity.
"The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. Hear this," etc. These verses lead us to look upon some aspects of that terrible national calamity which was the great burden of the prophet"s ministry. We learn from the passage
I THAT THIS CALAMITY WAS DIVINELY REVEALED AT FIRST TO THE HIND OF ONE MAN. "The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethueh" No one knew at first what a sad calamity was coming on the country but Jehovah himself. No sage, seer, or priest knew anything of it. The Eternal selects one man to whom to impart the intelligence, and that one man seems to have been so undistinguished and obscure, that history takes scarcely any notice of him. Such a fact as this suggests:
1. The distinguishing faculty of man. Of all the creatures on earth, man alone can receive communications kern heaven. Man alone can take in a "word" from the Lord. We know not how the word came unto him. The great Father of spirits has many ways of striking his thoughts into the souls of his children. Sometimes by awakening a train of suggestions, sometimes by articulate utterances, sometimes by dreams at night and visions in the day. He has divers ways. Souls are ever accessible to him.
2. The manifest sovereignty of God. Why did he select Joel more than any other man? There is no proof that he was greater or holier than many others in his country. No reason can be assigned for the selection but the grand reason that explains the creation of the universe. It was after the counsel of his own will according to his good pleasure.
II THAT THIS CALAMITY WAS UNPRECEDENTED IN HISTORY. "Hear ye this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the clays of your fathers? " He means to say that such a disastrous event the oldest man amongst them had never seen, nor had they learnt from the histories of the past of anything equal to its terrific character. Terrible judgments had fallen on Judah before; but this, according to Joel, was the greatest of all. Observe:
1. That no Divine judgments have been so great as to preclude the possibility of greater. The penal resources of the righteous Judge are unbounded. The most tremendous thunderbolts that he has thrown upon the world are only as atoms compared with the massive mountains he might hurl. Great as your afflictions have been, they can be greater.
2. That the greater the sins of a people, the greater the judgments to be expected. It is probable that Judah"s sins were greater at this time than they had ever been before, and that, consequently, severer penalties were to come. Eternal justice requires that the sufferings of individuals and communities should be in proportion to the number and aggravation of their sins. Take care, sinner; in every sin you commit you are treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath.
III THAT THIS CALAMITY WAS SO TREMENDOUS AS TO COMMAND THE ATTENTION OF ALL GENERATIONS. "Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." The terrible events of God"s judicial providence have a bearing beyond the men in whose history they occur. These that occur in one age and land demand the study of men in all ages and lands. They are not confined to individuals, they have a bearing on the race; not confined to men, they embrace humanity even to remotest times. Hence the importance of history. Truthful history is the Bible written by Providence to the world. But why should such an event as this be transmitted to posterity?
1. Because it shows that God rules the world. It is not controlled by chance or necessity; it is under the control of One who is not only All-mighty and All-wise, but All-just, who will not at all clear the guilty.
2. Because it shows that God takes cognizance of the worlds sin, and abhors it. These facts will be of interest and importance to the generations that are unborn, even to the end of time.
IV THAT THIS CALAMITY WAS INFLICTED BY THE MOST INSIGNIFICANT OF GOD"S CREATURES. "That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten." There is no authority for the opinion that the creatures here mentioned were symbols of hostile armies who were about to invade Judah. The locust belongs to the genus of insects known amongst entomologists as gryllii, which include the different species, from the common grasshopper to the devouring locusts of the East. The creatures, therefore, mentioned in the verse seem to be from different species of locusts rather than from different kinds of insects. And the words may be paraphrased, "That which one swarm of locusts hath left, a second swarm hath eaten; and that which the second swarm hath left, a third swarm hath eaten; and that which the third left, a fourth swarm hath eaten." To punish sinners, God does not require to hurl thunderbolts from his throne, or flash lightnings, or despatch Gabriels from his heavens. No; he can make insects do it. He can kill men by a moth. He can smite a nation by a gust of wind. He can perform his purposes by an army of locusts as easily as by a hierarchy of angels. D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19 The word of the Lord that came to Joel…
Joe_1:1-4
The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
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Joel
Great as is the variety in the works of nature, it is no less so in the treasury of Gods Word. The prophets are quite unlike the rest of the books; and between the prophets themselves there is a marked distinction of character. This is seen in the case of the four great prophets, it is even yet more striking in the twelve lesser, or minor, prophets. Notice particularly the three, Joel, Micah, and Habakkuk. Strongly defined are the individual characters of each as different members of the same body, while all alike are animated by one life and spirit; or as varied instruments of music made use of by one and the same poet or musician, and chosen as best suited for his purpose, according to the character of his message or the mind he would convey. The prophet Habakkuk is remarkable for very striking figurative expressions, which have become familiar in the mouths of all. Micah is the one of all the prophets chosen to foretell the place of our Lords birth--Bethlehem Ephrata. Micah associates the mercies of the Incarnate Son of God with pastoral scenes, well meet for the herald of Bethlehem. Different to this is the prophet Joel. One object fills his mind from first to last, one subject in which he is altogether wrapt. There are no little sentences of wisdom like Habakkuk, who might be called the prophet of faith; no rural images like Micah, who might be termed the prophet of mercy; but one absorbing spirit throughout; and the question is not about expressions, but about the meaning and intent of them. He is beyond all others, and it might be said, solely and entirely the prophet of judgment. He is full of the trumpet; it is in all he says. What are we to consider the exact subject of this prophet? It is, but more especially at the beginning, the description of a plague of locusts. The description is most exact and striking in all its parts. It is figurative and allegorical of an armed host. In detailing one it foretells the other. This introducing into the same description many judgments is usual in the Bible; more than one thing is contained in the same prophecy;--one near and soon to happen, the other more distant; one of things temporal, the other of things eternal. One great lesson God would impress upon us by His prophet Joel, of constantly hearing the trumpet call, and realising the Great Day. Another remarkable point m Joel is, the voice of joy and exultation that is combined throughout with the terrible theme, and pervades each subject of his prophecy. The more we are impressed with a serious expectation of the Great Day, the more shall we be able to look forward to it with joy and comfort. (Isaac Williams, B. D.)
Joel
He is the prophet of the great repentance, of the Pentecostal gift, and of the final conflict of great principles. Of the man himself and his age we know practically nothing. The man is little more than a name to us.
1. He was a successful prophet. He accomplished s remarkable moral revolution. He bowed the hearts of his contemporaries as the heart of one man; he drew them to the altar of God! and united them in a great national fast and supplication. The prophet is raised up to do his work. He is to live, to speak, to die if necessary; to rouse the conscience, and, as far as he can, to persuade the world of the truth of his message. He is to do his errand,--he is not to be talked of. And what are we compared with the work which we have to do? The joy of the true prophet is like that of the Baptist. He (the Lord and Master) must increase. What matter if I decrease, or be forgotten? Where the spirit of self-suppression is, there is power. No dim or uncertain thought mars the concentration of purpose. Feebler or more selfish natures dread to lose self. The date in which Joel lived is not necessary to be known in order to understand the direction and drift of his ministry. The spiritual value of many things is independent of chronology.
2. What was his message? He teaches spiritual principles, not for an age but for all time.
(1) He is a prophet of rebuke and repentance. He so influences the people that they gather to a great day of humiliation. A grievous calamity spoke with the prophets words. The calamity was awful, and unparalleled in its severity. It was the utter desolation of the land by locusts. Joy ceases among the people as they gaze at their desolated land, and contemplate the famine that must follow. The prophet gave guidance to peoples thoughts and pointed the significance of the calamity. Mere trouble does not melt the heart or subdue the will, but startling troubles which come to disturb the monotony of indolently expected prosperity are nevertheless messengers of the Lord. The day of calamity, rightly understood, is a day of the Lord. This calamity breaks up two of the accustomed orders of life. The gifts of natures order--the harvest of corn and wine--are snatched away. The usages of religious order are suspended. There being no gifts, the daily sacrifice ceases. To the people no two things could be more dread-inspiring. The twofold bond which bound the people to their God, and God to the people, seemed to them to be broken. The order of nature and the order of worship were both upset. All order is witness of another order, the order of righteousness. If there be a bond between the Lord and the people, that bond must be of the highest and most enduring order. It must be a bond in the order of the moral life. The suspension of the accustomed order of things may be the witness to the existence of the highest order--the righteous order in which the righteous God rules. So this calamity is indeed the day of the Lord. It calls man to repair the bond which is more precious than the bond of benefits or material gifts and sacrifices. It bids the people to look at the broken links of that golden chain which is righteousness, purity, faith. The prophet exercises his function of rebuke. And this power it is hard for ministers to retain. Rebuke of mens sins so easily enlists the assistance of our personal feelings. When once this unholy alliance is permitted we assail men rather than mens vices. Will the prophet give us hints as to the principles which would enable us to maintain this power in purity and efficiency, and enable us to discharge this duty with impartial fairness? Notice the large sympathy of the prophet. He has the completest power of identifying himself with the sorrows and troubles of the land and people. He is one with them; their sorrow is his sorrow. Here is one condition of the capacity of rebuke. It has often been said that we can only help men by putting ourselves in their place. Want of tenderness almost certainly involves want of tact; and want of tact renders us ineffective in reproof and in persuasion. Along with sympathy there must be a spirit which is profoundly convinced of the reality of the Divine rule. No man is or can be a prophet to whom the kingdom of God is not the most real thing in the universe. Repentance must be deep and natural. It must be the hatred of the moral evil that hinders them. It must be the awakening of the spirit to the gulf which small and unobserved sins may make between them and God. The vainglorious spirit which so often follows in the wake of earnest and victory seeking desires, robs away the protections which humility affords. What is needed is repentance for the whole spiritual tone--repentance which implies a recognition of the claim of God upon our whole spirit; repentance for the deviations from true and inward righteousness--repentance for the dulness and downwardness of our spirits. Joel does not mention specific sins. What then do we all need? We need the strong and vivid conviction of the reality of the kingdom of righteousness to make true our efforts for good. We need spirits which are united in sympathy with the Spirit of Him who sent us, for are we not fellow-workers with Him? Quick in tenderness, firm in righteousness, and with spirits possessed of the consciousness of God, we may attempt our work. (Bishop Boyd-Carpenter.)
The individuality of mens messages
Not the word that came to Hosea or to Amos, but the word that came to Joel,--intimating that there is a word that comes to every man. Each man has his own view of God, his own kingdom of heaven, his own way of telling what God has done for him. And the mischief is that we expect every man to speak in the same tone, to deliver the same words, and to subject himself to the same literary yoke or spiritual discipline. The Bible sets itself against all this monotony. Every man must speak the word that God has given to him through the instrumentality of his own characteristics. A man cannot say what word has to come to him. A man cannot be both the message carrier and the message originator. We are errand-runners; we have to receive our message and to repeat it; we have not first to create it, then to modify it, then to deliver it. The prophets assumed the position of being instruments, mediums for communications which the Lord wished to make with His children near and far, and with the world at large, and through all time. A man cannot say he will sing his Gospel; the Lord has only sent a certain number of singers, and we cannot increase the multitude. No man can say. I will go forth, and thunder the Word of the Lord in the ear of the age; the Lord hath not given His thunder to that tongue; it was meant to speak peacefully, soothingly, kindly, and when it tries to thunder creation would smile at the feebleness of the effort, and the palpableness of the irony. So we have in the Bible all kinds of ministry. There are thunders and judgments in the Book, and there are voices like lutes; there are whispers which you can only hear when you incline your ear with all the intensity of attention. There are words that roll down the mountains like splintered rocks, granites that have been ripped in two by the lightning; and there are words that fall from another mountain as flowers, beatitudes, tender speeches. The Lord hath need of all kinds of men; He wants the fire and the whirlwind and the tempest, and the dew, and the still small voice--all are Gods ministry, Gods husbandry. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
The Word of the Lord to a sinful nation
The prophet here informs us that the Word of the Lord came to him, and that it had reference to the most alarming calamities which could possibly happen to a nation. The messages of God sometimes come in a loud voice, and have in them more of judgment than of mercy.
I. That the word of God to a sinful nation is communicated through the instrumentality of one man. The Word of the Lord that came to Joel. Here we learn that it is the ordinary way of God to communicate with the race through human instrumentality. The Divine Being did not present Himself to the wicked people of Judah and threaten woe; they could not have endured the brightness of His presence; they would have fled from before the majesty of His voice. He did not send an angel to convey His message; an angel would not have gained the confidence required. And so it is the way of God to speak by man to men, that He may dim His infinite glory by wrapping it in human vesture, and thus adapt it to human vision; but the word thus spoken is none the less Divine, and none the less worthy of regard. Christ was incarnate that He might utter the unfathomable Word of God, and that Word is still prolonged by human lips.
1. This one man was Divinely selected. The prophet Joel was selected by God to convey the message of woe and the need of repentance to the people of Judah. But who was Joel? Was he a man of social reputation, of advanced scholarship, of eminent talent? We know not. Nothing of his history is written; simply the name of his father is given. He was anxious to be known only as the servant of God. And we find that God often chooses modest agencies, unknown to fame, to speak His Word to mankind; He uses the foolish things of the world to confound the mighty. Thus the word uttered derives emphasis from the absence of human greatness in the speaker. Fame is not a condition of ministerial success. A man must be chosen by God before he has any right to preach the Word to the nations.
2. This one man was greatly honoured. The Word of the Lord which came to Joel imparted to him the highest dignity. It honoured him by coming to his soul, even as the presence of a king confers renown upon those who are favoured therewith. He was the chosen of God out of a vast nation, and was entrusted with prophetic communications. New abilities were awakened within him, and his life, which had hitherto been solitary and of little influence, was to become the centre of a nations life. Manhood can have no greater honour conferred upon it than to be sent with the Word of God to men.
3. This one man was supremely trusted. Joel was entrusted with a great position. He was selected as one man out of a vast people to receive and make known the Word of the Lord. This might have led him to assume false claims and empty titles; he might have been tempted to use the moral authority thus given to him for secular ends. A minister holds his unique position in society as a sacred trust, and betrays it if he uses it for any other purpose than the moral welfare of those around him. Joel was also entrusted with a valuable deposit, even with the Word of the Lord. This he was not to conceal, but to declare. This he was not to adulterate, but to defend. This he was bravely to announce to a sinful people, unawed by numbers or results.
4. This one man was arduously worked. To Joel was committed the task of effecting a moral reformation in the national life of Judah. He stood almost alone with a great work to accomplish, lie had to proclaim great calamities to which few would listen. And the true minister has arduous work before him; he has oft, single-handed, to contend with a degenerate crowd; he has to preach great doctrines rejected and despised; he cannot guarantee success.
II. That the divine word to a sinful nation requires the earnest attention of all classes of individuals (verses 2, 3).
1. It should awaken the attention of the aged. The old men in the land of Judah were to listen to the prediction of Joel, and say whether anything so calamitous had ever occurred before. They could remember the past, and hence were competent to speak concerning it. Attention to the truth is the first condition of a renewed and sober life; even old men, who ought to be wiser, are sometimes heedless concerning it, and need to be reminded of its importance.
2. It should awaken the attention of the general multitude. All the inhabitants of the land of Judah were called upon to hear the message of Joel. It not only concerned the wise, but also the ignorant; not only the rulers, but those under them. It would not be the fault of the prophet if any did not feel the importance of his communication. The common multitude arc not generally observant of the judgments of God occurring around them, they need some one to unveil their inner and solemn meaning.
3. It should awaken the attention of remote posterity. The calamity predicted by Joel was to be handed down to a remote posterity. Not only are the memories of Divine mercy to be preserved, but also of Divine judgment, that they may in future deter from evil. Children must be instructed in the historical revelation which God has made concerning Himself, that they may see the wisdom of piety demonstrated in the facts of life. We should ever remember that the ages are mysteriously linked together, and that we are transmitting moral influences and instruction which the future must inherit. Let us heed the teaching of the past.
III. That the Divine word to a sinful nation sometimes has reference to the most awful calamities (verse 4).
1. It was a calamity occasioned by a wondrous increase of useful creatures. God can turn the existing arrangements of the universe into an army of eternal justice. He has no need to create new agencies to rebuke sin; there are myriads awaiting His command. Locusts will execute His judgments. The Divine resource of retribution is beyond human imagination.
2. It was a calamity which employed the weakest agencies to execute its purpose. Gods weak things are strong enough to work mischief to the wicked. Man is soon smitten down by little creatures.
3. It was a calamity which for continuous destruction was unequalled in the national history. One agency of ruin was succeeded by another, until the effect of the whole was utter desolation of resource and joy. Lessons--
1. That men must give themselves to the work which God appoints them.
2. That men should heed the Word of the Lord before the hour of retribution comes.
3. That sin is sure to be followed by the most awful calamities. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
National calamity
We learn from this passage--
I. That this calamity was Divinely revealed at first to the mind of one man. The Word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. No one knew at first what a sad calamity was coming on the country but Jehovah Himself. No sage, seer, or priest knew anything of it. Such a fact as this suggests--
1. The distinguishing faculty of man. Of all the creatures on earth, man alone can receive communications from heaven. We know not how the Word came unto him. The great Father of Spirits has many ways of striking His thoughts into the souls of His children. Souls are ever accessible to Him.
2. The manifest sovereignty of God. Why did He select Joel more than any other man?
II. That this calamity was unprecedented in history. Hear ye this, ye old men, etc. Observe--
1. That no Divine judgments have been so great as to preclude the possibility of greater. The penal resources of the righteous Judge are unbounded. Great as your afflictions have been, they can be greater.
2. That the greater the sins of a people, the greater the judgments to be expected. It is probable that Judahs sins were greater at this time than they had ever been before, and that, consequently, severer penalties were to come. Take care, sinner, in every sin you commit you are treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath.
III. That this calamity was so tremendous as to command the attention of all generations, Tell ye your children, etc.
1. Because it shows that God rules the world. It is not controlled by chance or necessity.
2. Because it shows that God takes cognisance of the worlds sin, and abhors it.
IV. This calamity was inflicted by the most insignificant of Gods creatures. There is no authority for the opinion that the creatures here mentioned were symbols of hostile armies. Locusts are mentioned in their different stages and species. So to punish sinners God needs no thunderbolts. He can kill a man with a moth. (Homilist.)
Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land--
Terrible Divine judgments
1. When men become incorrigible, and sin ripens to a height, then the Lord will reprove and plead against it by judgments, and not by His Word only; for whereas the method of other prophets is, first, to reprove sin, then to threaten for it, and then to subjoin exhortations to repentance with encouragements and promises; this prophet doth at first point out their sin and guilt, as to be read in visible judgments,
2. Famine is one of the rods whereby the Lord pleads against the Church for her sin, and strips her of abused mercies, and of temptations to wantonness and rebellion.
3. God can, when He pleaseth, arm very mean and contemptible creatures to execute His judgments, and particularly, to deprive men of the fruits of the ground; for here He sends out the palmer-worm, the locust, the canker-worm, and the caterpillar, and they eat up all.
4. As God hath still one scourge after another with which to plague a sinful and incorrigible people, who will not repent, but think to escape with the plagues that have come on them. So it speaks sad things when one calamity stints not the controversy, but He pursueth still one judgment after another, and with breach upon breach, for so it is here, what one left another did eat up.
5. Albeit the Lord in every age be testifying His displeasure against sin, yet at some times, and when sin is come to a great height, He may make one age a remarkable spectacle of justice, and bring judgments on them, the like of which have not been seen in many generations; for such was His dealing with this generation, their fathers, past memory of man, had not seen the like, nor should the like be seen for many generations to come. (George Hutcheson.)
That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust oaten.
Palmer-worm, etc.
The Hebrew words arc the gazam, the arbeh, the yeleg, the chasil, and they seem to mean, in accordance with their etymology, the gnawer, the swarmer, the licker, and the consumer. But are they four different kinds of locusts? As there are eighty known species of this gryllus migratorius, the supposition would be possible. But all known ravages of locusts are caused by successive flights of the same insect, not by different varieties. Are they then, as Credner argues, successive stages in the growth of the same insect, meaning the unwinged, the partially winged, the full-winged locust, and that changing in colour? Such is the view of Ewald, and he says that these four stages are well marked. There are insuperable difficulties in this theory. For if four successive stages had been intended in Joe_1:4, why is the order confused and altered in Joe_2:25, where the arbeh is put first, and the gazam last? This is inexplicable if, as Credner thought, the gazam in Joe_1:4 meant the mother-swarm, and the arbeh, yeleg, and chasil, its three metamorphoses. In point of fact, there are only two broadly marked changes in the development of the locust--from larva to pupa--and from pupa to the full-grown insect. In hot climates the creature can use its wings in about three weeks. It seems certain that the prophet is in no sense writing as a natural historian. The use of the four terms is only due to poetry and rhetoric, just as the Psalmist, in Psa_78:46; Psa_105:34, freely employs the words chasil and jeleg as interchangeable with the word arbeh, which used in the Pentateuch to describe the Egyptian plague. (Dean Farrar, D. D.)
Gods locusts
What is to be told? God hath many locusts. Only four of them are named here, but they are the greatest devourers that ever fell upon a landscape. They came but an hour ago; they are multitudinous beyond the power of arithmetic to enumerate, and in a few hours not one green thing will be left upon the land. Nay, their jaws are like stones, they will seize the bark upon the trees and tear it off, and none can hear the crunching of that gluttony; and to-morrow what will the fair landscape be like? It will be like a country smitten by sudden winter; the trees that yesterday were green and fair and lovely will be naked, and their whiteness shall resemble the whiteness of snow. All the fourfold locust tribe belong to the Lord. The great providence of God is responsible for its own acts. Man needs to be severely humbled; it does not always suffice simply to bend him a little; sometimes he must be doubled and thrown down as out of a scornful hand--not that he may be destroyed, but that he may be brought to himself. Soldiers with their sabres and bayonets cannot turn back the beetle. The Lord hath made some things so small that no bayonet can strike them; yet how they bite, how they devour, how they consume, how they plague the air, how they kill kings, and make nations weak, and turn armies white with panic. Joel knew what he was talking about, and could point to the landscape. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Successive foes of spiritual life
The text speaks of the ravages of the locust in the different stages. If to the Jew the locust was a vivid type of the repeated wastings of his nation by the Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman invasions, it may be to us a no less vivid picture of sins successive swarm and scourge of our own spiritual heritage. Three thoughts respecting spiritual life.
I. Its foes. Nature reveals life in its myriad lower forms begirt by foes. In our own physical life, the foreign fact becomes a near experience. Intellectual life has its foes. That spiritual life should have its foes is therefore no anomaly.
II. Their succession. In a garden, you save the plants from their first enemies only to find that later foes attack them. There are successive foes for every stage of the spiritual life.
III. Their connection. The foes of the text were of one kind. They were several species of locusts, or several forms of the same species. So sin in one form is often followed by its fellows or its progeny, each working a wider ruin. We see pleasure-seeking followed by a breed of worthless traits; speculation followed by falsehood and dishonour; worldly yielding followed by neglect in prayer; compromise followed by compliance; doubt followed by intellectual pride; ignorance followed by fanaticism; covetousness by pharisaism; selfish success by indolence. What is the lesson? Beware of the coming into the field of your spiritual life of any sin. It will draw others after it. It will itself be metamorphosed into something worse. (G. H. Morgan, Ph. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v2 Joe_1:2-20; Joe_2:1-17
THE LOCUSTS AND THE DAY OF THE LORD
Joe_1:2-20; Joe_2:1-17
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JOEL, as we have seen, found the motive of his prophecy in a recent plague of locusts, the appearance of which and the havoc they worked are described by him in full detail. Writing not only as a poet but as a seer, who reads in the locusts signs of the great Day of the Lord, Joel has necessarily put into his picture several features which carry the imagination beyond the limits of experience. And yet, if we ourselves had lived through such a plague, we should be able to recognize how little license the poet has taken, and that the seer, so far from unduly mixing with his facts the colors of Apocalypse, must have experienced in the terrible plague itself enough to provoke all the religious and monitory use which he makes of it.
The present writer has seen but one swarm of locusts, in which, though it was small and soon swept away by the wind, he felt not only many of the features that Joel describes, but even some degree of that singular helplessness before a calamity of portent far beyond itself, something of that supernatural edge and accent, which, by the confession of so many observers, characterize the locust-plague and the earthquake above all other physical disasters. One summer afternoon, upon the plain of Hauran, a long bank of mist grew rapidly from the western horizon. The day was dull, and as the mist rose athwart the sunbeams, struggling through clouds, it gleamed cold and white, like the front of a distant snow storm. When it came near, it seemed to be more than a mile broad, and was dense enough to turn the atmosphere raw and dirty, with a chill as of a summer sea-fog, only that this was not due to any fall in the temperature. Nor was there the silence of a mist. We were enveloped by a noise, less like the whirring of wings than the rattle of hail or the crackling of bush on fire. Myriads upon myriads of locusts were about us, covering the ground, and shutting out the view in all directions. Though they drifted before the wind, there was no confusion in their ranks. They sailed in unbroken lines, sometimes straight, sometimes wavy; and when they passed pushing through our caravan, they left almost no stragglers, except from the last battalion, and only the few dead which we had caught in our hands. After several minutes they were again but a lustre on the air, and so melted away into some heavy clouds in the east.
Modern travelers furnish us with terrible impressions of the innumerable multitudes of a locust plague, the succession of their swarms through days and weeks, and the utter desolation they leave behind them. Mr. Doughty writes: "There hopped before our feet a minute brood of second locusts, of a leaden color, with budding wings like the spring leaves, and born of those gay swarms which a few weeks before had passed over and despoiled the desert. After forty days these also would fly as a pestilence, yet more hungry than the former, and fill the atmosphere." And later: "The clouds of the second locust brood which the Aarab call Amdan, pillars, flew over us for some days, invaded the booths and for blind hunger even bit our shins." It was "a storm of rustling wings." "This year was remembered for the locust swarms and great summer heat." A traveler in South Africa says: "For the space of ten miles on each side of the Sea-Cow river and eighty or ninety miles in length, an area of sixteen or eighteen hundred square miles, the whole surface might literally be said to be covered with them." In his recently published book on South Africa, Mr. Bryce writes:-
"It is a strange sight, beautiful if you can forget the destruction it brings with it. The whole air, to twelve or even eighteen feet above the ground, is filled with the insects, reddish brown in body, with bright gauzy wings. When the suns rays catch them it is like the sea sparkling with light. When you see them against a cloud they are like the dense flakes of a driving snow-storm. You feel as if you had never before realized immensity in number. Vast crowds of men gathered at a festival, countless tree-tops rising along the slope of a forest ridge, the chimneys of London houses from the top of St. Pauls-all are as nothing to the myriads of insects that blot out the sun above and cover the ground beneath and fill the air whichever way one looks. The breeze carries them swiftly past, but they come on in fresh clouds, a host of which there is no end, each of them a harmless creature which you can catch and crush in your hand, but appalling in their power of collective devastation."
And take three testimonies from Syria:
"The quantity of these insects is a thing incredible to any one who has not seen it himself; the ground is covered by them for several leagues."
"The whole face of the mountain was black with them. On they came like a living deluge. We dug trenches and kindled fires, and beat and burnt to death heaps upon heaps, but the effort was utterly useless. They rolled up the moun-tain-side, and poured over rocks, walls, ditches, and hedges, those behind covering up and passing over the masses already killed. For some days they continued to pass. The noise made by them in marching and foraging was like that of a heavy shower falling upon a distant forest."
"The roads were covered with them, all marching and in regular lines, like armies of soldiers, with their leaders in front; and all the opposition of man to resist their progress was in vain." Having consumed the plantations in the country, they entered the towns and villages. "When they approached our garden all the farm servants were employed to keep them off, but to no avail; though our men broke their ranks for a moment, no sooner had they passed the men than they closed again, and marched forward through hedges and ditches as before. Our garden finished, they continued their march toward the town, devastating one garden after another. They have also penetrated into most of our rooms: whatever one is doing one hears their noise from without, like the noise of armed hosts, or the running of many waters. When in an erect position their appearance at a little distance is like that of a well-armed horseman."
Locusts are notoriously adapted for a plague, "since to strength incredible for so small a creature, they add saw-like teeth, admirably calculated to eat up all the herbs in the land." They are the incarnation of hunger. No voracity is like theirs, the voracity of little creatures, whose million separate appetites nothing is too minute to escape. They devour first grass and leaves, fruit and foliage, everything that is green and juicy.
Then they attack the young branches of trees, and then the hard bark of the trunks. "After eating up the corn, they fell upon the vines, the pulse, the willows, and even the hemp, notwithstanding its great bitterness." "The bark of figs, pomegranates, and oranges, bitter, hard, and corrosive, escaped not their voracity." "They are particularly injurious to the palm-trees; these they strip of every leaf and green particle, the trees remaining like skeletons with bare branches." "For eighty or ninety miles they devoured every green herb and every blade of grass." "The gardens outside Jaffa are now completely stripped, even the bark of the young trees having been devoured, and look like a birch-tree forest in winter." "The bushes were eaten quite bare, though the animals could not have been long on the spot. They sat by hundreds on a bush gnawing the rind and the woody fibres." "Bamboo groves have been stripped of their leaves and left standing like saplings after a rapid bush fire, and grass has been devoured so that the bare ground appeared as if burned." "The country did not seem to be burnt, but to be much covered with snow through the whiteness of the trees and the dryness of the herbs." The fields finished, they invade towns and houses, in search of stores. Victual of all kinds, hay, straw, and even linen and woolen clothes and leather bottles, they consume or tear in pieces. They flood through the open, unglazed windows and lattices: nothing can keep them out.
These extracts prove to us what little need Joel had of hyperbole in order to read his locusts as signs of the Day of Jehovah; especially if we keep in mind that locusts are worst in very hot summers, and often accompany an absolute drought along with its consequence of prairie and forest fires. Some have thought that, in introducing the effects of fire, Joel only means to paint the burnt look of a land after locusts have ravaged it. But locusts do not drink up the streams, nor cause the seed to shrivel in the earth. {Joe_1:20; Joe_1:17} By these the prophet must mean drought, and by "the flame that has burned all the trees of the field," {Joe_1:19} the forest fire, finding an easy prey in the trees which have been reduced to firewood by the locusts teeth.
Even in the great passage in which he passes from history to Apocalypse, from the gloom and terror of the locusts to the lurid dawn of Jehovahs Day, Joel keeps within the actual facts of experience:-
"Day of darkness and murk,
Day of cloud and heavy mist,
Like dawn scattered on the mountains,
A people many and powerful."
No one who has seen a cloud of locusts can question the realism even of this picture: the heavy gloom of the immeasurable mass of them, shot by gleams of light where a few of the suns imprisoned beams have broken through or across the storm of lustrous wings. This is like dawn beaten down upon the hilltops, and crushed by rolling masses of cloud, in conspiracy to prolong the night. No: the only point at which Joel leaves absolute fact for the wilder combinations of Apocalypse is at the very close of his description, Joe_2:10-11, and just before his call to repentance. Here we find, mixed with the locusts, earthquake and thunderstorm; and Joel has borrowed these from the classic pictures of the Day of the Lord, using some of the very phrases of the latter:-
"Earth trembles before them,
Heaven quakes, Sun and moon become black,
The stars withdraw their shining,
And Jehovah utters His voice before His army."
Joel, then, describes, and does not unduly enhance, the terrors of an actual plague. At first his whole strength is so bent to make his people feel these, that, though about to call to repentance, he does not detail the national sins which require it. In his opening verses he summons the drunkards (Joe_1:5), but that is merely to lend vividness to his picture of facts, because men of such habits will be the first to feel a plague of this kind. Nor does Joel yet ask his hearers what the calamity portends. At first he only demands that they shall feet it, in its uniqueness and its own sheer force.
Hence the peculiar style of the passage. Letter for letter, this is one of the heaviest passages in prophecy. The proportion in Hebrew of liquids to the other letters is not large; but here it is smaller than ever. The explosives and dentals are very numerous. There are several key-words, with hard consonants and long vowels, used again and again: Shuddadh, a-bhlah, umlal, hobbish. The longer lines into which Hebrew parallelism tends to run are replaced by a rapid series of short, heavy phrases, falling like blows. Critics have called it rhetoric. But it is rhetoric of a very high order and perfectly suited to the prophets purpose. Look at Joe_1:10 :shuddadh sadheh, abhlah adhamah, shuddadh daghan, hobhish tirosh, umlal yishar. Joel loads his clauses with the most leaden letters he can find, and drops them in quick succession, repeating the same heavy word again and again, as if he would stun the careless people into some sense of the bare, brutal weight of the calamity which has befallen them.
Now Joel does this because he believes that, if his people feel the plague in its proper violence, they must be convinced that it comes from Jehovah. The keynote of this part of the prophecy is found in Joe_1:15 : "Keshodh mishshaddhai," "like violence from the All-violent doth it come." "If you feel this as it is, you will feel Jehovah Himself in it. By these very blows, He and His Day are near. We had been forgetting how near." Joel mentions no crime, nor enforces any virtue: how could he have done so in so strong a sense that "the Judge was at the door"? To make men feel that they had forgotten they were in reach of that Almighty Hand, which could strike so suddenly and so hard-Joel had time only to make men feel that, and to call them to repentance. In this we probably see some reflection of the age: an age when mens thoughts were thrusting the Deity further and further from their life; when they put His Law and Temple between Him and themselves: and when their religion, devoid of the sense of His Presence, had become a set of formal observances, the rending of garments and not of hearts. But He, whom His own ordinances had hidden from His people, has burst forth through nature and in sheer force of calamity. He has revealed Himself, El-Shaddhai, God All-violent, as He was known to their fathers, who had no elaborate law or ritual to put between their fearful hearts and His terrible strength, but cowered before Him, helpless on the stripped soil, and naked beneath His thunder. By just these means did Elijah and Amos bring God home to the hearts of ancient Israel. In Joel we see the revival of the old nature-religion, and the revenge that it was bound to take upon the elaborate systems which had displaced it, but which by their formalism and their artificial completeness had made men forget that near presence and direct action of the Almighty which it is natures own office to enforce upon the heart.
The thing is true, and permanently valid. Only the great natural processes can break up the systems of dogma and ritual in which we make ourselves comfortable and formal, and drive us out into Gods open air of reality. In the crash of natures forces even our particular sins are forgotten, and we feel, as in the immediate presence of God, our whole, deep need of repentance. So far from blaming the absence of special ethics in Joels sermon, we accept it as natural and proper to the occasion.
Such, then, appears to be the explanation of the first part of the prophecy, and its development towards the call to repentance, which follows it. If we are correct, the assertion is false that no plan was meant by the prophet. For not only is there a plan, but the plan is most suitable to the requirements of Israel, after their adoption of the whole Law in 445, and forms one of the most necessary and interesting developments of all religion: the revival, in an artificial period, of those primitive forces of religion which nature alone supplies, and which are needed to correct formalism and the forgetfulness of the near presence of the Almighty. We see in this, too, the reason of Joels archaic style, both of conception and expression: that likeness of his to early prophets which has led so many to place him between Elijah and Amos. They are wrong. Joels simplicity is that not of early prophecy, but of the austere forces of this revived and applied to the artificiality of a later age.
One other proof of Joels conviction of the religious meaning of the plague might also have been pled by the earlier prophets, but certainly not in the terms in which Joel expresses it. Amos and Hoses had both described the destruction of the countrys fertility in their day as Gods displeasure on His people and (as Hosea puts it) His divorce of His Bride from Himself. But by them the physical calamities were not threatened alone: banishment from the land and from enjoyment of its fruits was to follow upon drought, locusts, and famine. In threatening no captivity Joel differs entirely from the early prophets. It is a mark of his late date. And he also describes the divorce between Jehovah and Israel, through the interruption of the ritual by the plague, in terms and with an accent which could hardly have been employed in Israel before the Exile. After the rebuilding of the Temple and restoration of the daily sacrifices morning and evening, the regular performance of the latter was regarded by the Jews with a most superstitious sense of its indispensableness to the national life. Before the Exile, Jeremiah, for instance, attaches no importance to it, in circumstances in which it would have been not unnatural for him, priest as he was, to do so. {Jeremiah 14} But after the Exile, the greater scrupulousness of the religious life, and its absorption in ritual, laid extraordinary emphasis upon the daily offering, which increased to a most painful degree of anxiety as the centuries went on. The New Testament speaks of "the Twelve Tribes constantly serving God day and night"; {Act_26:7} and Josephus, while declaring that in no siege of Jerusalem before the last did the interruption ever take place in spite of the stress of famine and war combined, records the awful impression made alike on Jew and heathen by the giving up of the daily sacrifice on the 17th of July, A.D. 70, during the investment of the city by Titus. This disaster, which Judaism so painfully feared at every crisis in its history, actually happened, Joel tells us, during the famine caused by the locusts. "Cut off are the meal and the drink offerings from the house of Jehovah. {Joe_1:9; Joe_1:13} Is not food cut off from our eves, joy and gladness from the house of our God? {Joe_2:14} Perhaps He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him, meal and drink offering for Jehovah our God." {Joe_1:16} The break "of the continual symbol of gracious intercourse between Jehovah and His people, and the main office of religion," means divorce between Jehovah and Israel. "Wail like a bride girt in sackcloth for the husband of her youth! Wail, O ministers of the altar, O ministers of God!" {Joe_1:8; Joe_1:13} This then was another reason for reading in the.plague of locusts more than a physical meaning. This was another proof, only too intelligible to scrupulous Jews, that the great and terrible Day of the Lord was at hand. Thus Joel reaches the climax of his argument. Jehovah is near, His Day is about to break. From this it is impossible to escape on the narrow path of disaster by which the prophet has led up to it. But beneath that path the prophet passes the ground of a broad truth, and on that truth, while judgment remains still as real, there is room for the people to turn from it. If experience has shown that God is in the present, near and inevitable, faith remembers that He is there not willingly for judgment, but with all His ancient feeling for Israel and His zeal to save her. If the people choose to turn, Jehovah, as their God and as one who works for their sake, will save them. Of this God assures them by His own word. For the first time in the prophecy He speaks for Himself. Hitherto the prophet has been describing the plague and summoning to penitence. "But now oracle of Jehovah of Hosts." {Joe_2:12} The great covenant name, "Jehovah your God," is solemnly repeated as if symbolic of the historic origin and age-long endurance of Jehovahs relation to Israel; and the very words of blessing are repeated which were given when Israel was called at Sinai and the covenant ratified:-
"For He is gracious and merciful,
Long-suffering and plenteous in leal love.
And relents Him of the evil"
He has threatened upon you. Once more the nation is summoned to try Him by prayer: the solemn prayer of all Israel, pleading that He should not give His people to reproach.
"The Word of Jehovah which came to Joel the son of Pethflel. Hear this, ye old men, And give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has the like been in your days, Or in the days of your fathers? Tell it to your children, And your children to their children, And their children to the generation that follows. That which the Shearer left the Swarmer hath eaten, And that which the Swarmer left the Lapper hath eaten, And that which the Lapper left the Devourer hath eaten."
These are four different names for locusts, which it is best to translate by their literal meaning. Some think that they represent one swarm of locusts in four stages of development, but this cannot be, because the same swarm never returns upon its path, to complete the work of destruction which it had begun in an earlier stage of its growth. Nor can the first-named be the adult brood from whose eggs the others spring, as Doughty has described, for that would account only for two of the four names. Joel rather describes successive swarms of the insect, without reference to the stages of its growth, and he does so as a poet, using, in order to bring out the full force of its devastation, several of the Hebrew names that were given to the locust as epithets of various aspects of its destructive power.
The names, it is true, cannot be said to rise in climax, but at least the most sinister is reserved to the last.
"Rouse ye, drunkards, and weep, And wail, all ye bibbers of wine! The new wine is cut off from your month! For a nation is come up on My land, Powerful and numberless; His teeth are the teeth of the lion, And the fangs of the lioness his. My vine he has turned to waste, And My fig-tree to splinters; He hath peeled it and strawed it, Bleached are its branches!"
"Wail as a bride girt in sackcloth for the spouse of her youth. Cut off are the meal and drink offerings from the house of Jehovah! In grief are the priests, the ministers of Jehovah. The fields are blasted, the ground is in grief, Blasted is the corn, abashed is the new wine, the oil pines away. Be ye abashed, O ploughmen! Wail, O vine-dressers, For the wheat and the barley; The harvest is lost from the field! The vine is abashed, and the fig-tree is drooping; Pomegranate, palm too and apple, All trees of the field are dried up: Yea, joy is abashed and away from the children of men."
In this passage the same feeling is attributed to men and to the fruits of the land: "In grief are the priests, the ground is in grief." And it is repeatedly said that all alike are "abashed." By this heavy word we have sought to render the effect of the similarly sounding "hobhisha," that our English version renders "ashamed." It signifies to be frustrated, and so "disheartened," "put out" "soured" would be an equivalent, applicable to the vine and to joy and to mens hearts.
"Put on mourning, O priests, beat the breast; Wail, ye ministers of the altar; Come, lie down in sackcloth, O ministers of my God: For meal-offering and drink-offering are cut off from the house of your God."
"Hallow a fast, summon an assembly, Gather all the inhabitants of the land to the house of your God; And cry to Jehovah! Alas for the Day! At hands the Day of Jehovah. And as vehemence from the Vehement doth it come. Is not food cut off from before us, Gladness and joy from the house of our God? The grains shrivel under their hoes, The garners are desolate, the barns broken down, For the corn is withered-what shall we put in them? The herds of cattle huddle together, for they have no pasture; Yea, the flocks of sheep are forlorn. To Thee, Jehovah, do I cry":
"For fire has devoured the pastures of the steppes, And the flame hath scorched all the trees of the field. The wild beasts pant up to Thee: For the watercourses are dry, And fire has devoured the pastures of the steppes."
Here, with the close of chapter 1, Joels discourse takes, pause, and in chapter 2 he begins a second with another call to repentance in face of the same plague. But the plague has progressed. The locusts are described now in their invasion not of the country but of the towns, to which they pass after the country is stripped. For illustration of the latter see above. The "horn" which is to be blown, Joe_2:1, is an "alarm horn," to warn the people of the approach of the Day of the Lord, and not the Shophar which called the people to a general assembly, as in Joe_2:15.
"Blow a horn in Zion, Sound the alarm in My holy mountain! Let all inhabitants of the land tremble, For the Day of Jehovah comes-it is near! Day of darkness and murk, day of cloud and heavy mist. Like dawn scattered on the mountains, A people many and powerful; Its like has not been from of old, And shall not again be for years of generation upon generation. Before it the fire devours, And behind the flame consumes. Like the garden of Eden {Eze_36:35} is the land in front, And behind it a desolate desert; Yea, it lets nothing escape. Their visage is the visage of horses, And like horsemen they run. They rattle like chariots over the tops of the hills, Like the crackle of flames devouring stubble, Like a powerful people prepared for battle. Peoples are writhing before them, Every face gathers blackness."
"Like warriors they run, Like fighting men they come up the wall; They march every man by himself, And they ravel not their paths. None jostles his comrade, They march every man on his track, And plunge through the missiles unbroken. They scour the city, run upon the walls, Climb into the houses, and enter the windows like a thief, Earth trembles before them, Heaven quakes, Sun and moon become black, The stars withdraw their shining. And Jehovah utters His voice before His army: For very great is His host; Yea, powerful is He that performeth His word, Great is the Day of Jehovah, and very awful: Who may abide it?"
"But now hear the oracle of Jehovah: Turn ye to Me with all your heart, And with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend ye your hearts and not your garments, And turn to Jehovah your God: For He is gracious and merciful, Long-suffering and plenteous in love, And relents of the evil. Who knows but He will turn and relent, And leave behind Him a blessing, Meal-offering and drink-offering to Jehovah your God?"
"Blow a horn in Zion, Hallow a fast, summon the assembly! Gather the people, hallow the congregation, Assemble the old men, gather the children, and infants at the breast; Let the bridegroom come forth from his chamber, And the bride from her bower.
Let the priests, the ministers of Jehovah, weep between porch and altar; Let them say, Spare, O Jehovah, Thy people, And give not Thine heritage to dishonor, for the heathen to mock.
Why should it be said among the nations, Where is their God?"
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19 CRITICAL NOTES.] The prophecy opens with lamentation over the…
CRITICAL NOTES.] The prophecy opens with lamentation over the land, made desolate by successive swarms of locusts. Joe_1:2-4 contain the spirited introduction. Old men] are called upon to note the unusual course of nature. Inhabitants] of Judah, whatever part they occupy, and whatever calamities they have witnessed, are asked to say if in their own, or in the days of their fathers, there had ever been a calamity so sweeping and so terrible. Children] must be impressed with a sense of national disaster, and admonished by the providence of God (Exo_13:8; Jos_4:6-7; Psa_78:6; Psa_78:8; Joe_1:4). The four names of the locusts have been thought to be four different species indicated by the etymology of the words, the gnawer (gâzâm); the multiplier (‘arbeh); the licker (yeleq); the devourer (châzîl). Some critics say that four is the symbol of universality.
Joe_1:5. Drunkards] An appeal to different classes. Wine-bibbers indulging in their favourite liquor must be roused from stupor to “weep and howl,” though usually jolly in national calamity.
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Joe_1:6. A nation] Lit. some; four successive empires; symbolically others. The epithets describe their number and savage hostility.
Joe_1:7. Vine] and fig-trees, common and greatly valued in the days of Solomon (1Ki_4:25), now destroyed.
HOMILETICS
GOD’S MESSAGE DEMANDS EARNEST ATTENTION.—Joe_1:1-4
Since the establishment of the kingdom Judah had seen partial and temporary judgments, but none that threatened such destruction as this fearful plague of locusts. Hence the prophet calls attention to it, and urges them to consider its design and transmit its record to posterity. Generations to come must know the judgments of God.
I. The message. “Hear this,” recorded in Joe_1:4. The visitation is unparalleled and never to be forgotten in history.
1. It was terrible. Not a mere visit of flying insects, but a succession, plague was to succeed plague, each more destructive than its predecessor. In ordinary providences God testifies against sin. But some ages and churches are made warnings to all generations by the justice of God. God’s penal resources are unlimited, and great as afflictions may have been in the past, the future may bring upon guilty sinners greater still. “Why should ye be stricken any more?”
2. It was unprecedented. “Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?” Old men who could remember events years ago, accustomed to extraordinary things in nature, had never seen anything like this Even in the days of their fathers, in the records of the nation, was there any judgment so terrible in its consequences. Neither the present nor the past generations had known such a calamity. The plague of Egypt lasted only a few days and consisted of few insects; but for multitude and mischief, this was unprecedented. “Very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.”
3. It was ever to be remembered. “Tell ye your children of it,” &c. Four generations were to note it. “This shall be written for the generation to come.” National disasters live in the records of the past, and present calamities are to be fixed in the memories of the future. Greece and Rome, France and England, have each their record written in bitter experience. Woe is pronounced upon those who “regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands” (Isa_5:12).
II. The hearers. This calamity was so striking that the attention of the present and all future generations is directed to it.
1. Old men. “Hear this, ye old man.” “Days should speak and multitude of years should teach wisdom,” and none are too old to learn. Men of the greatest age and ripest experience have more to learn in life, especially if their lot has fallen in grievous times. If our stock of knowledge be not increasing it is wasting. All should hear the voice of judgments. “A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.”
2. All the inhabitants of the land. Lest any should escape, all the people are urged to give earnest attention. What concerns one concerns all. None like to hear evil tidings, but they must be pressed upon men sometimes. When God speaks, when vital interests are at stake, all should hear. “Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world.”
3. Children of another generation. God’s dealings with the present age have a relation to the future. The events of one nation are lessons to all nations. Whatever concerns humanity concerns all men. Generation must declare to generation the wonders of God’s love and the might of his judgments. Our woes must be warnings to posterity, and our corrections their instructions (1Co_10:6). If the memory of God’s love does not stir up to gratitude, the memory of woe must entreat them to repentance. “Take heed to thyself, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen; but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons” (Deu_4:9; Deu_6:6-7; Deu_11:19).
III. The purpose. The present generation must hear and the future be taught for a wise purpose. People are negligent, persist in sin, and bring punishment upon themselves. Hence they must be taught,—
1. That God watches over men’s conduct. This fact is constantly impressed upon our minds by God’s ways in providence and in creation. Men cannot sin and defy the visitations of God with impunity. Our children may learn this lesson, future generations may read it in our history without our experience.
2. That God directs the events of history. All events are under his control and are overruled for the fulfilment of his will. Yet men “regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operation of his hands” (Psa_28:5). Israel forgot God in his dealings with them. Even at the Red Sea, amid the greatest displays of mercy and judgment, they could not discern him (Psa_88:11; Psa_106:13).
3. That God warns men of their danger. Those who forget God’s works are in great danger, and have need of Divine teaching. Israel was a favoured nation, a standing testimony of God’s truth and existence to idolatrous peoples. Israel’s sufferings were a warning to all nations to avoid Israel’s guilt. God designs to educate the world in the knowledge of his love and power. The lessons are given to one man to relate to another, written in the experience of one age that another may be impressed; “that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Joe_1:1. It is a mercy that God reveals his word to the Church, when he is about to inflict punishment upon it. This word is not to be sought in wild fanatic spirits, but in chosen servants of God. The word of the Lord that came to Joel.
Individuality merged in Divine commission. Little known of the birth, life, and deeds of Joel. Some known by personal service rather than personal history—David’s mighty men. Others content to live and act in obscurity, and wish to be known only by efforts to save the souls of men.
Joe_1:2. Hear God’s word addressed to all classes.
1. The common dangers of men.
2. The common needs of men.
3. The common privileges of men. Take heed how ye hear.
Joe_1:3. Tell your children. Parental duty.
1. A necessary duty.
2. A personal duty.
3. A solemn duty.
4. A duty commanded by God (Deu_6:7). As far as life and means permit we must prepare for the instruction of the future youth, and transmit the doings of God by succeeding families. The word of God is for this and every age. The doctrines of that word are not effete, but adapted to our wants, and will exert an influence as long as the race shall last.
1. God’s word explains God’s providence, that we may know the author, cause, and design of our affliction.
2. What we learn in the school of providence we should transmit to posterity. “That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children” (Psa_68:6).
I. What is to be told? This, i.e. the judgments of God upon Israel. II. To whom are they to be made known? (a) Your children. (b) Their children, and (c) Another generation. Four generations are to keep up the remembrance. III. How are they to be known? “Tell, Heb. Cipher them up diligently, after the manner of arithmeticians; reckon up the several years with the several calamities thereof to your children and nephews, that they may hear and fear, and do no more so” (Deu_19:20).
Family Religion. I. The fathers’ knowledge the children’s heritage. II. The fathers’ fall the children’s preservation [Treasury of David].
HOMILETICS
NATIONAL CALAMITIES.—Joe_1:4; Joe_1:6-7
These verses set forth that terrible calamity which was coming upon a land which God once protected and blessed, but which was devastated by a nation of savage and innumerable hosts.
I. Calamities by diminutive creatures. In one sense nothing is insignificant in the hands of God. “A fly with God’s message could choke a king,” says Jeremy Taylor. Armed with his vengeance, the meanest creatures become the mightiest. In the East so proverbial is the power of the locusts, that the insects are made to say to Mahomet, “We are the army of the great God; we produce ninety-nine eggs; if the hundred were completed we should consume the whole earth and all that is in it.” “In every stage of their existence,” says Dr Thompson, “these locusts give a most impressive view of the power of God to punish a wicked world.” All creatures are under God’s control. The lion from the forest and the wind from heaven do his bidding. Hosts of angels and swarms of insects can punish a guilty people.
II. Calamities in dreadful succession. Whatever time intervened, calamity followed calamity, each destructive, but all together most terrible in their consequences. Travellers tell us that swarm succeeds swarm, darken the sun, extend hundreds of miles, and devour every green thing. Volney says that “the quantity of these insects is a thing incredible to any one who has not seen it himself.” The judgments of God are often linked together like a chain, each one drawing on the other. Yet, says one, “at each link of the lengthening chain, allowing space and time for repentance to break it through.” If men like Pharaoh harden their hearts they will be destroyed. “By executing thy judgments upon them by little and little thou gavest them place of repentance, not being ignorant that they were a naughty generation” (Wis_12:10).
III. Calamities most destructive.
1. Fierce as a lion. “Whose teeth are the teeth of a lion,” &c. Nothing can resist their bite. “They gnaw even the doors of houses,” says Pliny. The sharp and prominent eye-teeth of the lion and lioness are ascribed to them. “They appear to be created for a scourge,” says a traveller, “since to strength incredible for so small a creature they add saw-like teeth, admirably calculated to eat up all the herbs in the land.”
2. Destructive to all vegetation. One feature is presented after another in a way to rouse attention. (a) All tender herbs were destroyed. What was left by the palmer-worm was eaten by the locust; “and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.” (b) Choice fruit trees, such as vines and fig-trees, were destroyed. The vine is most prominent as the more noble and valuable tree. It flourished from time immemorial, was most fruitful, and a source of wealth to the people. These were the trees of Judea, and to have them destroyed was a calamity not common to a people whose common drink was wine. (c) Desolation was extreme. Young shoots and even the bark of trees were not spared. Drooping vines and injured fig-trees, with their leafless branches and peeled bark, were effects of wasting plagues for many years. This picture is not exaggerated in the least. It is fearfully accurate, and an awful symbol of the desolation of churches and nations caused by sin. The Christian Church is God’s vineyard. If it yields not fruit, it may be laid waste. Prevailing sins will be visited by corresponding judgments. How great must be that guilt which leads God to punish his own land! “I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briars and thorns.”
A SOLEMN WARNING TO DRUNKARDS.—Joe_1:5
All classes are called upon to repent. The wine-bibbers are to wake up to a recognition of the hand of God, to “weep and wail,” for the judgment has touched what they most love. Drunkenness is the greatest curse of this land, and the greatest hindrance to the gospel. In a community educated, wise, and pious, it is a source of powerful mischief; but among the masses of mankind, governed by appetite and not intelligence, it has been terribly destructive.
I. Drunkards frustrate the design of nature. Whatever produce of the earth is fit for food is placed at man’s disposal. He should co-operate with God in the laws of providence, for the growth and increase of this food. All waste in nature is condemnable. Yet the sole end for which some cultivate the fig-tree and the vine, the garden and the farm, is selfish indulgence. Nature’s gifts are abused, and the benevolent design of God is nullified and reversed. Drunkards virtually say concerning fruit and grain, “To me they shall not be for meat.”
II. Drunkards render themselves insensible to danger. “Awake, ye drunkards.” All sin stupefies; but drunkenness intoxicates the mind, lulls the conscience, hardens the heart, and turns into society a sordid, selfish animal. This delirium is the most solemn feature of the case. The victim having lost all sensibility and will, has no power to awake, and sleeps quietly like one “lying down in the midst of the sea, or upon the top of the mast.” The senses even seem stupefied. He may be “stricken and beaten,” but he feels it not (Pro_23:35), more senseless than the brute who satisfies nature, not lust; he is lost to shame, enslaved by appetite, and seeks relief from temporary awakening, by yielding himself again to his ruinous sin. “When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.”—
With ceaseless, ravenous, and remorseless rage,
By day and night—on Sabbath and on work day,
The monster feeds and feasts and fattens on its prey.
III. Drunkards will be roused from sottish slumber. “For it is cut off from your mouth.” Locusts were to destroy the vines, the grapes would cease to grow, and the sweetness and strength “of the new wine” would be taken from them. “Take away my wine, you take away my life,” said one. God will deprive men of idolized indulgence, and force them to “weep and howl” by his judgments. The more inordinately they lust, the more pinching will be their distress. “A wilful waste will bring a woeful want.” If temporal sufferings do not rouse the drunkard, the epicure, and the sensualist to a sense of their sin and danger, what must be their feelings when weeping and howling will be without hope and intermission? Let weeping for things temporal beget care not to lose things eternal. “For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red: it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
Joe_1:1-4. The Jewish theocracy is passed away, but God is still the moral governor of the world; and in perfect harmony with the principles of the New Testament, which teach us not to pronounce a man to be a sinner above other men, because on him the tower of Siloam falls, we may interpret the prevalence of natural evils in any country as meant by God to call the attention of the people to those moral evils which abound amongst them. So that if untimely weather come, or malignant diseases come, or any form of calamity come;—if people ask one another, “Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Did you ever know such a season, such weather, such sickness, or such death?”—it is only the province of religious duty to look on such things as the working out of great laws, of moral righteousness;—to recognize man’s sin as the awful fact lying under what man calls his misfortunes, and by timely repentance to secure forgiveness; and thus turn the visitation into a blessed chastisement [Stoughton].
Joe_1:4; Joe_1:6-7. Locusts. The insect that destroyed all the peach-trees in St. Helena was imported from the Cape, says Kirby and Spence. “We know,” says Burke, “that a swarm of locusts, however individually despicable, can render a country more desolate than Gengis Khan or Tamerlane. When God Almighty chose to humble the pride and presumption of Pharaoh and bring him to shame, he did not effect his purpose with tigers and lions. He sent lice, mice, frogs, and everything loathsome and contemptible, to pollute and destroy the country.”
Joe_1:5. Drunkards. Be sober in diet. Nature is content with a little; but where sobriety wanteth, nothing is enough. The body must have sufficient lest it faint in necessary duties; but beware of gluttony and drunkenness. Christ saith, “Take heed, overload not your hearts with these burdens of excess.” “Be not drunken with wine.” These lessons are fit for England, where ancient sobriety hath given place to superfluity, where many such men are as fare daintily day by day. God grant their end be not like his, who riotously wasting here the creatures of God, wanted afterwards a drop of water when he would gladly have had it [Sandys].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Coming of the Locusts a Harbinger of the…
The Coming of the Locusts a Harbinger of the Day of the Lord
After the title (Joe_1:1), the prophet announces an unheard of and long to be remembered ruin, wrought by locusts (Joe_1:2-4), and summons the users of wine to bewail the destruction of vineyards (Joe_1:5-7). He calls for lamentation, like that of a widowed bride, over the loss of sacrificial offerings, and wasted fields and orchards (Joe_1:8-12). He commands the priests to lament and to appoint a fast and a meeting for prayer (Joe_1:13-14), and then he vividly describes the failure of crops and distress of cattle (Joe_1:16-20).
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1. Joel] see Intro. Pethuel] entirely unknown.
4. The palmerworm, cankerworm, caterpiller, and locust, are not different insects, but in the original four different names of the locust, possibly representing it in different stages of growth; yet here in a climactic description, i.e. 'swarm upon swarm.' The use of synonyms for a common object is characteristic of Hebrew.
5. New wine] RV 'sweet wine,' primarily the freshly pressed juice of the grape or other fruit.
6. A nation] figurative of the locusts: cp. similar figure for ants and conies in Pro_30:25. My land] i.e. of Jehovah since the prophet gives His message. The teeth of a lion] in destructiveness. The cheek teeth] RV 'The jaw teeth.' The lion was common in ancient Palestine.
7. Locusts consume not only plants and vegetables, but also small branches and tender bark, thus exposing the white wood. Cast it away] i.e. the unedible fragments of bark and wood which fall to the ground.
8. A general address to the people. The simile may contain an underlying reference to the abandonment of the people by Jehovah, since the union between them was often typified by the marriage relation, and the disaster of the locust plague implied that Jehovah had forsaken the land.
9. The meat offering (RV 'meal offering') and the drink offering] Two daily offerings which went with the morning and evening sacrifice of a lamb, the one consisting of fine flour mingled with oil and the other of a libation of wine: cp. Exo_29:38-42; Num_28:1-8; Lev_2:1-16. Is cut off] i.e. cannot be provided.
10. The land mourneth] Nature is represented in the OT. with the same feelings as those of man. Cp. for mourning Isa_33:9; Jer_12:4, Jer_12:11; Jer_23:10; Amo_1:2.
Corn, wine, and oil, the three principal products of the soil of Palestine, frequently mentioned together as from Jehovah (Joe_2:19; Deu_7:13; Deu_11:14; Deu_28:51; Jer_31:12; Hos_2:8, Hos_2:23). The corn (ARV 'grain') was principally wheat, barley, and spelt or vetch. Rye and oats were not grown. The oil was that of the olive.
11. Be ye ashamed, etc.] RM 'The husbandmen are ashamed, the vinedressers howl.'
12. Palm tree] Symbol of glory or beauty (Psa_92:12; Son_7:7.; Jer_10:5), but here mentioned as a fruit tree. Its dates are very valuable. The apple] sometimes rendered 'apricot,' although apples are found in Palestine: cp. Pro_25:11; Son_2:3, Son_2:5; Son_7:9.
13. Gird yourselves] i.e. with sackcloth: cp. Isa_32:11. Lie all night] cp. David (2Sa_12:16), Ahab (1Ki_21:27). Nothing was more terrible to the Jewish mind than the failure of the daily sacrifice.
14. Sanctify.. a fast] i.e. keep a holy fast unto Jehovah. As feasting is a natural expression of joy so fasting is of grief, and fasts were observed in times of distress along with confession of sin and prayer for divine favour (Jdg_20:26; 1Sa_7:6; 2Sa_12:16; 1Ki_21:27; Psa_69:10.; Ezr_10:6; Neh_9:1; Jon_3:5-9; Dan_9:3), and entered also regularly into the Jewish calendar (Lev_16:29; Zec_7:3, Zec_7:5; Zec_8:19). Gather the elders, etc.] better, 'Gather, O elders, all the inhabitants,' or omit 'elders.'
15. The day of the Lord] early in popular thought a time when Jehovah granted victory unto Israel (Amo_5:18), but in prophetic discourse a time of signal divine manifestation in judgment (as here in the locust plague, Joe_2:1, Joe_2:11, cp. Isa_2:12; Isa_13:6; Amo_5:18; Zep_1:7, Zep_1:14; Mal_4:5), and especially in connexion with the final consummation of Jehovah's plan for Israel, and thus a day of salvation (Joe_2:31.; Joe_3:14.; Mal_4:5.).
16. Meat] i.e. food. Many of the celebrations at the Temple were occasions of rejoicing over abundant harvests and the like (Deu_16:10, Deu_16:13-15; Deu_12:6-7; Deu_26:1, Deu_26:10.)
17. RM 'The seeds shrivel,' from the drought, which seems to have accompanied the locust plague.
19. Fire.. flame] figurative of the drought.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v4 The palmerworm, locust, etc., are thought to be different…
palmerworm
The palmerworm, locust, etc., are thought to be different forms, at different stages of development, of one insect. The essential fact is that, according to the usual method of the Spirit in prophecy, some local circumstance is shown to be of spiritual significance, and is made the occasion of a far-reaching prophecy (e.g.) Isa 7:1-14 where the Syrian invasion and the unbelief of Ahaz give occasion to the great prophecy of Joe 1:14. Here in Joel a plague of devouring insects is shown to have spiritual significance Joe 1:13; Joe 1:14 and is made the occasion of the prophecy of the day of the Lord, not yet fulfilled. (See Scofield "Isa 2:12"). This is more developed in Joel 2, where the literal locusts are left behind, and the future day of Jehovah fills the scene.
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The whole picture is of the end-time of this present age, of the "times of the Gentiles" Luk 21:24; Rev 16:14 of the battle of Armageddon; Rev 16:14; Rev 19:11-21 of the regathering of Israel. (See Scofield "Rom 11:26") and of kingdom blessing. It is remarkable that Joel, coming at the very beginning of written prophecy (B.C. 836), gives the fullest view of the consummation of all written prophecy.
The order of events is:
(1) The invasion of Palestine from the north by Gentile world-powers headed up under the Beast and false prophet Joe 2:1-10 "Armageddon," (See Scofield "Rev 16:14").
(2) the Lord’s army and destruction of the invaders Joe 2:11; Rev 19:11-21.
(3) the repentance of Judah in the land Joe 2:12-17 (See Scofield "Deu 30:3").
(4) the answer of Jehovah Joe 2:18-27
(5) the effusion of the Spirit in the (Jewish) "last days" Joe 2:28; Joe 2:29.
(6) the return of the Lord in glory and the setting up of the kingdom Joe 2:30-32; Act 15:15-17 by the regathering of the nation and judgment of the nations Joe 3:1-16
(7) full and permanent kingdom blessing Joe 3:17-21; Zec 14:1-21. (See Scofield "Mat 25:32").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis and Annotations
Analysis and Annotations
I. THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS
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II. THE COMING DAY OF THE LORD: THE RUIN, THE REPENTANCE AND THE RESTORATION
III. THE EVENTS OF THE DAY OF THE LORD: ISRAEL’S ENEMIES JUDGED AND THE KINGDOM ESTABLISHED
I. THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS
CHAPTER 1
1. The prophet’s appeal (Joe 1:1-4)
2. The call to the drunkards (Joe 1:5-7)
3. The call to the people and the priests (Joe 1:8-14)
4. The day of the Lord and the suffering land (Joe 1:15-18)
5. The prayer of the prophet (Joe 1:19-20)
Joe 1:1-4. The prophet announces that it is the Word of Jehovah he utters, which came to him. (Joe 1:2 and Joe 1:3 are an introduction to the description which follows the great calamity which had befallen the land. It is in the form of an appeal. What had happened to the land is of such a fearful character that it is unprecedented. The visitation of the land by the locust plague is to be related to future generations, because there is a great prophetic meaning as to the future attached to the locusts, which will be pointed out later. The fourth verse (Joe 1:4) we render in a way our own, leaving the words of the destroying insects untranslated.
What the Gazam left, the Arbeh hath devoured;
And what the Arbeh left, the Jelek hath devoured;
And what the Jelek left, the Chasel hath devoured.
We left the Hebrew words untranslated because they do not express insects of different species; they are one insect, the locust, in a fourfold stage. Gazam means “to gnaw off,” Arbeh is “to be many”; this is the common name of the locusts on account of their migratory habits. Jelek is “to lick off,” and Chasel means “to devour or consume.” The locust passes through a fourfold stage in its development to full growth. First, it is the gnawing locust, when first hatched; then it gets its wings and flies about; after that it starts in its destructive work by licking off whatever it finds, and, finally, it reaches its full growth and devours everything in its path. (Many foolish applications have been made of these locusts. one of the most ridiculous is the one made by a certain woman-healer in her book Lost and Restored.)
The locust plague which laid Israel’s land bare was a judgment from the Lord. It was one of the judgments the Lord sent upon Egypt, and Moses had prophetically announced that the Lord would use them to punish his people (see Deu 28:38; Deu 28:42) .
But these literal locusts, which fell literally upon the land and destroyed in a short time all vegetation, are symbolic of other agencies which were to be used later in Israel’s history to bring judgment upon the land and the people. They are typical of Gentile armies, as stated in the second chapter, where the Lord calls them “My great army.” Here is unquestionably a prophetic forecast as to the future of the land. From Daniel’s prophecy we learn twice that four world powers should subjugate Israel and prey upon the land: Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Graeco-Macedonia and Rome. Zechariah, also, in one of his night visions, beheld four horns, and these four horns scattered Judah and Jerusalem. We see, therefore, in the locusts, first, the literal locusts which destroyed everything in vegetation at the time Joel lived, and these locusts are symbolical of future judgments executed upon the land and the nations by the prophetically announced world powers. At the close of the “times of the Gentiles,” during which Jerusalem is trodden down, the final invasion of the land takes place; it is this which is described in the second chapter.
Joe 1:5-7. The first swarm had probably appeared in the fall; only the vineyards had not yet been harvested. They attacked the vineyards and speedily the vines and the grapes disappeared under the onslaught. The drinkers of wine were therefore to suffer first. That there was much drunkenness among the people Israel, especially in the days of their prosperity, may be learned from Amo 6:1-6; Isa 5:11; Isa 24:7-23; Isa 28:7, etc. In Joe 1:6 the locusts are described as a nation, mighty without number, with lion’s teeth. This confirms the typical application to Gentile nations of the future who would devastate the land. See, furthermore, Num 13:33, Isa 40:22 and Jer 51:14, where the same comparison is made.
Joe 1:8-14. On account of the great disaster the people are called to mourn and put on sackcloth. “Lament like a virgin, girded with sackcloth, for the husband of her youth.” This is a significant expression. Israel in her relationship to Jehovah is here indicated. We are reminded of Isa 3:26 concerning Jerusalem, “And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she, being desolate, shall sit on the ground; ” and Isa 54:6, “For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.” So great was the havoc wrought that the meal and drink offering was cut off from the house of the Lord so that the priests mourned, the servants of Jehovah. This is their mournful chant:
Wasted is the field,
Mourning is the land,
For wasted is the corn,
The new vine is dried up,
The oil faileth.
This is followed by the call to lament for the husbandman and vinedressers. The whole harvest was gone, and besides the failure of the vine, the fig tree, the other trees are also mentioned, yea, “all the trees of the field are withered.” On account of the severity of this visitation joy had left the children of men.
Then comes the definite call to the priests to lament and cry unto Jehovah and to sanctify a fast (Joe 1:13-14). But there is no record of a response. At the close of this chapter the Prophet alone raises his voice to Jehovah. We shall learn in the second chapter of the time of the national repentance of Israel.
Joe 1:15-18. For the first time we meet the day of the Lord (Yom Jehovah), that phrase used so frequently in all the prophetic books. The 15th verse (Joe 1:15) is an exclamation of the Prophet as before his vision that day appears. In the midst of the weird description of the calamity, present in Joel’s day, he beholds a greater judgment approaching. It is the same day he beholds which the other prophets mention; each time Joel uses this expression it means the coming day of the Lord, still approaching. It may be noticed that the five passages in Joel in which “the day of the Lord” is mentioned are progressive.
For a comparative study of this important phrase we quote the leading passage of the different prophets.
Isaiah. The phrase “in that day” is found many times in his book. We mention Isa 2:2-5; Isa 2:10-22; Isa 4:1-6; Isa 13:6-13. The great glory predictions of Isa 54:1-17; Isa 60:1-22; Isa 61:1-11; Isa 62:1-12 are all related to this day.
Jeremiah. He also speaks of that day (Jer 25:30-33; Jer 30:18-24) .
Ezekiel. Chapters 7 and 8. From chapters 37-38 we have the record of great events both of judgment and blessing which will come to pass in connection with that day. While Daniel does not use in his book the phrase “day of the Lord” nearly all his great prophecies are connected with that day. It is the day in which the stone smites the great image, representing the times of the Gentiles, and demolishes it; the day on which “the Son of Man” comes in the clouds of heaven to receive the kingdom. Hosea points to that day in chapters 2 and 3, as well as in the closing chapter. Amos witnesses to it in Amo 1:2; Amo 6:3; Amo 9:2; Amo 9:15. Obadiah, who lived about the same time as Joel, speaks of the day in Oba 1:15 of his brief prophecy. Micah in his prophecy refers to it in Mic 5:15. In Nahum the day is described in which the Lord will deal in judgment with the wicked world cities (see Nah 1:1-9). The third chapter of Habakkuk reveals that day. Zephaniah has a great deal more to say about that day than the preceding prophetic books (Zep 1:14-18; Zep 2:1-15; Zep 3:1-20). Haggai bears witness to it in Hag 2:6-7. (Compare with Heb 12:26-29.) Zechariah uses the phrase “in that day” many times, especially in the last three chapters. Malachi reveals the day in Mal 3:1-3; and Mal 4:1-3).
We learn from all this what a prominent place the day of the Lord occupies in the prophecies. It must be so, for it is the day of manifestation and consummation. Joel beheld here for the first time this day.
Then follows an additional description of the great calamity which had come upon the land in Joel’s day ((Joe 1:16-18).
Joe 1:19-20. Joel was, like all the other prophets, a man of prayer. No other mention is made by the prophet concerning himself, but this brief word is sufficient to give us a glimpse of his inner life and his trust in the Lord. He cried to Jehovah in the great distress.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 13 A Description of the Calamity
A Description of the Calamity
v. 1. The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel, the superscription assuring us that we are not getting Joel’s own ideas, but the inspired words of Jehovah.
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v. 2. Hear this, ye old men, whose memory reached back through generations of men, and give ear, in yielding a most willing and careful attention, all ye inhabitants of the land. It is a spirited challenge to all the people of Judah to mark the lesson of the great calamity which has befallen them. Hath this been in your days or even in the days of your fathers? A visitation of this kind, and grievous to this extent, had never yet been seen in Palestine.
v. 3. Tell ye your children of it and let your children tell their children and their children another generation, passing it on from father to son, all of them accepting this tradition with awe, fear, and trembling, as being an unparalleled manifestation of God’s anger against men on account of their sins.
v. 4. That which the palmer-worm, literally, "the gnawer-off,". hath left hath the locust eaten, the swarming or multiplying locust of the Orient; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm, the devouring grasshopper, eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten, that is, the consuming locust. All four names describe the devastation wrought by the great Oriental locust, which apparently came into the land in successive swarms at that time, gnawing off first the tender shoots of the orchards and vineyards, then the vegetables and field fruits, and finally the foliage of the trees and every spear of green that was in sight. The desolation wrought by the plague of the locusts is described in the most graphic manner, one feature after another being depicted in a way to arouse the people to a realization of the seriousness of the situation.
v. 5. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, since the supply of grapes and therefore of the liquor made from them was not available; for it is cut off from your mouth. This appeal is introduced to describe, with poetical power, the complete devastation of the country.
v. 6. For a nation is come up upon My land, a great and mighty army of fierce warriors, strong and without number, in swarms of countless myriads, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great lion, the jaw-teeth of a lioness protecting or avenging her young, grinding to pieces everything that came in their path.
v. 7. He hath laid My vine waste, by consuming its foliage, and barked My fig-tree, gnawing off the bark and laying bare stem and branches, so that they were ruined; he hath made it clean bare and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white, by the complete removal of the bark. This being the condition in which the land was left after the visit of the locusts, the prophet now urges his countrymen to mourn.
v. 8. Lament like a virgin, girded with sackcloth, the dress of mourning, for the husband of her youth, whom, after their betrothal, death took away. The grief of a bereaved virgin and bride is represented also in other passages as deep and overwhelming. Cf Isa 54:6.
v. 9. The meat-offering and the drink-offering, the sacrifices in the worship of Jehovah, is cut off from the house of the Lord, because it was impossible to procure the necessary materials, since everything was destroyed; the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn, on account of the decay resulting from the devastation, which was followed also by a dearth of the animals used for sacrificial purposes.
v. 10. The field is wasted, made desolate; the land mourneth, both the uncultivated and the cultivated sections of the land suffering in the same measure; for the corn is wasted, the grain completely consumed; the new wine is dried up, the grapes being spoiled for want of foliage on the vines; the oil languisheth, because the olive-trees produced no fruit.
v. 11. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen, bearing the shame of disappointed hopes after working hard for a crop; howl, O ye vine-dressers, these two representing the agricultural classes of the land, for the wheat and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished, this being the cause of the farmers’ lament.
v. 12. The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languisheth, so that gardener and horticulturist likewise had reasons for mourning; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, the date-palm, which ordinarily escaped the onslaughts of the locust, and the apple-tree, or the quince, even all the trees of the field, are withered; because joy is withered away from the sons of men, so that there could be no rejoicing over a bountiful harvest, as usual. Cf Psa 4:7; Isa 9:3. The description of the swarming grasshoppers and the desolation following in their wake is one of the most powerful in all literature, and the picture is rightly regarded as one which ought to call all men to repentance.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 18 General Information:
General Information:
God speaks through Joel to the people of Israel using poetry. (See: Parallelism)
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the word of Yahweh that came to Joel
This idiom is used to announce that God gave messages to Joel. AT: "the message Yahweh gave to Joel" or "the message Yahweh spoke to Joel" (See: Idiom)
Yahweh
This is the name of God that he revealed to his people in the Old Testament. See the translationWord page about Yahweh concerning how to translate this.
Pethuel
Joel's father (See: How to Translate Names)
Has anything like this happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors?
Joel is preparing the elders to listen to what he has to say. This can be translated as a statement. AT: "Nothing like this has ever happened before either to you or to your ancestors" (See: Rhetorical Question)
their children the next generation
You may need to fill in the words that have been left out. AT: "let their children tell the generation after them" (See: Ellipsis)
translationWords
word of God
Yahweh
Joel
elder
generation
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 1:1–2:17 Joel describes the devastating locust plague that afflicted…
1:1–2:17 Joel describes the devastating locust plague that afflicted Judah and Jerusalem.
1:1 TheThe word of the Lord gave this message (literally The word of the Lord came): The Lord, not the human prophet, was the ultimate source of these words. • The name Joel means “the Lord [Yahweh] is God.” Joel’s father, Pethuel, is unknown apart from this verse.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.