Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of Yahweh comes, for it is close at hand:
A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn spreading on the mountains, a great and strong people; there has never been the like, neither will there be any more after them, even to the years of many generations.
A fire devours before them, and behind them, a flame burns. The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them, a desolate wilderness. Yes, and no one has escaped them.
Their appearance is as the appearance of horses, and they run as horsemen.
Like the noise of chariots on the tops of the mountains, they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devours the stubble, like a strong people set in battle array.
At their presence the peoples are in anguish. All faces have grown pale.
They run like mighty men. They climb the wall like warriors. They each march in his line, and they don’t swerve off course.
Neither does one jostle another; they march everyone in his path, and they burst through the defenses, and don’t break ranks.
They rush on the city. They run on the wall. They climb up into the houses. They enter in at the windows like thieves.
The earth quakes before them. The heavens tremble. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.
Yahweh thunders his voice before his army; for his forces are very great; for he is strong who obeys his command; for the day of Yahweh is great and very awesome, and who can endure it?
“Yet even now,” says Yahweh, “turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.”
Tear your heart, and not your garments, and turn to Yahweh, your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and relents from sending calamity.
Who knows? He may turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meal offering and a drink offering to Yahweh, your God.
Blow the trumpet in Zion! Sanctify a fast. Call a solemn assembly.
Gather the people. Sanctify the assembly. Assemble the elders. Gather the children, and those who nurse from breasts. Let the bridegroom go out of his room, and the bride out of her room.
Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare your people, Yahweh, and don’t give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 This chapter contains serious exhortations, mixed with threatening; but…
This chapter contains serious exhortations, mixed with threatening; but the Prophet threatens for the purpose of correcting the indifference of the people, whom we have seen to have been very tardy to consider God’s judgments. Now the reason why I wished to join together these eleven verses was, because the design of the Prophet in them is no other than to stir up by fear the minds of the people. The object of the narrative then is, to make the people sensible, that it was now no time for taking rest; for the Lord, having long tolerated their wickedness, was now resolved to pour upon them in full torrent his whole fiery. This is the sum of the whole. Let us now come to the words.
Sound the trumpet, he says, in Zion; cry out in my holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the earth tremble. The Prophet begins with an exhortation. We know, indeed that he alludes to the usual custom sanctioned by the law; for as on festivals trumpets were sounded to call the people, so also it was done when anything extraordinary happened. Hence the Prophet addresses not each individually; but as all had done wickedly, from the least to the greatest, he bids the whole assembly to be called, that they might in common own themselves to be guilty before God, and deprecate his vengeance. It is the same as though the Prophet had said that there was no one among the people who could exempt himself from blame, for iniquity had prevailed through the whole body. But this passage shows that when any judgment of God is impending, and tokens of it appear, this remedy ought to be used, namely, that all must publicly assemble and confess themselves worthy of punishments and at the same time flee to the mercy of God. This, we know, was, as I have already said, formerly enjoined on the people; and this practice has not been abolished by the gospel. And it hence appears how much we have departed from the right and lawful order of things; for at this day it would be new and unusual to proclaim a fast. How so? Because the greater part are become hardened; and as they know not commonly what repentance is, so they understand not what the profession of repentance means; for they understand not what sin is, what the wrath of God is, what grace is. It is then no wonder that they are so secure, and that when praying for pardon is mentioned, it is a thing wholly unknown at this day. But though people in general are thus stupid, it is yet our duty to learn from the Prophets what has always been the actual mode of proceeding among the people of God, and to labor as much as we can, that this may be known, so that when there shall come an occasion for a public repentance, even the most ignorant may understand that this practice has ever prevailed in the Church of God, and that it did not prevail through inconsiderate zeal of men, but through the will of God himself.
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But he bids the inhabitants of the land to tremble. By these words he intimates, that we are not to trifle with God by vain ceremonies but to deal with him in earnest. When therefore, the trumpets sound, our hearts ought to tremble; and thus the reality is to be connected with the outward signs. And this ought to be carefully noticed; for the world is ever disposed to have an eye to some outward service, and thinks that a satisfaction is given to God, when some external rite is observed. But we do nothing but mock God, when we present him with ceremonies, while there is no corresponding sincere feeling in the heart; and this is what we shall find handled in another place.
The Prophet now adds threatening, that he might stir up the minds of the people: For coming, he says, is the day of Jehovah for nigh it is. By these words he first intimates that we are not to wait until God strikes us, but that as soon as he shows signs of his wrath, we ought to anticipate his judgment. When God then warns us of his displeasure, we ought instantly to solicit pardon: nigh, he says, is the day of Jehovah. What follows has a regard to the end which we have mentioned; for the Prophet paints the terrible judgment of God with the view of rousing minds wholly stupid and indifferent.
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 vv1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16 He showeth the great judgments of God, which are…
He showeth the great judgments of God, which are at hand, except they repent.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Joe 2:1 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and…
Joe 2:1 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for [it is] nigh at hand;
Ver. 1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion] Idem aliis verbis repetit, saith Mercer here. The prophet repeats the same as in the former chapter, only in other words, more at large, and after another manner; pressing the people further to the practice of repentance by many sweet promises of the blessings of this and a better life. Our prophet may seem to be of the same mind with Tertullian, who said that he was nulli rei natus nisi poenitentiae, born for no other end but to repent, and to call upon others so to do. Tot autem verbis et figuris utitur, saith Luther, he useth so many words and figures, because he had to do with a people that were harder than rocks, Jer 5:8; as also, because there is an absolute necessity of repentance. Aut poenitendum, aut pereundum, as our Saviour tells his disciples twice in a breath, Luk 13:2; Luk 13:5. The prophet had urged them hereunto from the evils they felt or feared, Joe 1:1-20. Pain and penitence are words of one derivation. God plagueth men that he may make them cry peccavi; I have sinned, not peril only, I am undone, as Cain; but peccavi, I have done very foolishly, as David. The first seventeen verses of this chapter are hortatory, the rest consolatory. The day of the Lord cometh, therefore repent. This is the sum of the exhortation. It cometh, and that instantly: give warning therefore. God loveth to foresignify, saith the heathen historian, and to admonish before he punish, Fιλει ο Yεος προσημαινειν (Herod.). He dealt so with Cain, to whom he read the first lecture of repentance, Gen 4:9-15, as he had done of faith to his father Adam, in the chapter before. He dealt so with the old world, with the Sodomites, Ninevites.
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Sound an alarm in my holy mountain] Ring the bells backwards (as among us they do), the house is on fire, the enemy is at hand.
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble] And take course to prevent or mitigate the ensuing mischief, to cut the cart ropes of sin that pull down wrath upon the land.
For the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand] "An end is come, is come, is come," as Ezekiel hath it, Eze 7:6-7 "I will overturn, overturn, overturn," as the same prophet hath it elsewhere, Eze 21:27, "Should we then make mirth?" as it is in the same chapter, Eze 21:10; should we sleep upon a mast pole, dance upon a weather cock, go hallooing and whooping to the place of execution?
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 vv1–17 Blow ye the trumpet: the prophet continueth his advice…
Blow ye the trumpet: the prophet continueth his advice or exhortation to the priests, who were by office appointed to summon the solemn assemblies, and to call them together by sound of trumpet or cornet; and so would he have the priests to gather the people together to fast, and weep, and pray.
In Zion; which taken largely is the same with Jerusalem, though strictly taken it is the hill on which the city of David, or his royal palace, did stand.
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Sound an alarm; give notice that all may be prepared against the enemy, let it be known that the enemy is coining, what danger attends his coming, and what provision should be made.
In my holy mountain; in Jerusalem, in Moriah, on which the temple did stand.
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; stand in awe of God’s majesty, fear his displeasure, and do this with a penitent heart, all you that dwell in the land of Canaan, the parched and burnt land.
For the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand: see Joe 1:15.
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, 12 Here we have God contending with his own professing…
Here we have God contending with his own professing people for their sins and executing upon them the judgment written in the law (Deu 28:42), The fruit of thy land shall the locust consume, which was one of those diseases of Egypt that God would bring upon them, Deu 28:60.
I. Here is the war proclaimed (Joe 2:1): Blow the trumpet in Zion, either to call the invading army together, and then the trumpet sounds a charge, or rather to give notice to Judah and Jerusalem of the approach of the judgment, that they might prepare to meet their God in the way of his judgments and might endeavor by prayers and tears, the church's best artillery, to put by the stroke. It was the priests' business to sound the trumpet (Num 10:8), both as an appeal to God in the day of their distress and a summons to the people to come together to seek his face. Note, It is the work of ministers to give warning from the word of God of the fatal consequences of sin, and to reveal his wrath from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And though it is not the privilege of Zion and Jerusalem to be exempted from the judgments of God, if they provoke him, yet it is their privilege to be warned of them, that they might make their peace with him. Even in the holy mountain the alarm must be sounded, and then it sounds most dreadful, Amo 3:2. Now, shall a trumpet be blown in the city, in the holy city, and the people not be afraid? Surely they will. Amo 3:6. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; they shall be made to tremble by the judgment itself; let them therefore tremble at the alarm of it.
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II. Here is a general idea given of the day of battle, which cometh, which is nigh at hand, and there is no avoiding it. It is the day of the Lord, the day of his judgment, in which he will both manifest and magnify himself. It is a day of darkness and gloominess (Joe 2:2), literally so, the swarms of locusts and caterpillars being so large and so thick as to darken the sky (Exo 10:15), or rather figuratively; it will be a melancholy time, a time of grievous affliction. And it will come as the morning spread upon the mountains; the darkness of this day will come as suddenly as the morning light, as irresistibly, will spread as far, and grow upon them as the morning light.
III. Here is the army drawn up in array (Joe 2:2): They are a great people, and a strong. Any one sees the vast numbers that there shall be of locusts and caterpillars, destroying the land, will say (as we are all apt to be most affected with what is present), "Surely, never was the like before, nor ever will be the like again." Note, Extraordinary judgments are rare things, and seldom happen, which is an instance of God's patience. When God had drowned the world once he promised never to do it again. The army is here describe to be, 1. Very bold and daring: They are as horses, as war-horses, that rush into the battle and are not affrighted (Job 39:22); and as horsemen, carried on with martial fire and fury, so they shall run, Joe 2:4. Some of the ancients have observed that the head of a locust is very like, in shape, to the head of a horse. 2. Very loud and noisy - like the noise of chariots, of many chariots, when driven furiously over rough ground, on the tops of the mountains, Joe 2:5. Hence is borrowed part of the description of the locusts which St. John saw rise out of the bottomless pit. Rev 9:7, Rev 9:9, The shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared to the battle; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots, of many horses running to the battle. Historians tell us that the noise made by swarms of locusts in those countries that are infested with them has sometimes been heard six miles off. The noise is likewise compared to that of a roaring fire; it is like the noise of a flame that devours the stubble, which noise is the more terrible because that which it is the indication of is devouring. Note, When God's judgments are abroad they make a great noise; and it is necessary for the awakening of a secure and stupid world that they should do so. (3.) They are very regular, and keep ranks in their march; though numerous and greedy of spoil, yet they are as a strong people set in battle array (Joe 2:5.): They shall march every one on his ways, straight forward, as if they had been trained up by the discipline of war to keep their post and observe their right-hand man. They shall not break their ranks, nor one thrust another, Joe 2:7, Joe 2:8. Their number and swiftness shall breed no confusion. See how God can make creatures to act by rule that have no reason to act by, when he designs to serve his own purposes by them. And see how necessary it is that those who are employed in any service for God should observe order, and keep ranks, should diligently go on in their own work and stand in one another's way. 4. They are very swift; they run like horsemen (Joe 2:4), run like mighty men (Joe 2:7); they run to and fro in the city, and run upon the wall, Joe 2:9. When God sends forth his command on earth his word runs very swiftly, Psa 147:15. Angels have wings, and so have locusts, when God makes use of them.
IV. Here is the terrible execution done by this formidable army, 1. In the country, Joe 2:3. View the army in the front, and you will see a fire devouring before them; they consume all as if they breathed fire. View it in the rear, and you will see those that come behind as furious as the foremost: Behind them a flame burns. When they are gone, then it will appear what destruction they have made. Look upon the fields that they have not yet invaded, and they are as the garden of Eden, pleasant to the eye, and full of good fruits; they are the pride and glory of the country. But look upon the fields that they have eaten up and they are as a desolate wilderness; one would not think that these had ever been like the former, and yet so they were perhaps but the day before, or that those should ever be made like these, and yet so they shall be perhaps by tomorrow night; yea, and nothing shall escape them than can possibly be made food for them. Let none be proud of the beauty of their grounds any more than of their bodies, for God can soon change the face of both. 2. In the city. They shall climb the wall (Joe 2:7), they shall run upon the houses, and enter in at the windows like a thief (Joe 2:9); when Egypt was plagued with locusts, they filled Pharaoh's houses and the houses of his servants, Exo 10:5, Exo 10:6. The locusts out of the bottomless pit, Satan's emissaries, and missionaries of the man of sin, do as these locusts. God's judgments too, when they come with commission, cannot be kept out with bars and bolts; they will find or force their way.
V. The impressions that should hereby be made upon the people. They shall find it to no purpose to make opposition. These enemies are invulnerable and therefore irresistible: When they fall upon the sword they shall not be wounded, Joe 2:8. And those that cannot be hurt cannot be stopped; and therefore before their faces the people shall be much pained (Joe 2:6), as the merchants are in pain for their trading ships when they hear they are just in the mouth of a squadron of the enemies. "One is in pain for his field, another for his vineyard, and all faces gather blackness," which denotes the utmost consternation imaginable. Men in fear look pale, but men in despair look black; the whiteness of a sudden fright, when it is settled, turns into blackness. What is the matter of our pride and pleasure God can soon make the matter of our pain. The terror that the country should be in is described (Joe 2:10) by figurative expressions: The earth shall quake and the heavens tremble; even the hearts that seemed undaunted, so firm that nothing would frighten them, as immovable as heaven or earth, shall be seized with astonishment. Or when the inhabitants of the land are made to quake it seems to them as if all about them trembled too. Through the prevalency of their fear, or for want of the supports of life which they used to have, their eye shall wax dim and their sight fail them, so that to them the sun and moon shall seem to be dark, and the stars to withdraw their shining. Note, When God frowns upon men the lights of heaven will be small joy to them; for man, by rebelling against his Creator, has forfeited the benefit of all the creatures. But, though this is to be understood figuratively, there is a day coming when it will be accomplished in the letter, when the heavens shall be rolled together like a scroll, and the earth, and all the works that are therein, shall be burnt up. Particular judgments should awaken us to think of the general judgment.
VI. We are here directed to look up both him who is the commander-in-chief of this formidable army, and that is God himself, Joe 2:11. It is his army; it is his camp. He raised it; he gives it commission; he utters his voice before it, as the general gives orders to his army what to do and makes a speech to animate the soldiers; it is the Lord that gives the word of command to all these animals, which they exactly observe. Some think that with this cloud of locusts God sent terrible thunder, for that is called, The voice of the Lord, and was another of the plagues of Egypt, and this made the heavens and the earth tremble. It is the day of the Lord (as it was called, Joe 2:1), for in this war we are sure he carries the day; it must needs be his, for his camp is great and numerous. Those whom he makes war upon he can, as here, overpower with numbers; and whoever he employs to execute his word, as the minister of his justice, is sure to be made strong and par negotio - equal to what he undertakes; whom God gives commission to he girds with strength for the executing of that commission. And this makes the great day of the Lord very terrible to all those who in that day are to be made the monuments of his justice; for who can abide it? None can escape the arrests of God's wrath, can make head against the force of it, or bear up under the weight of it, Sa1 6:20; Psa 76:7.
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 vv1–17 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an…
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain,.... This is spoken to the priests, whose business it was to blow the trumpets for calling solemn assemblies to meet in Zion, the temple built there, called from thence the holy mountain of God. Here the trumpet is ordered to be blown with a broken quivering voice, a tarantantara, to give notice of approaching danger by the locusts, or those enemies signified by them, and to prepare for it, and return to God by repentance;
let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; at the judgments of God coming upon them, and the alarm of them:
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for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; the time fixed by him to punish a wicked people, and to pour out his wrath and vengeance on them; the day of his visitation, not in love, but in anger.
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, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17 A farther description of the desolation of the land,…
A farther description of the desolation of the land, ver. 1-11. An earnest call to repentance, ver. 12-17. A promise of all good things to the penitent, ver. 18-27. A prophecy of the Messiah's kingdom, ver. 28-32.
Blow ye - The prophet continues his exhortation to the priests, who were appointed to summon the solemn assemblies.
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, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 The prophet sounds the alarm of a dreadful calamity,…
CHAPTER II
The prophet sounds the alarm of a dreadful calamity, the
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description of which is most terribly worked up, 1-11.
Exhortation to repentance, fasting, and prayer, that the Divine
judgments may be averted, 12-17.
God will in due time take vengeance on all the enemies of pure
and undefiled religion, 18-20.
Great prosperity of the Jews subsequent to their return from
the Babylonish captivity, 21-27.
Joel then makes an elegant transition to the outpouring of the
Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, 28-30;
for so these verses are explained by one of the twelve apostles
of the Lamb. See Ac 2:16-21.
Prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, which was
shortly to follow the opening of the Gospel dispensation, 31.
Promises of safety to the faithful and penitent; promises
afterwards remarkably fulfilled to the Christians in their
escape to Pella from the desolating sword of the Roman army,
32.
NOTES ON CHAP. II
Verse 1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion] This verse also shows that the temple was still standing. All assemblies of the people were collected by the sound of the trumpet.
The day of the Lord cometh] This phrase generally means a day of judgment or punishment.
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, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17 Joe 2:1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion —…
Joe 2:1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion — The prophet, having in the preceding chapter described the locusts and caterpillars as a mighty army sent by God, in pursuance of this metaphor now exhorts the people to prepare to meet them, in the same terms as if they were alarmed to oppose an enemy, which was always done by the sound of the trumpet. Danger is proclaimed in this way, Eze 33:3; Eze 33:5; Hos 5:8; Amo 3:6. Natural means were wont to be used, to prevent the devastations of locusts; pits and trenches were dug, bags were provided, and combustible matter was prepared and set on fire: see Shaw’s Travels, 4to. p. 187. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble — Let them be seized with as terrible an apprehension of this approaching judgment, as if they saw an enemy invading their country.
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 vv1–17 Blow ye the trumpet - The trumpet was accustomed…
Blow ye the trumpet - The trumpet was accustomed to sound in Zion, only for religious uses; to call together the congregations for holy meetings, to usher in the beginnings of their months and their solemn days with festival gladness. Now in Zion itself, the stronghold of the kingdom, the Holy City, the place which God chose to put His Name there, which He had promised to establish, the trumpet was to be used, only for sounds of alarm and fear. Alarm could not penetrate there, without having pervaded the whole land. With it, the whole human hope of Judah was gone.
Sound an alarm in My holy mountain - He repeats the warning in varied expressions, in order the more to impress people’s hearts and to stir them to repentance. Even “the holy mountain” of God was to echo with alarms; the holiness, once bestowed upon it, was to be no security against the judgments of God; yea, in it rather were those judgments to begin. So Peter saith, “The time is come, that judgment must begin at the house of God” 1Pe 4:17. The alarm being blown in Zion, terror was to spread to all the inhabitants of the land, who were, in fear, to repent. The Church of Christ is foretold in prophecy under the names of “Zion” and of the holy “mountain.” It is the “stone cut out without hands, which became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” Dan 2:34-35. Of it, it is said, “Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob!” Isa 2:3. And Paul says, “ye are come unto mount Zion and unto the city of the living God” Heb 12:22. The words then are a rule for all times. The judgments predicted by Joel represent all judgments unto the end; the conduct, prescribed on their approach, is a pattern to the Church at all times. : “In this mountain we must wail, considering the failure of the faithful, in which, “iniquity abounding, charity waxeth cold.” For now (1450 a.d.) the state of the Church is so sunken, and you may see so great misery in her from the most evil conversation of many, that one who burns with zeal for God, and truly loveth his brethren, must say with Jeremiah, “Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach” Jer 14:17.
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Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble - o: “We should be troubled when we hear the words of God, rebuking, threatening, avenging, as Jeremiah saith, ‘my heart within me is broken, all my bones shake, because of the Lord and because of the words of His holiness’ Jer 23:9. Good is the trouble which people, weighing their sins, are shaken with fear and trembling, and repent.”
For the Day of the Lord is at hand - “The Day of the Lord” is any day in which He avengeth sin, any day of Judgment, in the course of His Providence or at the end; the day of Jerusalem from the Chaldees or Romans, the day of antichrist, the day of general or particular judgment, of which James says, “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Behold the Judge standeth before the door” Jam 5:8-9. : “Well is that called “the day of the Lord,” in that, by the divine appointment, it avengeth the wrongs done to the Lord through the disobedience of His people.”
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, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 Blow. The prophets often ordered, to signify what will…
Blow. The prophets often ordered, to signify what will take place. (Worthington) --- The people were gathered by the sound of trumpets. The danger from the locusts was imminent; and all are exhorted to avert it, by praying in the temple, &c. --- Tremble at the sound, Amos iii. 6. (Calmet) --- Extemplo turbati. (Virgil, Æneid viii.) --- Lord. That is, the time when he will execute justice on sinners, (Challoner) and suffer affliction to fall upon them. (Worthington) (Chap. i. 15.)
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 Day of the Lord cometh! Repentance alone can…
SECTION II
The Day of the Lord cometh! Repentance alone can avail to meet it. Hence the Demand for a Day of Public Humiliation
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Joe_2:1-17
1 Blow the trumpet1 in Zion,
Sound2 an alarm on my holy mountain.3
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
Because the day of Jehovah cometh,4
It is nigh at hand.
2 A day of darkness and of gloom,5
A day of clouds, and of thick mists,6
Like the morning7 dawn spread upon the mountains;
So shall come a people numerous and mighty,
The like of which hath never been before,
And the like of which shall not come again,
In the years of many generations.
3 A fire devoureth before them,
And behind them a flame burneth;
Before them the land is as the garden of Eden,8
And behind them a desolate wilderness,
And nothing shall escape them.
4 Their appearance is like9 the appearance of horses,
And like horsemen shall they run.
5 Like the noise of chariots, on the tops of mountains10 they shall leap,
Like the sound of a flame of fire devouring stubble.
Like a strong people set in battle array.
6 Before them the people11 are in pain,
All faces gather paleness.12
7 They shall run like mighty men,
They shall climb the wall like men of war;
And they shall march, each one in his way,
And they shall not turn aside13 from their paths.
8 And no one shall press upon another,
They shall march each one in his path;14
And though they rush15 upon the dart, they shall not be wounded.
9 They shall run to and fro in the city,
They shall run upon the wall;
They shall climb upon the houses,
They shall enter behind the windows like a thief.
10 Before them the earth trembleth,
The heavens quake,
The sun and the moon shall be darkened,
And the stars withdraw their brightness,
11 And Jehovah shall utter his voice before his host,
For his army is very great,
For he that executes his word is mighty;
For great is the day of Jehovah, and very terrible,
And who can endure it?
12 Yet even now,16 saith Jehovah,17
Turn unto me with all your heart,
With fasting, and with weeping, and with lamentation,
13 And rend your heart, and not your garments.
And return to Jehovah your God,
For He is gracious and merciful,
Slow to anger and of great kindness,
And repenteth Him of the evil.
14 Who knoweth?18 He may return and repent
And leave a blessing behind,
A meat-offering and a drink-offering
For Jehovah your God.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
Sanctify a fast,
Call a solemn assembly;
16 Gather the people,
Sanctify a congregation,
Assemble the old men,
Gather the children,
And those that suck the breasts;
Let the bridegroom desert his chamber,
And the bride her closet;
17 Between the porch and the altar,
Let the priests weep,
The ministers of Jehovah,
And say,
Spare thy people, O Jehovah,
And give not thy heritage to reproach,
That the heathen should rule over19 (or use a bye-word against) them;
Wherefore should they say among the heathen (—the peoples)
Where is their God?
EXEGETICAL
This portion of the prophecy consists of two parts. The first is contained in Joe_2:1-11, in which the prophet explains more fully than he had before done, the misery that was coming on the land, a harbinger of the great and terrible day of the Lord. The second part includes Joe_2:12-17, and declares that timely repentance would secure God’s gracious help, and therefore that the priests should earnestly deal with the people to this end.
Joe_2:1. Blow the Trumpet in Zion. This is a call to the priests. They must give a signal of alarm from Zion, which is to be understood not in the local sense, but as including the whole of Jerusalem. Then comes the more precise locality, “the holy mountain.” The design of this signal is to arouse the inhabitants of the land, and to apprise them that an event of terrible magnitude is close at hand. The Day is the judgment day of the Lord. There is a climax in the clauses announcing its approach, “it is coming,” “it is near,” i. e., its coming is not an event of the far distant future, but it will be very soon.
Joe_2:2. The Day is one of darkness. Four terms are used to show how intense it will be. See Exo_10:22; Deu_4:11. It will be darker than that of Egypt, and than that of Sinai. Here the “darkness” is to be understood in a literal sense, for by the vast swarms of locusts, the sun would be obscured (Joe_2:10, and Exo_14:15). That the prophet had these swarms of locusts in view is evident from what follows. כשַׁהַר belongs to the following עַם רַב. As the early morning dawns upon the mountains, so this “people” comes. “This,” says Keil, “is to be understood of the shining caused by the reflected rays of the sun from the wings of a swarm of locusts.” [Some, says Dr. Pusey, have thought that there is here an allusion to the appearance which, the inhabitants of Abyssinia well know, precedes the swarm of locusts. A sombre yellow light is cast upon the ground from the reflection, it is thought, of their yellow wings. But that appearance seems to be peculiar to that country.—F.] The image naturally exhibits the suddenness and universality of the darkness, when men looked for light. As to the meaning of שַׁהַר, expositors are greatly divided. Bauer thinks that the points of comparison are the quickness with which, and the wide extent over which the dawn spreads itself. Credner’s view is, that as the morning light overspreading the hills is a symbol and pledge of life and joy, so these clouds shall come overspreading the land with darkness and misery. [Wünsche takes it in the sense of the “morning gray,” i. e., the time when the morning is wrapped in a sort of darkish or dusky gray; the meaning being, that the nature of this “day” will be made known, just as the gray dawn of morning proclaims the coming day.—F.] There hath not been ever the like. The phrase seems to have been borrowed from Exo_10:14,—a passage on which the prophet, in a general way, seems to have had his eye,—where the same thing is said of the plague of locusts sent upon Egypt.
Joe_2:3. A fire devoureth. This description is based on what had been already experienced, namely, that the desolation caused by locusts had been attended usually by drought and terrible heat. But now the heat grows into a fierce flame, analogous to the awful displays when God revealed Himself at Sinai. So here, the army of locusts is God’s host. פלֵיטָה. That which has “escaped,” namely, the “fire,” or the desolation caused by it, has not remained in the land. [This is a strained sense. The exposition of Newcome, Pusey, and Wünsche is more natural and sensible. “There is nothing that has escaped it, i. e., this army.” Pusey adds, “the word being used elsewhere of the persons who escape,—captivity or captives,—suggests in itself that we should not linger by the type of the locusts only, but think of enemies more terrible, who destroy men.—F.]
Joe_2:4-5. Their appearance—in battle array. The entrance of this fearful host is described. The head of the locust has a certain resemblance to that of the horse. Their celerity of movement is compared to that of horsemen; and in Joe_2:5, the noise caused by their leaping is likened to that made by chariots on rough mountain roads, so that their appearance is somewhat similar to that of an army advancing in battle array. Their noise in devouring plants and herbs is also compared to the crackling of flames in a field of stubble. [Pusey: The amazing noise of the flight of locusts is likened by those who have heard them, to all sorts of deep sharp rushing sounds. The prophet combines purposely things incompatible, the terrible heavy bounding of the scythed chariot, and the light speed with which these countless hosts should in their flight bound over the tops of the mountains where God had made no paths for man.—F.]
Joe_2:6. Before them the peoples, etc. עַמִים here has the usual sense of “peoples,” “nations,” since the day of the Lord would not be confined to one country. All faces lose their glowing color, i. e., the blood retires from the cheeks, so that they grow pale. קָבַץ is here to be taken in the sense of אָסַף in Joe_2:10; Joe_3:15.
Joe_2:7. They shall run, etc. With resistless power they advance and march toward their goal. They run to attack. In like manner they climb the wall. עָבַט = to change or shift the way, i. e., to turn from one’s way and go into that of another, so that the latter, is hindered. [Pusey: They are on God’s message and they linger not. Men can mount a wall few at a time; the locusts scale it much more steadily, compactly, irresistibly. The picture unites the countless multitude, condensed march, and entire security of the locusts with the might of warriors.—F.]
Joe_2:8-10. And no one shall press, etc. Those behind shall not press upon those before. No weapons can stop the advance of this host; or arrest its march. They rush through, or between, or under the darts, or swords. They go forward as if no obstacles were in their way. Of course this does not mean that any attempt was actually made to oppose their progress, but simply that it would be vain to resist them, by the means ordinarily used to arrest an army (Joe_2:9), comp. Exo_10:6. The picture in Joe_2:7-9 is perfectly true to nature. Jerome (in loc.) says, “We have ourselves lately seen this very thing in this province (Palestine). When the locusts come and fill the whole space betweeen earth and sky, they fly in perfect order, as if obedient to a divine command, so that they look like the squares of a pavement. Each one holds its own place, not diverging from it even so much as by a finger’s breadth. To these locusts nothing is impenetrable, fields, meadows, trees, cities, houses, even their most secret chambers.” The accounts of more recent observers agree with this description. There is a design in this picture so elaborate in its details. The more terrible the visitation of locusts appears, the more certain would it be, that when the day of the Lord came, this host would become God’s instrument in the infliction of his judgment. What follows in Joe_2:10 is fully consonant with the fact, though there is some rhetorical amplification, as the prophet, once for all, sees in the swarm of locusts not a mere natural phenomenon, but an evidence of the coming of the day of the Lord. The view we take of an event naturally gives a certain coloring to the picture of it, and a certain climactic amplication is proper, when the event is one that surpasses all previous experience. Before them, or it, i. e., this great and mighty people. The earth trembles. What more natural than that heaven and earth should be terrified by such a host,—one so dreadful in fact, so much more dreadful when viewed as the host of an avenging God? This most awful effect cannot, indeed, be seen or heard, like these marching hosts and the noise they produce; it can only be felt, and thus all the wider scope is given to the terrified imagination. The obscuration of the sun, moon, and stars is real, but this darkness becomes more fearfully impressive, since the locust swarms appear as a tempest cloud of divine wrath. (Comp. Jer_13:10; Eze_12:7; Mar_13:24.)
Joe_2:11. And Jehovah shall utter his voice. Probably a real event is referred to,—a thunderstorm in connection with the coming of the locusts. The prophet hears the thunder not so much with his outward ear as mentally, recognizing it as a manifestation of God. Only such displays of power as those described in Joe_2:10-11, would befit the greatness of the host sent to do Jehovah’s will, and the terribleness of the day of the Lord that was coming,—a day so terrible as to wring from the prophet the inquiry, “who can endure it?” See Jer_10:10; Mal_3:1.
Joe_2:12-17. Yet even now, etc. Though the anger of God is so clearly revealed that men may see his day coming, yet He says, Turn unto me, and thus points out the way in which his anger may be averted. If they repented, they would escape these judgments, and find God gracious. With all your heart. This is the most essential thing, and so is named first, yet this hearty repentance will also manifest itself outwardly. But the prophet warns the people that a merely external repentance will effect nothing (Joe_2:13), comp. Psa_51:19; Eze_36:26. Such repentance, however, as that described in Joe_2:12-13, will avail, because “He is gracious” (Exo_34:6; 2Sa_24:16). Therefore is there hope that He will avert his judgments. Who knoweth. That God is such as He is here described is beyond a doubt, but whether, under present circumstances, He will display his mercy, is not so certain. This depends on the conduct of the people, and hence the prophet would have them to bear in mind, that pardon would not come to them as a matter of course, and that their repentance must not be of an easy and formal kind. He will return. Jehovah is conceived of as on his way from heaven for the purpose of judgment; but He may stop, and return to heaven. Leave behind Him, i.e., when He returns to heaven (Hos_5:5). A blessing, i. e., an abundant harvest, so that there may be no lack of those offerings, the materials of which had been destroyed by the locusts (Joe_1:9-13). Instead of a day of judgment (involving a greater desolation than any as yet experienced), there was hope that God would give another crop to replace the one destroyed (Joe_2:5). Since repentance opened such prospects of blessing, the priests should summon the people to meet for the purpose of humiliation and prayer, and they should themselves, in the name of the people, implore God’s mercy.
Joe_2:16 repeats what was said before in Joe_1:14, but more in detail. Sanctify a congregation, i., e., call a meeting of the congregation for sacred purposes. No age should be excepted, because the entire people deserved punishment and needed to repent. Even the joy of the bridegroom and the bride must give place to penitential mourning. What the priests should do, when the people were assembled, is defined in Joe_2:17. They shall stand between the porch and the altar, i. e., immediately before the entrance to the sanctuary and turning toward it, they should pray to God, appealing to Him in behalf of the people as his own covenant people.
[Pusey: The porch in this, Solomon’s temple, was in fact a tower in front of the Holy of holies, of the same breadth with the temple. The brazen altar for burnt-offerings stood in front of it. The space between the porch and the altar, became an inner part of the court of the priests. It seems to have been a place of prayer for priests. It is spoken of as an aggravation of the sins of those twenty-five idolatrous priests, that here, where they ought to worship God, they turned their backs toward the temple of the Lord to worship the sun. Here Zechariah was standing, when the spirit of God came upon him, and he rebuked the people, and they stoned him.—F.]
THEOLOGICAL
1. The day of the Lord (Joe_1:15; Joe_2:1; Joe_3:4-14), is a phrase used only by the prophets. If, as some think, Obadiah is the oldest, the phrase occurs first in Oba_1:15, and next in the above marked places in Joel. If this view of the relative ages of these prophets be correct, we may assume that the phrase was introduced into prophetic language by Obadiah. Certainly Joel uses it in a way to show that he regarded the idea expressed by it as one well known to those for whom he prophesied, though, as Ewald suggests, the expression may be here presented in its oldest and simplest form. “As the king of a vast empire,—Ewald adds,—may for a time so completely disappear from the view of his subjects, as to be the same as if he had ceased to exist, and then suddenly reappear among them, in the fullness of his power to hold a long delayed assize, so the Invisible One may put off, or seem to put off the day when He will appear as the Supreme Judge. The idea of the “day of the Lord” is closely connected with that of Jehovah as king, who as such has a “day” for men,—a day in the pregnant sense of the word, a day for judgment. Jehovah as king must and will, in due time, suddenly and miraculously judge and subdue all who are in rebellion against Him. He will subject all things to his own holy and righteous control, thus showing that his will is the only and absolute rule; and will rectify all that is now disorderly in the condition of things on the earth. As Israel was then the kingdom of Jehovah in a special sense, “the day” for Israel as God’s people, would be the epoch of their perfect and glorious deliverance from all their enemies. This appears in Joel 3. The “day” is that one on which Jehovah sits in judgment on all his foes, and when Israel’s prosperity begins. Yet it is even for Israel a day of judgment,—one that shall make it manifest whether they are faithful or not to their obligations as God’s people. If not, even they shall be destroyed, unless timely repentance intervenes. This view is presented in chaps, 1–2. Thus while the ultimate result of the judgment will be the salvation and glory of Israel, the immediate design of the day of the Lord is the punishment of the heathen as the enemies of his people, and of the latter as well if untrue to their covenant relation. Hence all the predicates that describe the day, mark it as one of judgment. It is “great and very terrible” (Joe_2:11; Joe_3:4); “dark and gloomy” (Joe_2:2; Amo_5:18; Isa_2:12). In the announcement of this “day,” Israel is not so much consoled, as warned against self-conceit and security,—a warning all the more earnest on account of the uncertainty of its coming. Hence men should be always ready for it. Still, Joel does not as yet seem to know how far the kingdoms of Israel and of Judah may be faithless to their calling as God’s people, nor what divine judgment shall overtake them. He sees them, on the one hand, menaced by judgments, but on the other hand, by their penitence averting them, so that actually these judgments in their destructive power fall upon the heathen alone, while Israel and Judah are redeemed and glorified. The יוֹם־יְהוָה is the ἡμέρα τοῦ κυρίου of the New Testament. Joel, however, does not use the phrase “day of the Lord” with reference to the hope of Messiah’s coming, since we find no such hope in any part of his prophecy.
2. The next question is this,—Considering the “day of the Lord” as one of menace to Israel, how was it regarded by the prophet himself? We begin by saying that the “day,” as viewed by Joel, was not marked by a series of events, but by a single, sudden, and conclusive act. And therefore Keil applies modern speculative notions to the exposition of the phrase, when he says, “each particular judgment by which God chastises his own people for their sins, or destroys the enemies of his kingdom, may be regarded as a moment in the ‘day of the Lord.’ ” If so, why should Joel connect the approach of that day with the visitation of locusts? As already mentioned in Joel 1. the allegoric signification assigned by some to the locusts (i. e., hostile hosts), has arisen out of the union of two heterogeneous things. This allegoric sense may be found in those other prophets, one of whose chief themes was the judgment to be inflicted upon Israel by means of heathen nations—a judgment which then appears as “the day of the Lord” for Israel. But the verbal text will not admit of this principle of interpretation in Joel 1. The objection, however, does not hold in Joel 2, where the prophet describes the entrance of swarms of locusts into the land as an actual event, and also designates it as the coming of the day of the Lord. Some interpreters take the locust visitation as a presage and a symbol of an invasion by hosts of a different kind, partly on the ground that it is denoted as the coming of the day of the Lord, and partly from the use of the term “northern” in Joe_2:20, which cannot be applied to the locusts. There is, however, not much force in the first of these considerations, for while there is, in a general way, an obvious analogy between the swarms of locusts and an invading army, much is here said about the one that will not apply to the other. The reference to Isaiah 13. is more to the purpose, for he quotes the very words of Joel, and describes the judgment of Babel in terms that show that he understood the locust invasion in an allegoric sense. But though the language of the two prophets is so similar, it does not follow that they refer to the same events, nor that their words are to be understood in precisely the same sense.
But there are positive difficulties in the way of the allegoric interpretation of this chapter. For example, what can be meant by “driving the locusts into the sea” (Joe_2:20)? Again, the question arises, if Israel is threatened by an enemy, by what one? The word “northern” proves nothing. It is strange, on this theory, that while Joel describes the judgment on Israel by some foe, he gives us no hint even by which to identify him. There is no indication that the heathen nations were to be the chosen instruments for this purpose. On the contrary, what they do against Israel is exhibited as a crime which shall bring down God’s judgments on their own head. This method of exposition also overlooks the differences in the times when the several prophets lived. In Joel’s days, the great empires had not yet appeared as the special instruments of God’s judgments on his covenant people. In this character they had not yet come within the range of the prophet’s vision. He knew, indeed, that Israel’s sins deserved, and would receive chastisement, but he had not yet been told that the heathen nations would be God’s agents in inflicting it. Whenever they are named, it is as being themselves the objects of wrath, while Israel appears as a penitent and the recipient of God’s mercy.
But it may be said that while the prophet describes a real locust visitation, he sees in it, at least to a certain extent, a type of the “day of the Lord—a day of judgment; or in other words, what the land had already experienced might warn its inhabitants that they would have a still more bitter experience when that “day” arrived. But the difficulty is that if we suppose one event to be in any sense formally typical of the other, we find in the minutely detailed account of the type much that in no way corresponds with the antitype. The darkness, the terror, and the desolation produced by the locusts might be in themselves typical, but these are the features on which the least emphasis is laid by the prophet.
The view which we prefer is this. The land had been desolated by locusts to an unparalleled extent. The prophet had reason to fear that this was the harbinger of a worse calamity of the same sort. He sees in the visitation the beginning of the day of the Lord. The locust army is led by God himself, and hence the lively colors of that picture of it which he draws. The plague of locusts and the day of the Lord are not to be taken as two distinct things. They differ, not like the type and the antitype, but as the beginning and the end of the same thing. And so he says, “the day of the Lord cometh, it is near.” He sees its approach, still he hopes that the repentance of the people in answer to his earnest appeals, will ward off its further effects,—that Israel, warned and taught by the earlier and merely relative judgment, may escape the final one, and that the enemies of God’s people alone shall be overwhelmed by it. The day of the Lord in the highest sense of the words, did not, indeed, come with the calamity by which Israel was then chastised, but each preliminary judgment was really the precursor and pledge of the absolute and final one. All that we can affirm is that the prophet saw in this locust visitation not merely a natural phenomenon, but the finger of God. In these terrible scenes he hears the voice of the Living God calling his people to repentance. As God’s messenger he reechoes the earnest appeal, knowing that ere long He will come to judge his people, though the exact time of his coming none can tell.
3. The plague of locusts was a punishment of the nation’s sins. The prophet, therefore, demands hearty repentance, and a return to God. He, however, does not name the sins which had brought down this chastisement. There seems to have been no one prevalent form of corruption at that time; and, in particular, there is no distinct trace of idolatry. But this shows how earnest God is in punishing sin, since not only do gross iniquities awaken his displeasure, but also sins of the heart, though there may be no outward display of them. His love to his people also appears, since He summons them to repentance, in circumstances, in which, without such a call, they might have sunk into a condition of dangerous security. The earnestness of the prophet is also shown by his recognizing these calamities as divine judgments for sin, and his evident belief that although the people might outwardly seem to be in the right way, they might really be at the same time ripe for punishment. The repentance he demands, should consist essentially of turning with the whole heart to God, and which would outwardly manifest itself by fasting, weeping, and rending the garments. These were expressive symbols, and on this very account there was danger of putting them in the place of the inward feelings which they implied and represented. Against this mistake he warns the people, “rend your hearts and not your garments.” But even their sorrow for sin, however real, would be of no avail without an actual turning to God. The repentance which He demands, is such as both has its seat in the heart, and displays itself in the life. Prayer for pardon is a prominent feature of the public solemn humiliation described in Joe_2:17. As the whole land had been already chastised, and was still threatened with a severer infliction, the repentance suited to the occasion was not simply that of individuals, but of the whole nation as such. Of course, this national penitence has its root in that of individual men, but it does not rest there. As Israel had only one legal sanctuary—the Temple,—all public religious ceremonies must take place there, and through the ministry of the one priesthood. The public fast-day demanded by the Prophet is a Biblical precedent for the observance of similar days in Christian times and lands. They are as proper under the New Economy as they were under the Old. In this penitential prayer, there is not only an appeal to God’s mercy, but a declaration that his honor is concerned in the continued existence of Israel as his people. To abandon Israel wholly would give occasion to the heathen to blaspheme, as if God had been unable to save his people, or had forgotten his promises to do so. This relation, and these promises were not designed, nor did they really tend to beget a sinful security, but to keep alive in the hearts of God’s people an humble faith and hope. Israel bows I under God’s hand, but at the same time trusts Him as his God. This relation of ancient Israel is repeated, but in a far higher form and degree in the sonship of God’s people under the New Covenant.
Repentance is necessary. It alone can help, yet the punitive justice of God has also its influence for good. For while it is certain that the righteous Lord will punish sin, his grace, and pity, and patience are no less certain. And so if there be no defect in the repentance of the sinner, forgiveness will not be wanting on the part of God. This truth is most emphatically expressed in Joe_2:18, where a rich promise immediately follows a severe menace. Yet the observation of Reiger is a very just one, namely, that the true penitent must and will leave wholly in God’s hand the mitigation of the temporal punishment which he may have brought upon himself on account of his sins.
HOMILETICAL
Joe_2:1. Blow the trumpet. It is the office of a minister of God’s Word, when great calamities are imminent, to sound an alarm, and call men to repentance. The day of the Lord, etc. All the remarkable judgments with which God visits individuals, or a land, are harbingers of the final judgment of the world, and whatever there is of the terrible in the former, will be found in the latter, in a far higher degree, by godless sinners. How stupid the security of those who, in the face of such events, with ruin impending over their heads, are not disturbed even for a moment. The day of the Lord cometh. (1) Nothing is more certain than the fact of its coming. (2) But nothing is more uncertain than the time of its coming. The call to prepare for it should be continually sounding. It does not come so quickly, perhaps, as we in our impatience often wish, but it will come more quickly than the secure imagine. Its delay is not designed to beget wantonness in men, but only shows—as we should gratefully own—the long suffering of the Lord, who desires not that any should perish; God warns men often, and for a long time, but at last the decision will come. We should not be hasty in predicting when the day of the Lord will come, but we should be reminded of it in all the visitations of his providence, and we should try to put ourselves in the light of that day. As the special divine judgments will find their completest accomplishment in that last great day of wrath, they are so described as to fill men’s minds with a wholesome terror, and to convince them how utterly unable they shall be to endure it.
[Pusey: Joe_2:1. The trumpet was wont to sound in Zion only for religious uses: to call together the congregations for holy meetings, to usher in the beginnings of their months, and their solemn days with festival gladness. Now, in Zion itself, the stronghold of the kingdom, the holy city, the place which God chose to put his Name there, which He had promised to establish, the trumpet was to be used only for sounds of alarm and fear. Alarm could not penetrate there, without having pervaded the whole land. Good is the trouble which shaketh carnal peace, vain security, and the rest of bodily delight, when men, weighing their sins, are shaken with fear and trembling, and repent.—F.]
Joe_2:2. A day of darkness. A day of judgment is a manifestation of God’s wrath against sin, after the measure of his grace which seeks to save and bless them has been exhausted. Hence darkness is its proper symbol.
[Henry: Extraordinary judgments are rare things and seldom happen, which is an instance of God’s patience. Let none be proud of the beauty of their grounds any more than of their bodies, for God can soon change the face of both.—F.]
Joe_2:6. The people tremble. An ever-growing dread will accompany and enhance the terrors of approaching judgment. Men in their wanton security are all the while preparing the material of such fear.
[Henry: When God frowns upon men, the lights of heaven will be small joy to them. For, man by rebelling against his Creator, has forfeited the benefit of all his creatures. None can escape the arrests of God’s wrath, can make head against the force of it, or bear up under the weight of it.
Pusey: The judgments of God hold on their course, each going straight to that person for whom God, in the awful wisdom of his justice, ordains it. No one judgment or chastisement comes by chance. Each is directed and adapted, weighed and measured, by infinite wisdom, and reaches just that soul for which God appointed it, and no other, and strikes upon it with just that force which God ordains it.—F.]
Joe_2:11. Very great is his army. God can use any creature as his instrument to do his work. How many and mighty the hosts which He can send against men! The smallest things can become his agents to produce the greatest results. The mightiness of God, and the weakness of men, are here most distinctly displayed. Who can endure? No one who does not turn in penitence to God. This is a most momentous question, which we should often and seriously ponder. O what a creature is man! How proud when trouble is at a distance! How powerless and despairing when it overtakes him!
Joe_2:12. Yet also even now, etc. These words introduce the exhortation to repentance, to guard the people against the notion, that, when the prophet called on them to repent, and assured them that they would escape punishment if they did so, he was speaking in a sort of formal way, and in his own name. Both the exhortation and the promise come from God. When repentance enters, then comes help and hope. Repentance alone can ward off divine judgments. It is not enough that repentance be strong in its outward manifestations, as fasting and weeping, it must also be deep-seated, hearty, and not superficial. Turn unto the Lord. A call that is both needful and salutary, though, alas, too often unheeded. Grief for sin is only the half of repentance, it must be accompanied by a real turning to God. Only thus, O man, shalt thou obtain pardon; only thus will there be an actual turning away from sin. Sinner! despair not on account of thy misdeeds. Is God’s wrath against sin very great? His grace in pardoning it is greater still. So rich is the grace of God that the prophet is at a loss for words adequately to describe it. How ready God is to repent Him of the evil! Make a trial of his readiness and see. He who does not seek God’s grace as a penitent will never know how great it is. How much more willing is God to leave behind Him a blessing rather than a curse. No one would ever truly repent unless grace planted in the heart the seeds of faith and hope. Though a gracious hope grows slowly, yet the wavering heart will often be, in a secret way, sustained by it, and such a soul will better apprehend it than one filled with overmuch confidence.
[Jeremy Taylor: Although all sorrow for sins hath not the same expression, nor the same degree of pungency and sensitive trouble, yet it is not a godly sorrow, unless it really produces these effects; i. e. (1), that it makes us really to hate, and (2) actually to decline sin; and (3) produces in us a fear of God’s anger, a sense of the guilt of his displeasure; (4) and then such consequent trouble as can consist with such apprehension of the Divine displeasure; which, if it express not in tears and hearty complaints, must be expressed in watchings and strivings against sin; in patiently bearing the rod of God; in confession of our sins; in perpetual begging of pardon; and in all the natural productions of these according to our temper and constitution; it must be a sorrow of the reasonable faculty, the greatest of its kind.
Pusey: Although the mercy of God is in itself one and simple, yet is called abundant, on account of its divers effects. For God knows how in a thousand ways to succor his own.—F.]
Joe_2:14. A meat-offering, etc. God’s glory and our salvation are so intimately conjoined, that the pardon of the guilty is facilitated thereby, since the salvation of the sinner redounds to the glory of God.
[Henry: Now observe: (1) The manner of the expectation is very humble and modest. Who knows? Some think it is expressed thus doubtfully to check the presumption of the people, and to quicken them to a holy carefulness. Or, rather, it is expressed doubtfully, because it is the removal of a temporal judgment that they here promise themselves, of which we cannot be so confident, as that God is gracious. (2) The matter of the expectation is very pious, they hope God will return and leave a blessing behind Him, not as if He were about to go from them, and they could be content with any blessing in lieu of his presence, but behind Him, i. e., after He has ceased his controversy.
Pusey: God has promised forgiveness of sins to those who turn to Him. But He has not promised, either to individuals or churches, that He will remit the temporal punishment which He had threatened. He forgave David his sin (against Uriah). But the temporal punishment of his sin pursued him even on the bed of death. God often visits the penitent soul, and by some sweetness with which the soul is bathed leaves a token of his renewed presence.—F.]
Joe_2:15-16. Sanctify a fast—Gather the people. Fasting is a refined external discipline, promotive of prayer and piety. Only we must take care not to make a merit of it.—The people. By penitence and prayer, an entire community may be saved from a great calamity.—Children. Parents should be aroused to a deeper sorrow for their sins by the thought of their young children, who are also members of God’s Church, and included in his covenant. As little children share in the calamities caused by the sins of their parents, their common distress should be presented before the Lord, and deliverance from it asked.—The Bride. In seasons of general distress and danger, we should abstain from the most innocent enjoyment.
[Henry: It is good to bring little children, as soon as they are capable of understanding anything, to religious assemblies, that they may be trained up betimes in the way they should go.—Private joys must always give way to public sorrows, both those for affliction, and those for sin.
Robinson: It is very consolatory to observe, even in the midst of this terrific visitation—the last harbinger of the Saviour’s coming—an invitation of mercy. If men will then but seek the Lord with their whole heart, in deep humiliation, and turn away from their sins, He will be inquired of. At the eleventh hour, when the time for work is all but gone, they may find admission into his vineyard. Happy is it when outward afflictions of any kind lead us to true repentance.—F.]
Joe_2:17. Let the Priests. The special duty of the priesthood was to exhort the people to repentance, to stand between them and the Lord and pray for them, and hence it is the duty of every Christian, as a spiritual priest, to stir up his fellow Christians to repentance, and to pray for them.—Spare Thy People,—a petition full of humility and confidence, i. e., “look upon our needs, but remember also thy glory, O Lord!” What we need is God’s mercy. We can appeal to what his grace has made of us. There is the strongest antithesis between God’s people and the heathen, just as there is between God and idols.—Where is their God. God will never abandon his people,—a truth full of comfort to them, though it affords no ground for carnal security. On the contrary, it is fitted to stimulate us to be faithful to Him, as He is faithful to us.
[Henry: Ministers must themselves be affected with those things wherewith they desire to affect others.—The maintaining of the credit of the nation among its neighbors, is a blessing to be desired and prayed for, by all that wish well to it. But that reproach of the Church is especially to be dreaded and deprecated which reflects upon God.—F.]
Footnotes:
[1]Joe_2:1.—The שׁוֹפָר of the Hebrews, according to Jerome, was a metal instrument in the shape of a horn, and had a tone of extraordinary power. Its root, שָׁפַר, to be bright, refers either to the metallic glitter of the instrument, or its clear ringing sound.
[2]Joe_2:1.—“And sound.” And is omitted in the Vulg., Sept., Arab., Chald., and five MSS. omit ו. There is more energy in the passage without it.
[3]Joe_2:1.—“Holy mountain.” קָדְשִׁי is a noun, lit., “mountain of my holiness,” The adject. קָדוֹשׁ is only applied to persons and never to things.
[4]Joe_2:1.—“The day—cometh.” The perf. בָא is used as the present to express the certainty of the event.
[5]Joe_2:2.—“Darkness and gloom.” אֲפֵלָה is often connected with חשֶׁךְ, to express a kind of climax. Its root is not used in Heb., but we find it in the Arab. ܩܪܪܷܬܱܐ.
[6]Joe_2:2.—“Clouds and thick mists.” עֲרָפֶל, formed apparently from עָרִיף, a cloud, and אָפַל, to be dark, corresponding to the Greek ὀρφνη. Here, too, a gradation is marked.
[7]Joe_2:2.—“Like the morning dawn,” etc. The Vulg. renders it, “as the morning spread upon the mountains, a people much and mighty,” but the accents will not admit of this. Newcome has it, “like the dusk,” but this suggests evening rather than morning. It properly means the gray of the morning, while the sun is still far below the horizon. It is one of the names of the Nile, from the turbid color of its water.
[8]Joe_2:3.—“Eden.” עֵדֶן, an old Semit. word, found also in various dialects in the sense of pleasure, like the Gr. ἠδονή. In the sing, with zere on the penult., it always means Paradise. With seghol on the penult., it is the name of a part of Mesopotamia. In the plur. form it denotes pleasures. Psa_36:9; 2Sa_1:24.
[9]Joe_2:4.—“Is like.” כ is here used παραβολικῶς compar., and not, as Theodoret supposes, ἐπιτατικῶς intens.
[10]Joe_2:5.—“On the tops of mountains,” etc. עַל־דָאשֵי must be connected with יְרַקֵּדוּן, they shall leap, and not with כְּקוֹל; the latter union is forbidden by the accents, and by the use of the word “chariots,” whose “noise” is only heard on level ground.
[11]Joe_2:6.—“Peoples.” The plural form עַמִּים is used, not as Credner supposes, with reference to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, but simply to denote people generally.
[12]Joe_2:6.—“Paleness.” פָאדוּר is variously understood. The Sept. render the clause ὡς πρός καυμαχύτρας, as the burning of a pot. The Chald., Syr., Vulg., Arab., “become like a pot or have the blackness of a pot.” But there is nothing in the nature of the thing, or in the etymology of the word, to warrant the “blackness” of our E. V. Cramer explains rather than translates the words: “all faces contract their muscles.” The root of the word is פָּאַר, to be beautiful, to glow: and it literally means “ruddiness.” This gathers, or withdraws itself, and the countenance becomes pale.
[13]Joe_2:7.—“They shall not turn aside”. יעַבְּטוּן is variously explained. Many expositors take it in the sense of pervertere, as if it were יְעַזתּוּן, to bend. Others get its meaning from the Arab. ױَבََ, to split, or divide. One MS., De Ross, has the reading, יְבְעַטוּן, they strike not out behind, like horses. The sense is, they move in a compact mass, bending neither to the right nor the left, forwards nor backwards.
[14]Joe_2:8.—“Each one in his path” lit., the mighty one, גֶּבֶר, used here Poetically for אִש.
[15]Joe_2:8.—“Though they rush,” etc. The meaning of this line is plain enough, i. e., nothing can arrest their march; but the renderings of it are various, growing out of the senses given to בְעַד. De Wette renders it: “Und zwischen Waffen stürzen sie hindurch, brechen den Zug nicht ab.”—Wünsche: “Und hinter dem Wurfpiess fallen sie, nicht brechen sie ab.” On the whole, I prefer the rendering of Tregelles: “Though they rush,” etc.
[16]Joe_2:12.—“Yet even now.” Credner, without reason, supplies a שׁוּבוּ after וגַּם עַתָּה.
[17]Joe_2:12.—“Saith Jehovah.” כְאֻם is most frequently used as the part. pass. constr. =“the voice of Jehovah is.”
[18]Joe_2:14.—“Who knoweth.” The interrogative particle אִם is omitted here as in Jon_3:9. The question is expressed only by the tone. Holzh. takes the phrase מי יוֹדֵעַ to=every one knows, i. e., it is quite certain; but this sense is too absolute.
[19]Joe_2:17.—“Rule over.” The primary meaning of מָשַל is to make like, and in its nominal form it has the sense of similitude, parable, proverb, song. Scholars have been a good deal puzzled how to reconcile the signification of making like and ruling, which last sense the word undoubtedly has in many places. When used in this last sense it is usually followed by ב, rarely (Wünsche says never) by עַל or אֵל. Tregelles renders it in this place, “to sing a song of derision,” and De Wette, “spotter,” which, I think, the context favors. Pusey and Wünsche insist on the sense of our E. V. “rule over.”—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 vv2–17 darkness . . . gloominess . . . clouds…
darkness . . . gloominess . . . clouds . . . thick darkness--accumulation of synonyms, to intensify the picture of calamity (Isa 8:22). Appropriate here, as the swarms of locusts intercepting the sunlight suggested darkness as a fit image of the coming visitation.
as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people--Substitute a comma for a colon after mountains: As the morning light spreads itself over the mountains, so a people numerous [MAURER] and strong shall spread themselves. The suddenness of the rising of the morning light, which gilds the mountain tops first, is less probably thought by others to be the point of comparison to the sudden inroad of the foe. MAURER refers it to the yellow splendor which arises from the reflection of the sunlight on the wings of the immense hosts of locusts as they approach. This is likely; understanding, however, that the locusts are only the symbols of human foes. The immense Assyrian host of invaders under Sennacherib (compare Isa 37:36) destroyed by God (Joe 2:18, Joe 2:20-21), may be the primary objects of the prophecy; but ultimately the last antichristian confederacy, destroyed by special divine interposition, is meant (see on Joe 3:2).
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there hath not been ever the like--(Compare Joe 1:2; Exo 10:14).
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, 4, 7, 12, 15 THE SCOURGE THE FORERUNNER OF THE DAY OF JEHOVAH;…
THE SCOURGE THE FORERUNNER OF THE DAY OF JEHOVAH; HIGH TIME TO REPENT, Joe_2:1-17.
Several expositors see in the locusts of Joe_2:1-11, a swarm different from that described in chapter 1. Credner thinks that the swarm of chapter 1 appeared in the fall, and on its departure left eggs which, in the following spring, were hatched out, and so formed an even more numerous host. It is more likely, however, that we have to do with only one swarm. The difference in the description is due to the fact that in chapter 1 the prophet is concerned primarily with the calamity already wrought; only briefly does he touch upon its deeper significance (Joe_2:15). In Joe_2:1-11, the same scourge of locusts is in his mind, but now he thinks of it chiefly as the immediate precursor of the terrible day of Jehovah. Joe_2:1-17, therefore, is an expansion of Joe_1:14-15. This apocalyptic significance of the locusts accounts for the highly poetic description of the swarms which, likened to a hostile army, are called the army of Jehovah coming to judgment (Joe_2:1-11). Although the command is already given there is still a possibility of mercy. If the people return to God with a contrite heart the calamity may yet be averted (Joe_2:12-14). The address closes with an earnest summons to the whole congregation to assemble for prayer and fasting in the house of God, and with instruction to the priests concerning the manner of their ministry (Joe_2:15-17).
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1. By the blowing of the horn the priests are to warn the people (Amo_3:6) of the near approach of the day of Jehovah and to gather them into the temple to pray. The latter thought is not expanded until Joe_2:15.
Trumpet — Better, horn. See on cornet, Hos_5:8. Evidently the priests are addressed, which would indicate that the signal was intended also to summon the people to worship. Before speaking of the latter the prophet describes the calamity that calls for penitence and prayer.
Zion — One of the hills on which Jerusalem stood. First mentioned as a Jebusite fortress which David captured, and whose name he changed into City of David. Its exact location is still a matter of dispute. Christian tradition identifies it with the southwest spur, but it was more likely in the southeast. After the building of the temple the name was extended so as to include the temple hill; so here. The signal is to be given from the top of the temple mount, so as to be heard far and wide.
Holy mountain — Called holy because it was separated as the dwelling place of the Holy One of Israel (Psa_2:6; see on Hos_11:9; Zec_14:20).
Tremble — It is high time to awake from careless indifference, for this is not an ordinary calamity; it forebodes the near approach of the day of Jehovah (Joe_1:15).
In order to make more effective the appeal which is to follow, the prophet pictures in 2ff. the terror of the day as signalized by the present calamity. The first half of the verse is closely connected with Joe_2:1, it describes the day as a day of darkness… gloominess… clouds… thick darkness — Four synonyms, for the sake of emphasis — intense, impenetrable darkness (Zep_1:15; Eze_34:12). Three of the words are used in Deu_4:11, of the darkness in which Sinai was enveloped when Jehovah descended upon it in fire; the fourth is applied in Exo_10:22, to the plague of darkness. Darkness is in the Old Testament a very common figure for calamity (Isa_5:30; Isa_8:22; Isa_9:2); here it is a very appropriate picture, for all writers agree in speaking of locusts as clouds darkening the sun. “These creatures do not come in legions, but in whole clouds.… All the air is full and darkened when they fly. Though the sun shine ever so bright, it is no brighter than when most clouded.” “Soon after my arrival at Barosh I saw a swarm of locusts extending a mile in length and half a mile in width. They appeared in the distance like a black cloud. When they came nearer from the east the black swarm darkened the rays of the sun and cast a dark shadow like an eclipse” (Forbes).
As the morning — Better, R.V., “dawn.” This does not belong to the preceding; it opens the description of the present calamity, which is not the day itself, only the dawn.
As — See on Joe_1:15. It is in every respect like the dawn, because (1) as the dawn introduces the day, so the present calamity marks the beginning of the day of Jehovah; (2) the reflection of the sunlight from the wings of the locusts produces a glimmer that may be likened to the light of dawn. “The day before the arrival of the locusts we could infer that they were coming from a yellow reflection in the sky, proceeding from their yellow wings. As soon as the light appeared no one had the slightest doubt that an enormous swarm of locusts was approaching” (Alvarez). (3) Whether there is the additional thought that the locusts came from the east, where the dawn becomes first visible, is doubtful.
Spread upon the mountains — Not in apposition to “day” (A.V.), nor is parus, “spread out,” the predicate of an indefinite subject (Keil); it is rather the predicate of the subject “a great people and a strong”; so that the whole sentence should be read, “Like dawn lies spread out upon the mountain a great people and a strong” (Joe_2:5).
People — The army of Joe_2:11 and of Joe_2:25, the swarms of locusts (Joe_1:4). The rest of Joe_2:2 points back to Joe_1:2. The present calamity has no analogy in the past, no matter how far back one goes; nor will it ever be equaled in the future; it stands out unique and without parallel (Exo_10:14). It is because of the enormity of the plague that Joel regards it as the forerunner of the final judgment, and it is on this account that he uses the hyperbolical expressions.
The destructiveness of the great and powerful people is further described in Joe_2:3. All is lost; the beautiful country has become a wasted desert.
Fire… before… behind them a flame — Literally, him, or it, the swarm of locusts. Like fire the locusts have swept over the country; whatever was in their way they have devoured, they have left behind nothing but destruction and ruin (compare comment on Joe_1:19). A most appropriate figure. “A few months afterward a much larger army alighted and gave the whole country the appearance of having been burned.” “Wherever they settled it looks as if fire had devoured and burned up everything” (Forbes). “It is better to have to do with the Tartars than with these destructive animals; you would think that fire follows their track” (Volney). “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” (G.A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve, 403; also Tristram, 316). The following expression emphasizes the destructiveness still more: before them the land was as the garden of Eden — Fertile, rich in verdure, pleasant to look upon (Gen_2:8 ff.). A similar comparison of the restored land with the garden of Eden is found in Eze_36:35; our passage may be dependent on that in Ezekiel, though not necessarily.
Desolate wilderness — Such as Egypt and Edom will become (Joe_3:19; compare Jer_12:10).
Nothing shall escape — Better, R.V., “none hath escaped.” The future tenses in Joe_2:3-11 should be rendered, as in R.V., as present or past tenses, describing a condition present to the prophet and his listeners.
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 vv1–17 1. Blow ye the horn in Zion] see, in…
1. Blow ye the horn in Zion] see, in justification of this rendering of shôphâr, on Amo_2:2. The horn is to be sounded, in order to give notice of impending danger, and arouse the people to meet it (cp. on Amo_3:6).
sound an alarm] The word, though it often has the sense of shouting, is used also to denote the long, continuous blast of the horn, which, in contradistinction to a succession of short, sharp notes, was the signal of danger (Num_10:9, though the reference there is not to the shôphâr, but to the ḥatzôtzerâh).
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tremble] aroused viz., by the ‘alarm,’ from their security.
for the day of Jehovah cometh, for it is at hand (or near)] Repeated, with some variation, from Joe_1:15. at hand (or near), exactly as Joe_1:15, Joe_3:14.
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, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17 (1) Blow ye the trumpet.—The preaching of the prophet…
II.
(1) Blow ye the trumpet.—The preaching of the prophet increases in its intensity. Behind the locusts, exemplified by them, there is a still more terrible visitation. He sees on the horizon a mustering of the nations hostile to his people, bent on destroying them. Let the priests stir up the people for a fast, and for the defence of their land by the trumpet. The locusts have done their symbolical work, they have left their mark on the country. Now the day of Jehovah, the manifestation of His power, is approaching—it is imminent.
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 vv1–17 Vers. 1-11. These verses contain a further description of…
Vers. 1-11. These verses contain a further description of the calamity occasioned by the locusts and the appearance presented by them; the calling of a congregational meeting for penitence and prayer; the reason assigned in the coming of the day of the Lord.
Blow ye the trumpet (margin, cornet) in Zion, and sound an alarm (or, cause it to sound) in my holy mountain. The shophar, or far-sounding horn, and probably the chatsoterah, the hazar or silver trumpet, were called into requisition. The priests are urged with great vehemence, as tiqu shophar and hariu imply, to apprise the people that the day of Jehovah"s terrible judgment was near at hand, and to prepare for it. This alarm was to be sounded from Zion, the dry or sunny hill, the holy mountain. The noun qadosh like tsadiq, is applied to persons, therefore the noun qodshe is used. It rose to an elevation of 2539 feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea. It was the place of the ark in David"s day, and so of the visible symbol of the Divine presence, and therefore the holy mountain, though subsequently Moriah was chosen as the temple-hill. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand. The effect here precedes the cause, as if what is upper. most in the heart comes first to the lips; while the abruptness may, perhaps, express the excitement and intensity of feeling. But how could the Lord"s day be said to have come (ba is perfect), and yet to be near at hand? Hengstenberg replies that, in the intuition of the prophet, it had already come, though in reality it was only drawing near. Keil"s solution of the difficulty is more satisfactory: every particular judgment that takes place in the history of God"s kingdom is the day of the Lord, and yet only approaching as far as the complete fulfilment was concerned.
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Vers. 1-3. The purposes for which a trumpet was blown and an alarm sounded.
I THE PARTICULAR PURPOSE ON THIS OCCASION.
II THE PLACE WHERE THE WARNING WAS GIVEN.
III THE PRIESTS WHO WERE TO SOUND THE ALARM. We are informed in Num_10:8 that it was the "sons of Aaron, the priests," that were to blow with the trumpets, either in sounding the alarm of war, or convening an assembly of the people, or for the journeying of the camps. Similar is the duty of the ministers of religion.
IV THE PERSONS TO WHOM THE WARNING IS ADDRESSED. They are all the inhabitants of the land without exception, for all more or less add their quota to the national sin, share consequently in the national danger.
V THE PECULIARITIES OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES SO VIVIDLY PICTURED BY THE PROPHET. While the peculiar circumstances of the visitation which the prophet portrays intensify the approaching disaster, they at the same time emphasize his preceding exhortation. In this picture of the prophet we have
(1) his description of the day of the Lord, and
(2) the destruction that succeeded.
The description represents that day as a day of darkness and, by way of gradation, of gloominess, that is, of still greater darkness; as a day of clouds and of densely dark clouds; as the morning gray, the darkest hour between midnight and dawn, spread upon the mountains. The locust-people that made it so were great in number and great in strength, unequalled in the past and unparalleled in the future, through all the rolling years of many generations. The destruction was terrible in the extreme, as if a devouring fire went before them and a burning flame followed them.
The havoc they made reduced a garden to a desert, and Eden itself to a wilderness; in a word, it was inescapable.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON Ver. 1. "Sound an alarm!
The trumpet-call was used among the Israelites both in their religious solemnities and in the conduct of war. The direction here given is that a summons should be addressed to the nation, calling upon all classes to give heed to the presence of the Lord, and to learn the lessons taught by his awful judgments. We are thus taught that the silver sound of the gospel trumpet is not the only note that reaches our human race; there is also the loud call, the startling alarm, which is especially intended for sinful and inattentive man.
I SIN AND FALSE SECURITY ARE OFTEN ASSOCIATED. The tempter not only leads men into sin; he persuades them that sin will have no evil consequences. The voice of conscience is silenced; the solemn assurance of Scripture is disregarded or disbelieved. Men sin without foreboding and without fear.
II HENCE THE NEED OF A SOLEMN AND FAITHFUL NOTE OF ALARM AND WARNING. Ezekiel was taught that one especial function of the prophet is to give the people warning. The watchman who sees the approach of danger is bound to blow the trumpet, that they may not be surprised and taken unawares. Those who are entrusted with a message from God to their fellow-men are directed, whether men hear or forbear, to deal faithfully with souls.
III THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GIVING HEED TO THE ALARM RESTS WITH THOSE WHO ARE WARNED. The warning may be disregarded, the penalty may be incurred, the judgment may be experienced. Or, on the other hand, the alarm may not be sounded in vain. Repentance may prove its reality by sincere resolutions and prayers, and a new heart may produce a new life. Then not only does the prophet deliver his soul; the sinner finds acceptance and salvation. T.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1-11. The ministry of alarm.
"Blow ye the trumpet in Zion," etc. Zion was the meeting-place for the people of God, and may be fairly taken as a type of the true Church in all ages. We may take these verses as setting forth one aspect of the Church"s ministry, namely, the ministry of alarm.
I IT HAS TO ANNOUNCE A JUDGMENT THAT IS TERRIBLE. How graphically and appallingly does the prophet set forth the tremendousness of the calamity that was about being inflicted on Judah! It was a day of "darkness and gloominess," a day of "clouds" and of "thick darkness," etc. We have here:
1. The executors of the judg ment. Whom did the Almighty Governor of the world now employ to execute his judgments? The magnates of the earth, or the illustrious legions of heaven? No; locusts. He brings them out by millions, and marshals them as his battalions, to fight against sin and crush the sinner. So dense are their crowds, that they darken the sun and conceal the stars. So rapid their movement, and so closely do they jostle together, that their noise is like "the noise of chariots on the top of the mountains." The sunbeam falleth on their glazed wings, so that they appear as a "fire that falleth before them, and behind them as a flame that burneth." They move with such order and force that their appearance is like "horses " and "horsemen." The meanest insect is God"s messenger; the little locust he employs as an officer of his justice.
2. The effects of the judgment. "The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them as a desolate wilderness." Note the power of combination. These little insects singly were comparatively powerless; in combination they moved with a resistless energy. Unity is strength. This terrible judgment, however, is but a faint shadow of that more terrible judgment that awaits this wicked world, "when the Son of man shall come in all his glory, with his holy angels," etc. "I saw, and, behold, a great white throne," etc.
II IT HAD TO ANNOUNCE A JUDGMENT THAT WAS APPROACHING. "The day of the Lord cometh; it is nigh at hand." This terrible army of insects was now in the course of formation, and was gathering together for the fearful work of destruction. The Church now has to give warning of a judgment that is coming. "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away," etc. Yes, it is coming. Its dim rays of dawn are seen on the tops of the distant hills; the terrible sun will break forth in the heavens ere long: it will indeed be "the day of the Lord." The Church"s work is to warn every man, to blow the trumpet of alarm, give it a blast that shall startle the thoughtless generation. 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, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an…
Joe_2:1
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain.
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A ministry morally awakening
In the first eleven verses of this chapter we have a continuation of the address of the prophet to the priests of Judah. It was the duty of the priests to blow the trumpet for the assembling of the congregation, for the removing of the camp, and when they went forth to war; here the trumpet is blown to announce danger, and the consequent need of attention to certain moral requirements.
I. That there are times when the Church is in especial need of a ministry morally awakening. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain. Zion was the meeting-place of the people of God, and may be taken as a type of the Church of God; here the trumpet was used only for sounds of alarm and fear. There was need that those who dwelt in the holy mountain should be aroused to a sense of the impending danger; we should have thought that they would have been sensitive to the judgment of God without such an awakening cry.
1. The Church needs an awakening ministry when it is not solicitous for the moral rectitude of the nation in which it is placed. It would appear as if Zion were ignorant of, or as if it were indifferent to, the apostasy all around it.
2. The Church needs an awakening ministry when it is not alive to the peril of souls it should endeavour to instruct.
3. The Church needs an awakening ministry when it reposes undue confidence in external organisations.
II. That at such times the ministry morally awakening must be charged with the solemn truths of advancing judgment. For the day of the Lord cometh, and is nigh at hand. Thus the ministry of the trumpet announced a terrible day of approaching judgment. The congregations of the present day are averse to these trumpet ministries, they prefer more gentle strains of truth, and prefer to be lulled to slumber rather than to be awakened to stern activity. The Church has need of its sons of thunder as well as of its sons of consolation. It announced these judgments as
(1) Certain,
(2) Near,
(3) Terrible.
III. That the announcement of such truths should have a solemn effect upon those to whom they are addressed. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble.
1. It should awaken solemn apprehension. The people would know that the sounding of the trumpet in Zion would foretoken evil to them, and would be deeply apprehensive of the nature and extent of the judgment to follow.
2. It should awaken deep repentance. The terrors of the Lord should persuade men to deep repentance, and should become a forcible argument for a renewed life.
3. It should awaken devout gratitude. While men mourn the advancing calamities they should indeed be devoutly grateful that their advent is so clearly made known, and that they do not come unexpected upon them.
Lessons--
1. That the Church requires to be aroused to a sense of its duty.
2. That the pulpit must give utterance to solemn and awakening truths.
3. That an earnest Church may avert a national judgment. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Warning trumpets
The trumpet is lifted up this time in warning. Sometimes it is lifted up in festival. The trumpet will do one of two things, the performer must tell it what to do. So with every ministry, and every instrumentality of life and nature; it is the intelligent, responsive, directing man that must say what is to be done with the silver lute of spring, or the golden instrument of summer, or the cornucopia of autumn, or the great wind of winter that makes the earth cold and bleak. The trumpet will foretell a coming battle, or it will call to an infinite feast; the man behind it must use it according to the occasion. It is even so with the Bible. There is no trumpet like the Bible for warning, alarm, excitement, a great blare at midnight shaking the whole air with tones of alarm; nor is there any instrument like the Bible for sweetness, gentleness, tenderness, an instrument that talks music to the heart, and that assures human fear that the time of apprehension has passed away. Warning has always been given by the Almighty before His judgments have taken effect. Yet there has always been some measure of suddenness about Divine judgments. The reason is that we cannot sufficiently prepare for them. We may know they are coming, we may tell even to a day when the judgment thunder will lift up its voice; yet when it does sound its appeal it startles and shocks and paralyses the world. Yet, though the warning has always been given, it has always been despised. How few people heed the voice of warning! They call that voice sensational. Were the old preachers to return with their old hell they would have but scant welcome to-day. They were men of the iron mouth; they were no Chrysostoms, golden-throated and golden-lipped; they were men who, knowing the terrors of the law, withheld them not from the knowledge of the people, but thundered right mightily even beside the altar of the Cross. Now all this is in many instances ruled out as theologically behind the time, as from a literary point of view vulgar and odious, and as from a spiritual point of view detestable, and not likely to work in man mightily in the direction of persuasion. We become familiar with warning. No man really believes in the day of judgment. But the warnings given us by men are often partial, and are not unfrequently falsely directed There is not a preacher in the world who could not make a great reputation by thundering against heterodoxy. The world loves such vacant thunder; the Church is willing to subscribe liberally to any man who will denounce the heterodoxy of other people. What we do want is, not to thunder warningly against mistaken speculation, but thunders sevenfold in loudness, to be delivered against the current iniquities of the day. Warning is needed, but let it be of the right kind; warning is a needful element in every ministry, but deliver it at the right door. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
The trumpet of Zion
I. What is meant by blowing the gospel trumpet? Trumpets were and are used in martial music, and in festive song. Commissioned by the Lord, and in dependence on God the Spirit, the ministers of Jesus Christ come forth before their people, to offer them, in Gods name, and on His own terms, pardon and peace, life and salvation, through Christ; or, if they reject these, to denounce to them, in His name, the sentence of death and destruction. This is blowing the trumpet. Not content with this, ministers solemnly warn the self-righteous and the unrighteous, the professor and the hypocrite, and those who are at ease in Zion, of their approaching danger. This is sounding an alarm. But what reception have you given to this Gospel?
II. To whom, and where, is this trumpet commanded to be blown, and this alarm to be sounded? Had he been sent to Nineveh, or to the profane part of his own people, we should not feel surprised, but he was sent to the princes and nobles, priests and Levites, aged and honourable; even to his neighbours and personal friends. He was to show to Jacob his transgressions, and to Israel his sins. What was the duty of Joel is the duty of every minister of the Gospel now; and the difficulties are very nearly the same. A minister must be faithful to his oath, his conscience, his people, and his God. One reason for blowing the trumpet needs consideration. It is this. The day of the Lord cometh, it is nigh at hand. (J. White Niblock, D. D.)
Warning ministries
The two sentences mean the same thing. To blow the trumpet is to sound an alarm. And the scene is the mount of Gods holiness--the holy mountain where this alarm is to be sounded.
I. What are the enemies against whorl an alarm must be sounded?
1. Ignorance.
2. Superstition.
3. Self-righteousness.
4. Conformity to the world.
5. Hypocrisy.
II. Reasons why this opportunity is taken for sounding an alarm. (The clergyman was pleading on behalf of Sunday and national schools.) The children of the poor need education. The children of this generation will be the fathers and mothers of the next.
III. Offer some encouragement. If you are disposed to listen to the alarm sounded, and endeavour to mind your ways. The first encouraging sign will be that you will learn to know your own state. Second encouraging sign, that you confess your sins. The next sign, your fairly setting to work, from this very hour, to see what can possibly be done for the everlasting good of these children. A most pleasing sign would be this, a looking up to God to do that for these little ones, which you have it not in your power to do for them. (T. Mortimer, B. D.)
Alarm in Gods house
I. A sacred scene. The trumpet is to sound the alarm in Zion--in Gods holy mountain--among His people who professed His name. He was to tell them of the awful judgments the Almighty would bring upon the land.
II. Our places of worship may be designated holy mountains.
1. Because there a holy God is worshipped. We cannot feel too much veneration and respect for the house of God. The places where we draw near to God are sacred spots. Holiness becometh His house.
2. Because there holy gifts are imparted. We meet together to receive blessings from God. There He sits, waiting to bestow on us all needful grace, to dispense His favours and to display His power. Holiness is that which we require in order to our enjoyment of God.
3. Because there holy anticipations are realised. We leave for a time the world and its concerns, and endeavour to attend on God without distraction, and feel ourselves surrounded with the Deity.
III. A solemn charge. Blowing of trumpets an ancient custom in Israel (Num_10:3-10). There was a peculiar way of blowing the trumpet when it sounded an alarm. Ministers are to sound the trumpet of invitation, and the trumpet of encouragement. But there are periods when we are to sound an alarm, and show Gods threatened judgments. Concerning four things you need warning.
1. Formality in the exercises of religion. A dead and dull spirit has crept into our churches.
2. Conformity to the world. Here is our special danger in the present day. As Christians, we are delivered from this present evil world. Ought we then to love it, to imbibe its spirit, and follow its maxims? How difficult the line of demarcation between the Church and the world!
3. Deadness to the power of prayer. Prayer is necessary to our prosperity in the Divine life; the more we are in it the more we shall thrive. But is there not a deficiency in the manner and spirit of this exercise, both alone and in the social meeting? God has answered prayer in every age.
4. Inactivity in the cause of Christ. Prayer without exertion is presumption. There is a want of united effort. Union is strength, and there is more of this wanted. A united people is likely to be a prosperous, thriving people--a comfort to the minister, an honour to religion, and a blessing to the world. (Ebenezer Temple.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 12, 15 CRITICAL NOTES.] This chapter still urges repentance, directs for…
CRITICAL NOTES.] This chapter still urges repentance, directs for a meeting of the people, and assures that God will have compassion.
Joe_2:1. Blow] Priests must sound an alarm, as if foreign invasion nigh.
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Joe_2:2. Darkness] Four terms used to indicate the intense calamity (Exo_10:22; Isa_8:22). Swarms of locusts literally obscure the sun. People] numerous and most formidable. Like] Expressive of extraordinary judgments (cf. 2Ki_18:5; 2Ki_23:5).
Joe_2:3. Fire] They consume. Eden] Fruitfulness. Nothing] No herb, plant, nor tree, shall escape. “The word used elsewhere of persons who escape, suggests that we should not linger by the type of locusts only, but think of enemies more terrible, who destroy not harvests only, but men, bodies and souls.”
Joe_2:4. Appearance] like horses prepared for battle (Job_39:20; Rev_9:7); swiftness and sound like chariots on rough mountain-tops.
Joe_2:6. Pained] with terror. “More terrible than the locusts,” says an Arab proverb. Blackness] from anxiety and fear (Lam_4:8). Heb. flames (Isa_13:8), to glow with heat: some to lose colour, to grow pale (Jer_30:6). 7–9] depict their military order and discipline; it is vain to resist (Exo_10:6). A picture perfectly true to nature, says Jerome and others.
Joe_2:10.] Heaven and earth feel their presence like a tempest-cloud of Divine wrath, covering all in darkness (Mat_24:29),
Joe_2:11.] “Lord of the locusts,” say Mohammedans, commands and makes the meanest the instruments of vengeance (Rev_18:8).
HOMILETICS
THE ALARM IN ZION.—Joe_2:1
In the dreadful calamities described what must be done? Jehovah shows that the danger can only be averted by repentance, humiliation, and reformation of conduct. In this verse the prophet interprets present chastisements, and lays a foundation for intimations which follow. Alarm must be given, the people roused, and called to solemn assembly.
I. The place of alarm. “In Zion.” Zion was once the seat of Divine government and consecrated by God’s presence. The Church of Christ is now the holy mount, the city of the living God, and the school of instruction to the universe. It is the spiritual palace of the Great King, who rules his people by his Spirit, and governs the world by his providence. Here he displays tokens of love and judgment. Great everywhere, his judgments are specially great here. It is a solemn thing when judgment begins in the house of God. But he will not permit sin in his own residence. The Church must be conspicuous in its elevation, adorned with holiness, and loyal in obedience. “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of God from Jerusalem.”
II. The means of the alarm. In times of old it was the duty of the priests to warn the people and blow the trumpet (Num_10:8). Ministers now must sound the alarm and declare the wrath of God against the unrighteousness of men. The watchmen of Zion must be awake, sound and “take the alarm they give.” They must be “sons of thunder.” They must not hesitate nor seek to hide the truth. The blast must wax louder and louder to startle thoughtless men. Ministers must never grow cold, careless of their own, and pitiless of the danger of others. When Perkins of Cambridge uttered the word damned, a solemn awe struck his hearers and the echo of it lasted many days. Whitfield brought tears in the eyes of old people, when he cried in the spirit of his Master, “O Glasgow, Glasgow!” “Blow the trumpet, and warn the people; then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning, if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.”
III. The reasons for alarm. “For the day of the Lord cometh.”
1. The danger is near. “The day cometh.” Many ridicule and call earnest men enthusiasts. Others cry, “Be calm, there is no need for that ado;” but the prophet of God sees the danger and urges swift escape. The day “is nigh at hand,” and not afar off; seen in present judgments and will come in sudden terror. Men are warned now of judgment to come and of enemies gathering together for fearful destruction. “The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord; the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.”
2. The people are careless. “Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble.” Though danger is nigh yet men neglect or despise it. They should tremble, start up from apathy and sullen indifference, and haste to the refuge. How stupid for persons in face of impending ruin to sit in ease! They provide in summer for winter, in youth and health for age and sickness, but strive not to escape spiritual death. They seek to ward off temporal evils, but eternal destruction is not foreseen and prepared for. Few hear the distant thunder which betokens the coming storm. In their fancied security they laugh at those who prepare for the evil day, laugh on the brink of that day which, unless sovereign grace intervene, will make them wise too late. “Lord, when thy hand is lifted up they will not see, but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them.”
THE DARK DAY.—Joe_2:2; Joe_2:11
With four terms the day of Jehovah is described as a day of judgment. “A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.” Darkness fell upon Egypt (Exo_10:22), and enveloped Sinai at the giving of the law (Deu_4:11). This typical of the mysteries of God and the miseries of men.
I. The profound mystery of the day. As clouds of locusts darken the sky, so obscurity hangs over all Divine proceedings. We know that all calamities are judgments of some sort; that we are tried and judged now, “already made manifest to God,” and that a day is nigh when all must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. But when and how the day will come no man knoweth. God veils his purpose and splendour. “Clouds and darkness are round about him.” Wisdom prepares for events, folly rushes on and falls into the confusion. Walk by faith, do present duty, and cease to speculate. “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”
II. The great misery of the day. As clouds indicate obscurity, so darkness denotes misery. The darkness of the locusts would be unparalleled. “There hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it.” Present punishments are only the beginning, the foretastes of eternal. If justice and judgment distress men now, what will they be at the day of final accounts? The destruction of the temple, and the rejection of the Jews, signal visitations upon churches and nations, are faint symbols of the terror of that day. “That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.”
III. The overwhelming destruction of the day. So great and terrible is the day, that the words are wrung from the prophet, “Who can abide it?” The displays of power will be omnipotent. “Who knoweth the power of thine anger?” It consumes like a fire and none escape or resist it. God has not diminished in majesty and might. As he discomfited Egyptians, so will he overcome his enemies at last. “He ruleth by his power for ever.” “Who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?” There is only one way of escape. Repent and believe in Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.
Bold shall I stand in that great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through Christ I am,
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.
THE ARMY OF THE LORD.—Joe_2:4-11
The locusts are led by Jehovah, under his command, and sent to execute his will. “Lord of the Locusts” is one of the names of God in Mohammedan writings.
I. Numerous and strong. “A great people and strong” (Joe_2:2). “What more countless or mightier than the locusts?” asks Jerome. Each small and contemptible in itself, is made powerful by the strength of God. All agencies, human and Divine, are pliable to his hand, when he wants instruments of displeasure.
II. Courageous and swift. “As the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run.” Their heads are exceedingly like that of a horse. In flying they make a noise like rushing wind, and loud “as dashing waters,” says a traveller. Like war-chariots rattling on rough mountain-tops, they speed to do their work. “The shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle” (Rev_9:7). “And the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots, of many horses running to battle” (Joe_2:9).
III. Universal and ill-omened. As “a morning spread upon the mountains,” like dawn ushering in a day of darkness and gloom. Or with yellow lustre on their wings, produced by the rays of the sun, they sweep down the mountains and announce the advent of terrible calamity. Travellers have noticed this feature. “The day before the arrival of the locusts,” says one, “we could infer that they were coming, from a yellow reflection in the sky, proceeding from their yellow wings. As soon as this light appeared no one had the slightest doubt that an enormous swarm of locusts was approaching.”
IV. Orderly and well-equipped. “Neither shall one thrust another.” All keep their rank, march in ease and battle-array. “They charge like heroes,” mount the walls and assail fortified cities with dauntless might. Like David’s army, “they know how to keep rank,” and diverge not to the left or right. They close up as comrades fall, and keep unbroken in military array (Joe_2:7-8). Having surmounted the walls, they storm and sack, “and rush through the city” in fearful speed. “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.”
V. Terrible and destructive.
1. The land is desolated. Like a devouring fire, they consume every green thing on the earth. “Yea, and nothing shall escape them.” “Thus the land was desolate after them, that no man passed through nor returned; for they laid the pleasant land desolate.”
2. The inhabitants are alarmed. They inspire terror, as universal and abject as that caused by an invading army. “Before their face the people shall be much pained, all faces shall gather blackness.” In the agony of despair Eastern nations wait their approach to-day. “They shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.”
3. Portentous signs in heaven and earth appear. “The earth shall quake and the heavens shall tremble” (Joe_2:10). Take this in connection with the next, and we see the terrible day, the dissolution of the social fabric, symbolized by signs. Sun and moon grow dark and stars withdraw their light, because Jehovah comes to judge (Isa_13:13; Jer_10:10; Nah_1:5-6). Nature is clothed in mourning, the universe trembles from predictions of judgment to come. Three sentences give the reason, for God does this—(a) Because his army “is very great.” (b) Because this powerful army “executeth his word.” (c) Because the day of judgment is so great and terrible that no one can stand before the wrath of the Judge.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Joe_2:7. They are on God’s message and they linger not, but rejoice to run their course (Psa_19:6). Men can mount a wall few at a time, the locusts scale much more steadily, more compactly, more determinately and irresistibly. The picture unites the countless multitude, condensed march, and entire security of the locusts with the might of warriors [Pusey].
On his ways. So each Divine judgment is directed, not by chance; adapted and weighed by infinite skill; and reaches in time and method just that person for whom it is intended. Nothing is lost, nothing escapes.
The judgments of God. I. The nature of the judgments. A day of darkness and gloom, none like them before or since. Most awful and extraordinary. II. The executors of the judgments. Not lions and beasts of savage name, but small and insignificant creatures, united, ranked, and commanded by the Divine leader; swift, furious, and irresistible in attack. III. The effects of the judgments. The execution most terrible—
1. In the country. The garden of Eden was turned into a desolate wilderness. In front and rear the army was like a devouring fire. No green thing escaped.
2. In the city. They climbed the wall, and, as a thief, entered the windows and ransacked the place. No fortifications nor force can resist the commissions of God (Jer_9:21). If the weakest creatures cannot be turned aside, and the smallest judgments cannot be resisted, what of the greatest? what of the last of all?
They shall not break their ranks. Joe_2:7. Unity is strength. The weakest efforts and agencies combined are powerful for good or evil. Rank and order are necessary to accomplish any victory. Confusion and disorder weaken; but when each goes on his way, patiently and perseveringly does his duty, success will be gained. Small armies, well disciplined and marshalled for battle, have vanquished and scattered hosts of disorderly foes.
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Learn—
1. The resources of God to punish are abundant.
2. The power of God to punish is—(a) omnipotent, and (b) irresistible.
3. The times of God to punish are ominous.
Joe_2:11. The camp of God.
1. Birds and beasts of prey. The meanest and mightiest creature. The lion in the forest and the moth in the sun.
2. The elements of nature. Winds and tempests, thunder and lightning, obey his will. Sun, moon, and stars cease to shine, and darkness covers the earth.
3. The hosts of heaven. Angels, armed with vengeance, destroy the first-born of Egypt and the army of Sennacherib. The resources of the universe are under his command to bless or to destroy.
What is creation less
Than a capacious reservoir of means,
Formed for his use, and ready at his will?
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Joe_2:1-3. Alarm. We might reasonably expect that the world would gather round the feet of the teacher. There is need for alarm, for men are indifferent. There is a way of escape, but men know or heed it not. Multitudes pass on and perish in the evil day. Noah regarded the signs of the times, and “moved with fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house.” “He that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.”
Be wise to-day; ’tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life. [Young.]
Joe_2:4-11. Locusts. The head is exceedingly like that of a horse [Theodoret]. Their noise is like the rushing of a wind [Forbes]. When they alight and feed, the plains are all covered. They make a murmuring noise as they eat, and they devour herbs, trees, and forage without restraint. “They overshadow the sun,” says Pliny, “the nations looking up with anxiety, lest they should cover their lands.” “The height of walls cannot hinder the charge of the mighty; they enter not by the gates, but over the walls. They fly, by the disposal of God ordaining, in such order, as to hold each his place, like the minute pieces of mosaic, fixed in the pavement by the artist’s hands, so as not to incline to one another a hair’s breadth” [Jerome]. Nothing in their habits is more striking than the pertinacity with which they all pursue the same line of march, like a disciplined army [Thompson]. They teach us the necessity of unity, steadfastness, and order. Many prefer an individual course instead of going by bands. They belong to no cohort, and are under no discipline. The strength of the Church lies in united, concentrated action. Every soldier well-disciplined and in his ranks; every officer at his post, and ready for the contest; each under rule, helpful to each other and to the common cause.
Joe_2:11. Voice. Lest God should be forgotten, he is represented as commanding a mighty army in the midst of judgments. Their presence indicates his presence and power. “The Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle” (Isa_13:4). He called the Medes and Persians to execute judgments upon Babylon. “He sent forth his armies and destroyed” Jerusalem, “and burnt up their city” (Mat_22:7). Hence the threefold ground of terror.
1. His camp is very great.
2. He has strength to accomplish his purpose by the weakest instruments.
3. When this purpose is accomplished, it will be a terrible day to the enemies.
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.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 I. The coming of the locusts was a day…
Joe 2:25
I. The coming of the locusts was a day of the Lord; a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, a day of bustle and heartrending calamity, of which fathers would tell their children, and children to the generations yet unborn. And as all things are double, one against another—as the types of the physical have their antitypes in the spiritual world—so is there not something of which the locusts are an emblem and which is yet more terrible than they—a mysterious something, at which in our healthy state we shudder, as though an evil spirit passed us by in the darkness? The fall of the first accursed locust, on the smiling plain, is not one-tenth part so awful as the first little cloud of evil that flung its shadow over the innocence of a still youthful life.
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II. Thickly as the locust-swarms may be over our past years, utterly as they may have wasted a vain and misguided boyhood, or a passionate foolish youth, yet the very worst of us need not despair. For what cause is it that God gives us the gift of time, if it be not that we may repent therein? Once more sow the seed, and plant the vineyard in the furrows of the contaminated soil. Poor may be the aftermath, scant the gleaning of grapes upon life’s topmost branches, that may be left for thee; yet do thou thy best to redeem these from the locust-swarm. The Holy One who inhabiteth eternity reaches to us out of His eternity the fingers of a man’s hand, and touches into green life again the years that the locust hath eaten. Even the memory of guilt He will alleviate. Sometimes as we float down the river of life, memory flashes up from the hidden depths, and the dark wave is peopled with the innumerable faces of once-forgotten sins which menace us from the waters and prophesy of death. But God can enable us to gaze unshudderingly on these faces, and say with thankful emotion, "These sins are not mine; they were mine, but they are forgiven."
F. W. Farrar, The Fall of Man, p. 292.
References: Joe 2:25.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 305; J. Vaughan, Old Testament Outlines, p. 273.
Joe 2:26
There are three respects in which the promise of our text may be regarded as applying to those who answer to the description of the people of God. The believer has no cause to be ashamed: (1) When he searches into himself; (2) when he stands before the world; (3) when he stands before God.
I. It is proved by daily experience that, when his own heart is laid open to a man, he shrinks from the scene of foulness and deformity, and could not endure, for any consideration, that others should see him in the light in which he now sees himself. He cannot look into a single recess of his heart without finding fresh cause for confusion of face; inasmuch as the more he knows himself, the more he sees of his moral uncleanness, the more he ascertains that he is everything at which he should blush, and has nothing in which he should trust. The conscience of the believer may charge him with many offences, and bring him in guilty of much that is at variance with the law of God, but if he have respect unto all God’s commandments, conscience may produce the catalogue, and yet not put him to shame. Conscience can have nothing with which to rebuke him, and therefore he can have nothing to be ashamed of at the tribunal of conscience, if he have not sinned in contempt of its remonstrances, and if he have shown a heartfelt repentance for sins committed.
II. Nothing but a clear conscience will enable us to look the world calmly and fearlessly in the face. The people of God must carry religion with them into every business of life, and see that all scenes are pervaded by its influence. They must have respect unto all the commandments; to make exceptions is to make a breach by which shame comes in. And if it be their endeavour to keep all the commandments, we know not why Christians should not bear themselves with that lofty dignity which no calumny can disturb.
III. The people of God need not be ashamed when brought into the presence of God. They have respect unto all God’s commandments, and amongst these from the first have been reckoned the commandments which relate to faith. Here we have the groundwork of confidence before God, notwithstanding our own insufficiency. If there be respect to that commandment which enjoins that we take Christ as our surety, and depend on His merits, what cause remains for shame—even though it be the High and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity in whose presence we stand? "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?"
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1541.
No person can doubt that a great part of the unhappiness and of the sin which there is in the world consists in a sense of shame. And by shame I mean a consciousness of mortified distress. So powerful a feeling is it, and so saddening, that God has thought it not unworthy to be recorded even among the joys of paradise, that its inhabitants were "not ashamed." Look at the different kinds of shame to which we are all subject.
I. Among the shames which we have all felt, we must place our retrospects. And here I mean in a twofold sense: the shame of beginnings which have had no endings, and the shame of beginnings which have ended in nothing but disappointment and wretchedness. Paul summed it all up long ago, about a man of the world: "What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?" And he drew the contrast with the Christian: "But this hope maketh not ashamed." The child of God is not like the man who began to build a tower, and had never calculated how he could finish it; but long since he has laid his foundation in God’s own faithfulness, and he has been careful before he began to connect his work with God’s glory. So he goes on in a holy confidence, while the very confidence he holds commands the issue.
II. There is another sense of shame—I mean the feeling of present loneliness. To be alone in what is good, does, of itself, tend to make a man ashamed. The remedy for the feeling of shame in standing alone for Christ and truth is in the conviction of the sacred presences that are with us and about us. Let such an one, who is ashamed of the "shame" of standing alone, read the latter part of the twelfth of Hebrews, and see to what he is come, and in the midst of which he is placed every moment; and the sense of that spiritual companionship will take away all his "shame," and he will feel how God gave His promise to all His own sorrowful ones: "My people shall never be ashamed."
III. Is not sin in its very nature a shame, and does not a Christian feel, more than any other, the "shame," the deep shame, of sin? You must remember that faith cuts off all painful retrospects; but if that man be living, as he ought to be living, in the assurance of God’s love, the shame is so swallowed up and lost in the feeling of forgiveness, and Christ’s glory is so his glory in it, that his eye may weep indeed, but it will still look up; the man may be in the dust, but his heart is in the heavens; he is humble, but he is not dejected; he is cast very low, but not ashamed.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 220.
Reference: Joe 2:26.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1098. Joe 2:28-32.—Pulpit Analyst, vol. i., p. 571. Joe 2:32.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1931. Joe 3:1-8.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 449. Joe 3:9-17.—Ibid., p. 450. Joe 3:14.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xi., p. 207. Joe 3:16.—W. H. Jackson, Christian Word Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 107. Joe 3:18-21.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 452. Joe 3:21.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 379. Joel.—S. Cox, Preacher’s Lantern, vol. ii., pp. 9, 74, 137, 209, 265, 329; R, Smith, Ibid., vol. iv., pp. 215, 349, 400.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Repentance followed by Restoration
Repentance followed by Restoration
Joe_2:1-17 are another description of the locust plague. An alarm is sounded as though the Day of Jehovah had come (Joe_2:1-3). The advance of the locusts into the city is described under the figure of an invading army (Joe_2:4-11). A message to the penitent is given from Jehovah (Joe_2:12-14), and a call is issued for a fast of supplication (Joe_2:15-17). Then follow the announcements that Jehovah has had pity on His people, and that He will remove the locusts (Joe_2:18-20), and restore abundantly the prosperity of the land (Joe_2:21-27), and afterward pour out His spirit and grant deliverance in His great day (Joe_2:28-32).
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1. The blown trumpet was a signal of danger (Jer_6:1; Eze_33:3; Amo_3:6). Day of the Lord] cp. Joe_1:15.
2. Darkness, etc.] caused either by the clouds of locusts, or a figure of calamity: cp. Amo_5:18; Zep_1:5.
3. The devastation wrought by the locusts was as though the country had been swept by a fire. Garden of Eden] Gen_2:8. called also 'garden of Jehovah,' Gen_13:10 : cp. Eze_28:13; Eze_36:35.
4. The head of a locust resembles somewhat that of a horse, hence the German name heupferd and Italian cavalletta. So shall they run] RV 'so do they run.' The description in this and the following vv. is not of a future but a present catastrophe, hence the verbs are to be rendered in the present, as in RV.
5. Shall they leap] RV 'do they leap.' The rustling noise of locusts has been likened by travellers to the sounds 'of the dashing of waters by the mill wheel,' and 'of a great cataract,' and their feeding to the noise 'of the crackling of a prairie fire.'
6. RV 'At their presence the peoples are in anguish: all faces are waxed pale.'
7. RV 'They run.. they climb.. they march.. they break not.'
8. RV 'Neither doth one thrust another; they march every one in his path: and they burst through the weapons, and break not off their course.' Thus compact is the march of locusts. No weapons avail to stem their approach.
9. RV 'They leap upon the city; they run upon the wall; they climb up into the houses; they enter.'
10. 'The earth quaketh.. heavens tremble.. are darkened.. stars withdraw.' The advent of the locusts is idealised as though with them came also the earthquake and the eclipse. The Hebrews conceived of the heavens as solid, and hence spoke of their trembling.
11. RV 'uttereth.' The voice of Jehovah is thunder (Psalms 29), hence the thought is that of a great storm accompanying the locusts.
12. With all your heart] cp Deu_6:5.
13. Rend your heart] even as the Psalmist speaks of a broken heart (Psa_51:17).
14. The divine will is neither arbitrary nor fixed, but is deeply affected by human intercessions and conditions, and hence a purpose of destruction may be changed (Jer_18:18; Jer_42:10; Amo_7:3, Amo_7:6).
15. Cp. Joe_2:1, Joe_1:14.
16. Closet] The same, of course, as the chamber of the bridegroom. The Heb. word means 'canopy' or 'pavilion,' and its usage comes from the primitive nuptial tent provided for the wedded pair.
17. The porch of the Temple, in front of which stood the altar in the court of the priests. That the heathen, etc.] RM 'that the nations should use a byword against them,' i.e. that they should become a byword through their wretched abandonment by God. RV 'among the peoples.' On the taunt, cp. Psa_42:10; Psa_79:10; Psa_115:2.
18. ARV 'Then was Jehovah jealous for his land and had pity on his people.' It is implied that the fast and solemn assembly were held, and that Jehovah responded to the cry of His people with the promises of Joe_2:19-32.
19. RV 'and the Lord answered and said unto his people.'
20. The northern army] or, 'the northerner,' i.e. the locusts, which might possibly have come from the N., although usually in Palestine from the S. or SE. Probably they are idealised as typical of the enemies of Israel, who are frequently spoken of as coming from the N (Jer_1:14; Jer_4:6; Jer_10:22; Eze_38:6, Eze_38:15; Eze_39:2). Land barren and desolate] the deserts S. and SE. of Judah. With his face] RV 'his forepart.' The east sea] i.e. the Dead Sea. The utmost sea] RV 'the western sea,' i.e. the Mediterranean.
And his stink, etc.] See Intro. Hath done, etc.] i.e. in destruction. The same phrase is used of the beneficent acts of Jehovah in Joe_2:21.
21. Introduces the promise of renewed prosperity.
22. Be not afraid] of famine. Do spring] i.e. are renewed with fresh grass: cp. Joe_1:7, Joe_1:12, Joe_1:18., where the desolation is described.
23. Moderately] RV 'in just measure.' The former.. and the latter rain] the rains at seedtime in early winter and before the harvest in early spring. In the first month] RM 'at (= as at) the first,' i.e. before the calamity of drought and locusts.
25. Cp. Joe_1:4; Joe_2:11.
26. And my people, etc.] probably by copyist error from next verse.
27. The rain and the harvests are evidences of Jehovah's presence. Israel] the Jewish community so called after the exile. None else] an assertion of monotheism: cp. Deu_4:35, Deu_4:39; 1Ki_8:60; Isa_45:5-6, Isa_45:18.
And my people, etc.] The glorious climax. Under the figure of the locust plague and the promised years of plenty, the prophet saw the final judgment and felicity of Israel, and thus he is naturally led to the thought of Joe_2:28-32.
28. Afterward] The prophets saw the future purposes of God realised one after the other without fixed intervals of time. Material blessings imply spiritual ones: both nature and man are to be renewed. My spirit] of knowledge or divine revelation, since it results in prophecy, dreams, and visions: a spirit of obedience is presupposed: cp. Jer_24:7; Jer_31:33.; Jer_32:29; Eze_11:19; Eze_36:27; Eze_39:29; Isa_32:15; Isa_44:3. All flesh] all classes of society, as the context shows. Your daughters] Women frequently had the prophetic gift in Israel. Under prophecy we may understand an utterance, through divine ecstasy or compulsion (1Sa_10:10.; Amo_3:8; Isa_8:11; Jer_1:7; Jer_20:9). Dreams, although belittled by Jeremiah (Jer_23:28), and visions were frequent means of divine revelation: cp. Dreams, Gen_20:3; Gen_28:12; Gen_37:5, Gen_37:9; Visions Isa_6:1; Amo_7:1, Amo_7:4, Amo_7:7; Amo_8:1; Jer_1:11; Eze_1:1., etc. Since young men are dreamers and old men seers, it may be implied that youth shall have the knowledge of age and age the enthusiasm of youth.
29. All persons, even menials, receive the spirit.
30. Great events, according to the thought of the ancient world, were accompanied with striking historical and natural phenomena; hence the great Day of Jehovah, which involved the destruction of His enemies and the redemption of His people, would be heralded with wonders. Blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke] indications of warfare are the wonders in the earth.
31. Eclipses are the wonders in the heavens: cp. Amo_8:9; Isa_13:10; Eze_3:27; Mat_24:29; Luk_21:10.
32. RV 'In Jerusalem shall be those that escape as Jehovah hath said, and among the remnant those whom Jehovah doth call.' In the general destruction the condition of escape is calling on Jehovah, and the saved remnant of Israel is at Jerusalem, and among them are those whom Jehovah has called from elsewhere, i.e. the Jews of the dispersion: cp. Isa_27:12.; Isa_66:19. Joe_2:28-32 are applied in Act_2:16. to the day of Pentecost. This application shows that this OT. prophecy is fulfilled in facts of divine manifestations rather than in an identity of form.
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 vv11, 13 his army
his army
To Joe 2:10 inclusive the invading army is described; at Joe 2:11 Jehovah’s army. This "army" is described, Rev 19:11-18. The call to repentance is based upon the Lord’s promise of deliverance, Joe 2:12-17. At verses Joe 2:18-20 we have the deliverance (Joe 2:20); see "Armageddon," (See Scofield "Rev 16:14"), and kingdom blessing in verses Joe 2:21-27. Joe 2:28-32 give the outpouring of the Spirit, and Joe 2:29-32 the cosmical signs preceding the day of the Lord. See Scofield "Rev 19:11".
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 1. The alarm sounded and the day at hand…
II. THE COMING DAY OF THE LORD: THE REPENTANCE AND RESTORATION OF ISRAEL
CHAPTER 2
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1. The alarm sounded and the day at hand (Joe 2:1-2)
2. The invading army from the north (Joe 2:3-11)
3. The repentance of the people and cry for help (Joe 2:12-17)
4. “Then.” The great change (Joe 2:18)
5. Promises of restoration, and the early and latter rain (Joe 2:19-27)
6. The outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh (Joe 2:28-31)
7. Deliverance in Mount Zion and Jerusalem (Joe 2:32)
Joe 2:1-2. With this chapter we reach the heart of the prophecy of Joel. The description of the literal locust plague is now no longer continued. As we have shown the literal locusts in their different stages were symbolical of nations laying waste the land as the locusts had done. Dispensationally the first chapter stands for the entire times of the Gentiles, which began with Nebuchadnezzar Dan 2:36-49, and they continue till the time comes when the God of heaven sets up a kingdom that cannot be destroyed. The second chapter takes us at once to the end of the times of the Gentiles, when the day of the Lord is to be enacted. Before the Lord appears in that day, the greatest distress will be upon the land and the people; there will be a great time of trouble such as never was before Mat 24:21. The remnant of His people will cry to the Lord for intervention and for deliverance, and the Lord will answer their cry and deliver them. Then their land becomes once more like the garden of Eden, there will be a great outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh and from Jerusalem the great kingdom-center blessings will extend to all the nations.
This whole chapter as well as the next one is therefore unfulfilled. Nothing of it has been fulfilled. Before it can be fulfilled a part of the people Israel must be restored to the land of promise and the ancient ceremonies and institutions be at least partially restored.
The chapter begins with the sounding of the alarm for “the Day of Jehovah cometh, for it is near at hand.” The last prophetic week of Daniel is now in process of fulfillment and near its end. (See annotations on Dan 9:1-27 A part of the people are back in the land, having returned there in unbelief, just as we see it today in the Zionistic movement. But in their midst will also be found a God-fearing remnant. The blowing of the trumpet shows that they have revived their ancient custom Num 10:1-22; Num 10:9. We also mention that trumpets are often connected with the appearing of the Lord and the restoration of Israel. In the second verse the day is described and may be compared with Zep 1:15-16 and Isa 60:2. Then there is an invading army announced which is fully described in the verses which follow. The words, “As the dawn spread upon the mountains,” are a description of the day and not of the army, as some have taken it. On the one hand the day of the Lord is a day of darkness and gloom, on the other hand it is “like the dawn spread upon mountains.” After the darkness, the morning light will break “the morning without clouds” 2Sa 23:4.
Joe 2:3-11. Many armies in past history have occupied the land of Israel and wasted it, but here is the coming great invasion from the north. This invasion is mentioned in the prophet Isaiah also. The Assyrian who came in Isaiah’s day to take Jerusalem is the type of the final Assyrian who threatens the land and the people with destruction. He is also prefigured by Antiochus Epiphanes, who came into the land of Israel as the predicted little horn, rising from one of the divisions of the Graeco-Macedonian Empire Dan 8:1-27.
This army of Israel’s enemies finds the land like the garden of Eden; it has been restored through political Zionism, irrigated and cultivated. The Jews are at it now, determined to make Palestine the garden-spot of the world, their Eden, as it has been said. Then comes the rude awakening. They thought themselves safe; they dreamed that their plans they had made without trusting in the Lord and without true repentance, had fully succeeded. But now the greatest trouble of their long history of blood and tears is at hand. The land is once more stripped of its beauty.
Before them the land is as the garden of Eden,
And behind them a desolate wilderness,
Yea, and nothing can escape them.
The Lord uses these destructive hosts to humble His people, to show them that He is their help, when this great calamity is upon them. The symbolical language here is characteristic of other prophecies.
The earth trembleth before them;
The heavens shake,
The sun and the moon are darkened,
And the stars withdraw their shining
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * *
For the Day of the Lord is great and very terrible.
Compare this with the following passages: Isa 11:11; Hab 1:6; Hab 1:12; Zec 14:3-21.
Joe 2:12-17. Here is the Lord calling to His people to return unto Him with true repentance (compare with Hos 5:15; Hos 6:11. And during that great tribulation there will be a truly penitent portion of the people who turn to Him in the manner described in this chapter. It is this remnant which will be saved in that day, while the impenitent part will be cut off in judgment. Eze 20:38 and Zec 13:8-9 speak of this. What Moses spoke long ago now takes place Deu 30:1-20). The many prophetic prayers recorded in the Psalms, as pointed out in the annotations of that book, will then be offered up by this godly waiting remnant Psa 44:13-26; Psa 115:2-18; Psa 79:9-13, etc.). This mourning and prayer for deliverance precedes the visible manifestation of the Lord in the day of His coming. When at last deliverance has come there will be another lamentation. This is found in Zec 12:9-14 and in Rev 1:7.
Joe 2:18. “Then Jehovah will be jealous for His land and will have pity on His people.” Here is the great change. Up to this point we have seen nothing but calamity and judgments. Literal locusts had devoured the land--the types of nations which would prey upon the land. They came, and Jerusalem was trodden down by the Gentiles. The times of the Gentiles terminated in Jacob’s trouble, out of which they are to be saved Jer 30:7. We saw their great repentance. Here is the answer from above. When their power is completely gone Deu 32:36, then will the Lord be jealous for His land and pity His people. Often this little word “then” is found in the prophetic Word marking the great change, from Israel’s past judgments and rejection to deliverance and glory. The following passages should be carefully examined and compared with the 18th verse here:Isa 14:25; Isa 24:23; Isa 32:16; Isa 35:5-10; Isa 58:8; Isa 58:14; Isa 60:5; Isa 66:12; Eze 28:25-26, etc.
The Lord’s personal manifestation is not mentioned here. The deliverance does not come apart from the second coming of our Lord. The entire prophetic Word bears witness to this. “Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations as He fought in the day of battle. And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem” Zec 14:3-21. “When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in glory” Psa 102:16. “The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man, He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war; He shall cry, yea, roar, He shall prevail against His enemies” Isa 42:13.
Joe 2:19-27. Here is His gracious answer. He will bless their land and make it fruitful once more, as it used to be, the land flowing with milk and honey. It is foolish to spiritualize the terms corn, new wine and oil. Yet it has been done. one of the older commentators of this book says on this verse about corn, wine and oil, that it has been fulfilled in the church. The corn he applies to the body of Christ, the wine to the blood of Christ, and the oil to the Spirit. Earthly blessings, such as belong to His earthly people are exclusively in view. Then they shall be no longer a reproach among the nations. Inasmuch as they are still a reproach we know that this promise is still future in its fulfillment. The one from the north will be overthrown and pass away forever. That all this cannot mean the Babylonian captivity and the small remnant which returned to the land may be learned from the statement “no longer” a reproach.
Because the Lord does all this they are commanded to rejoice, the children of Zion, which does not mean a spiritual Zion, but God’s only true Zion. The early and the latter rain is restored to the land. Of late this term, too, has been strangely misapplied. It has been claimed that the early and latter rain mean spiritual blessing. The early rain, it is said, means the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out, and the latter rain, these deluded people tell us, is another Pentecost, a greater manifestation of the Spirit. This latter rain, they teach, consists, according to their conception, in a restoration of “Pentecostal gifts” and is especially evidenced in making strange sounds, which, it is claimed, is the original gift of tongues. This unscriptural teaching has led to all kinds of fanaticism and worse things than that.
Nowhere in the Bible is there warrant for us to believe that “the early and latter rain” has a spiritual significance. To say that the early rain and the latter rain typify blessings and manifestations of the spirit of God, peculiar to the opening of this present age and to its close is extremely fanciful and cannot be verified by the Scriptures. It is strange that even men who seem to possess considerable light have endorsed this kind of exposition, which has worked such harm among so many Christian people. There is absolutely no prediction anywhere in the New Testament that the present age is to close with “a latter rain” experience, a time when the Holy Spirit is poured out and that in greater measure. This age, according to divine revelation, ends in apostasy and complete departure from God and His truth 2Th 2:3-17. After the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, for the formation of the Church, the body of Christ, there is nowhere to be found a promise in the Church Epistles that another outpouring is to take place, by which a part of the Church is to get into possession again of the different sign gifts. The enemy of souls has made good use of these distorted teachings to bring in his most subtle delusions.
The rain has altogether a literal meaning. Read carefully the following passages for a confirmation:Lev 26:44; Deu 11:14-32; 1Ki 8:33-66 and Jer 3:3.
Then all the harm done by the locusts, the army the Lord used in judging His people, will be restored. “And My people shall never be ashamed” (Joe 2:27). This again is sufficient proof that all this remains unfulfilled.
Joe 2:28-32. This interesting passage invites our closest attention. The almost general interpretation of this prophecy has been that it found its fulfillment on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured forth. Most expositors confine the fulfillment to that event while others claim that Pentecost was only the beginning of the fulfillment and that the event which occurred once continues to occur throughout this Christian age. We quote from one of the best commentaries. “But however certain it may be that the fulfillment took place at the first Christian feast of Pentecost, we must not stop at this one Pentecostal miracle. The address of the Apostle Peter by no means requires this limitation, but rather contains distinct indications that Peter himself saw nothing more therein than the commencement of the fulfillment, but a commencement indeed, which embraced the ultimate fulfillment, as the germ enfolds the tree; for if not only the children of the apostles’ contemporaries but also those that were afar off--i.e., not foreign Jews, but the far off heathen, were to participate in the gift of the Holy Spirit, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which commenced on Pentecost must continue as long as the Lord shall receive into His kingdom those that are still standing afar, i.e., until the fullness of the Gentiles shall have entered the kingdom of God.”
There is, however, no Scriptural foundation for the statement that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit commenced on Pentecost must continue throughout this present age. The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost. He was poured out once, and nowhere in the New Testament is there a continued or repeated outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised. The difficulty with interpreting this great prophecy of Joel of having been fulfilled on Pentecost and being fulfilled throughout this age is that which follows in the next two verses. Wonders in heaven and on earth, fire, pillars of smoke, a darkened sun and a blood-red moon are mentioned, and that in connection with the day of Jehovah, which, as we have seen is the great theme of Joel’s vision. These words have been generally applied to the destruction of Jerusalem, which followed the day of Pentecost. The spiritualizing method has been fully brought into play to overcome the difficulties the 30th and 31st verses raise. The terrible day of Jehovah, it is claimed, is the destruction of Jerusalem. Thus we read in the commentary of Patrick and Lowth: “This (Joe 2:30) and the following verse principally point out the destruction of the city and the temple of Jerusalem by the Romans, a judgment justly inflicted upon the Jewish nation for their resisting the Holy Spirit and contempt of the means of grace.” We quote another leading commentator on Joe 2:30, Dr. Clarke. He states: “This refers to the fearful sights, dreadful portents and destructive commotions by which the Jewish polity was finally overthrown and the Christian religion finally established in the Roman empire. See how our Lord applies this prophecy in Mat 24:29 and the parallel texts.” And in Joe 2:31 (“the sun shall be turned into darkness”) Clarke says “it means the Jewish polity, civil and ecclesiastical, shall be entirely destroyed.” Others give these words the same spiritualized meaning. These learned doctors tell us that Joe 2:30-31 relate to the destruction of the nation, and the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the Jews! This is a fair example of the havoc which a Bible interpretation makes, which ignores the great dispensational facts revealed in the Word of God. But inasmuch as the 32nd verse, the last verse in this second chapter of Joel, reveals that there shall be deliverance in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem after these signs and wonders, and the continuation of the prophecy in the third chapter shows the judgment of the enemies of the people Israel, God’s ancient people, such interpretations appear at once as fundamentally wrong.
It is strange that all these expositors use the word “fulfillment” in connection with this prophecy, saying, that Peter said that the day of Pentecost was the fulfillment of what is written by Joel. But the Holy Spirit did not use the word “fulfillment” at all. He purposely avoided such a statement. In so many passages in the New Testament we find the phrase “that it might be fulfilled,” but in making use of the prophecy in Acts, chapter 2, this phrase is not used and instead of it we read that Peter said, “But this is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel” Act 2:16. There is a great difference between this word and an out and out declaration of the fulfillment of that passage. Peter’s words call the attention to the fact that something like that which took place on the day of Pentecost had been predicted by Joel, but his words do not claim that Joel’s prophecy was there and then fulfilled. Nor does he hint at a continued fulfillment or coming fulfillment during this present age. The chief purpose of the quotation of that prophecy on the day of Pentecost was to point out to the Jews, many of whom were scoffing, that the miraculous thing which had happened so suddenly in their midst was fully confirmed by what Joel had foretold would be the effect of the outpouring of the Spirit. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit had taken place, but not in the full sense as given in the prophecy of Joel. He came for a special purpose, which was the formation of the Church and for this purpose He is still on earth.
Without following the events on Pentecost and their meaning it is evident from the entire prophecy, which precedes this prediction of the outpouring of the Spirit, that these words have never been fulfilled. We might briefly ask, What is necessary according to the contents of this second chapter in Joel, before this prophecy can be accomplished? We just mention what we have already learned before in our exposition. The people Israel must be partly restored to their land, that great invasion from the north, bringing such trouble to the land must have taken place, then there must also have come the intervention of the Lord and He must be jealous for His land and pity His people, then at that time this great outpouring of the Spirit of God will take place. It stands in the closest connection with the restoration of Israel. The promises which are Israel’s Rom 9:4 may be grouped into two classes, those which pertain to the land, earthly blessings and supremacy over the nations, and spiritual blessings, such as knowing the Lord, walking in His ways, being a kingdom of priests and prophets. The earthly blessings are accomplished by the power of Jehovah when He is manifested as their deliverer and the spiritual blessings will be conferred upon them by the outpouring of the Spirit.
The word “afterwards” with which this prophecy is introduced refers to the same period of time as the phrase “in the latter days,” that is, the days when the Lord will redeem His earthly people and be merciful to His land.
Therefore when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost it was not in fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. This prophecy has never been fulfilled nor will it be fulfilled during this present age, in which the Church is being formed, which is the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. After this is accomplished the Lord will begin His relationship with His earthly people, when He appears in His day then they will experience the fulfillment of this great prediction.
There are numerous passages in the Old Testament which shed interesting light upon this future outpouring of the Spirit (see Isa 32:15; Isa 44:3-28; Isa 59:19-21; Eze 36:27-38; Eze 37:14; Eze 39:29).
Joe 2:32. The great coming outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh will result in salvation. It is blessedly true now that “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” but it will be also true in that day. The word our Lord spoke, “salvation is of the Jews” will find its largest fulfillment. The nations will then be joined to the Lord in the kingdom Zec 2:11.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 The Prophet Urges Repentance
The Prophet Urges Repentance
v. 1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, this signal of the priests announcing the coming calamity, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain, from the Temple mountain, as the center of Jehovah’s worship and the place of His presence in the midst of His people. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, shaken up out of their care-free condition; for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand, the visitation is no longer in the dim and distant future, but is an event to be expected very soon,
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v. 2. a day of darkness and of gloominess, as when the light of the sun is shut out by immense swarms of locusts, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, of heavy, dense, and obscuring cloudiness, as the morning spread upon the mountains, a great people and a strong, the wings of the locusts reflecting the rays of the sun in a murky light before their immense numbers shut out the sun altogether. There hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations, Cf Joe 1:2.
v. 3. A fire, a most intense and parching heat, devoureth before them, in preparing for the desolation to follow, and behind them a flame burneth, the terrible, withering heat continuing even after the swarms of grasshoppers had passed. The land is as the Garden of Eden before them, like the beautiful park of paradise described in Genesis 2, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them, the devastation would be so thorough.
v. 4. The appearance of them, of the locusts, is as the appearance of horses, whom they resemble as to the shape of their heads; and as horsemen, so shall they run, with uncanny swiftness.
v. 5. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains, as they clatter along over rough mountain roads, shall they leap, such would be the noise of their crackling movements in a great mass, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array, for there is a strong similarity to all these rushing, pounding sounds in the movements of vast swarms of locusts.
v. 6. Before their face, as they proceed on their path of devastation, the people, all those so visited, shall be much pained, trembling and helpless with terror; all faces shall gather blackness, losing the glowing color of health, growing pale with conscious helplessness.
v. 7. They shall run like mighty men, straightforward to the attack; they shall climb the wall like men of war, in an advance that cannot be stopped; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks, this peculiarity being noted by all observers. It was and is vain to resist them by the means ordinarily used to stop the progress of an invading army.
v. 8. Neither shall one thrust another, not pressing ahead, upon those going before; they shall walk every one in his path, like a well-drilled army; and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded, for they are represented as an invincible army of the Lord.
v. 9. They shall run to and fro in the city, being altogether unhindered in their advance; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. Jerome writes concerning this phenomenon: "When the locusts come and fill the whole space between earth and sky, they fly in perfect order, as if obedient to a divine command, so that they look like the squares of a pavement. Each one holds its own place, not diverging from it even so much as by a finger’s breadth. To these locusts nothing is impenetrable, fields, meadows, trees, cities, houses, even their most secret chambers. "
v. 10. The earth shall quake before them, terrified by their dreadful host, the heavens shall tremble, resounding with the rushing of their flight; the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining, their light shut out by the immense hosts of locusts;
v. 11. and the Lord shall utter His voice before His army, which the grasshoppers here represent; for His camp is very great, the host under His command exceedingly large; for He is strong that executeth His word, carrying out the will of the Lord; for the day of the Lord, His coming visitation, is great and very terrible; and who can abide it? It is evident that the entire description is incidentally symbolical of the great and mighty Judgment of the Lord, which, in its preliminary features, is seen in the Deluge, in the two destructions of Jerusalem, and in various other calamities and cataclysms, but which is destined to be immeasurably greater than man can conceive of when it actually comes to pass. Cf Mal 3:2. This being true, the admonition of the prophet comes with particular force.
v. 12. Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to Me with all your heart, in a true repentance, and with fasting and with weeping and with mourning, as outward indications of the change of heart,
v. 13. and rend your heart, in a true and unfeigned sorrow, and not your garments, for the latter may be done also by hypocrites, and turn unto the Lord, your God; for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil, that is, He is persuaded not to let stern justice alone rule. Cf Exo 34:6.
v. 14. Who knoweth if He will return, not carry out the threatened punishment, and repent, and leave a blessing behind Him, namely, when He, as men pictured Him, returns to His throne in heaven, even a meat-offering and a drink-offering unto the Lord, your God? for by an abundant harvest, which He may be persuaded to give, the people would again be enabled to bring their usual sacrifices in the Temple. In order to accomplish this, however, it was necessary that the people unite in a great service of prayer and supplication.
v. 15. Blow the trumpet in Zion, the call once more going forth; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly,
v. 16. gather the people, for a great meeting of worship and supplication; sanctify the congregation, so that no one would be Levitically unclean; assemble the elders, the aged people of the congregation; gather the children and those that suck the breast, for no one is to be omitted in this great appeal for mercy, since all of them, from the smallest to the greatest, were guilty; let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber and the bride out of her closet, where they were preparing for the coming wedding. The fact that even infants in arms and bride and groom were included in the appeal of the prophet shows that the guilt was universal and beyond excuse.
v. 17. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, who occupied the position of mediators between God and His people, weep between the porch and the altar and let them say, in a solemn litany chanted at the very door of the Holy Place, Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine heritage, the people of His own possession, to reproach, Cf Exo 32:11-12, that the heathen should rule over them, or, "make mockery of them. ". Wherefore should they say among the people, among the heathen nations everywhere, Where is their God? thus bringing disgrace upon the holy name of the Lord. This is one of the strongest arguments which believers may advance in presenting their supplication before the Lord, namely, that the glory of His own name requires His looking upon His children in mercy, so that they may not be abandoned to the wiles of the enemy.
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, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17 General Information:
General Information:
Joel continues poetry that began in the previous chapter. (See: Parallelism)
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Blow the trumpet ... sound an alarm
Joel is emphasizing the importance of calling Israel together in preparation for the destruction that is coming.
day of darkness and gloom
The words "darkness" and "gloom" share similar meanings and emphasize that the darkness will be very dark. Both words refer to a time of disaster or divine judgment. AT: "day that is full of darkness" or "day of terrible judgment" (See: Doublet and Metonymy)
gloom
total or partial darkness
day of clouds and thick darkness
This phrase means the same thing as, and intensifies the idea of the previous phrase. Like that phrase, both "clouds" and "thick darkness" refer to divine judgment. AT: "day full of dark storm clouds" (See: Doublet and Metonymy)
Like the dawn that spreads on the mountains, a large and mighty army is approaching
When direct sunlight shines on a mountain at dawn, it begins at the top and spreads to the bottom. When an army comes over a mountain range, it comes over the top and spreads out as it comes down. AT: "A large, mighty army comes over the mountains into the land. They spread over the land like the light from the rising sun" (See: Simile)
a large and mighty army
The words "large" and "mighty" share similar meanings here and emphasize that the army will be very strong. The word "army" could possibly be 1) a metaphor for a swarm of locusts or 2) referring to a human army. (See: Metaphor and Doublet)
translationWords
trumpet
Zion
holy
Yahweh
darkness
might
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, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 2:1-11 Some regard this section as a second account…
2:1-11 Some regard this section as a second account of the locust plague described in ch 1, but in ch 1, the plague is in the past, whereas in this section, the verb tenses seem to depict it as a future event. Thus, others see it as a warning of yet another locust plague. Still other commentators have understood this passage as an apocalyptic description of the coming day of the Lord, using the language of a locust plague to describe an invading human army.
2:1 When an ancient city was attacked, the watchmen on the city wall would raise the alarm by blowing the trumpet, a ram’s horn instrument called a shofar (see also 2:15), to call all the defenders to repel the enemy.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.