I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the great locust, the grasshopper, and the caterpillar, my great army, which I sent among you.
Parallel Translations
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I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the great locust, the grasshopper, and the caterpillar, my great army, which I sent among you.
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And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
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And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker-worm, and the caterpiller, and the palmer-worm, My great army which I sent among you.
Cross-references (3)
Passages linked to Joel 2:25 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Zechariah 10:6 “I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph, and I will bring them back; for I have mercy on them; and they will be as though I had not cast them off: for I am Yahweh their God, and I will hear them.
- Joel 1:4-7 What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten. What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten. What the grasshopper has left, the caterpillar has eaten. Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up on my land, strong, and without number. His teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a lioness. He has laid my vine waste, and stripped my fig tree. He has stripped its bark, and thrown it away. Its branches are made white.
- Joel 2:2-11 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?
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (16 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain The Prophet confirms what he had previously said, and…
The Prophet confirms what he had previously said, and states what is of an opposite character, — that God can as easily restore a rich fruitfulness to the land as he had before rendered it barren by sending devouring insects. I will give you years, (for the other years,) he says; and that the Jews might more fully understand that all this was in God’s hand, he expressly declares that the cankerworms, the chafers, and the locusts , were his army and as it were his hired army, whom he had employed as it seemed good to him. The spoilers, then, which had destroyed the whole produce of the land, were, as the Prophet declares, the messengers of God: it was not, he says, by chance that the locusts, or the cankerworms, or the chafers came; but God hired these soldiers, they were his forces and his army to distress the whole people; then famine and want consumed them. It is not then to no purpose that the Prophet mentions here that these destructive insects were God’s army; it is to show more fully what is here promised; for God, who had by this army devoured the whole increase of the land, can now easily restore plenty for the barrenness of past years. Now, when any one lays down his arms, the land is afterwards cultivated, and brings forth its usual fruit: so the Lord also now shows, that the land had been barren, because he had sent forth his army, which laid waste its whole produce. But now, he says, when I shall restore you to favor, there will be no army to devour your fruit: the land then will nourish you, for there will be nothing to prevent you to receive its wonted produce.
Had not the Jews been made assured that the land had been sterile, because the locusts, and the chafers, and the cankerworms, were the army which the Lord had prepared they might have ever dreaded these spoilers: “Surely the locusts will spring up, the chafers and the cankerworms will come, to devour all the fruit.” The Prophet shows that this happened not by chance: “Now then, when God shall be reconciled to you, the land will yield its increase, and nothing shall hinder you from enjoying its abundance.”
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By calling this army great, he shows that God has no need of strong forces to subdue men; for when he prepares locusts and insects, which are but little things, they snatch food from the mouths of men and leave them in want; though no one puts forth a sword against them, they yet pine away with hunger. The Prophet then derides here the arrogance of men, and shows that God needs not do much, when he intends to reduce them to nothing. Let us now proceed —
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.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Joe 2:25 And I will restore to you the…
Joe 2:25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
Ver. 25. And I will restore to you the years, &c.] I will so make up your former losses, that there shall remain no sign nor sense thereof. See a like promise Zec 10:6, "They shall be as though I had not cast them off," {See Trapp on "Zec 10:6"} See also Isa 60:10.
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My great army] sc. the locusts, see above, Joe 2:2; Joe 2:5; Joe 2:11. God is Lord of Hosts, and (as the Rabbis well observe) he hath the upper and lower troops, as his horse and foot ready prest.
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 I will restore; make up to you, or compensate:…
I will restore; make up to you, or compensate: the lean years of Egypt did eat up the fat, but with you now the fat years shall feed and enrich the lean ones.
The years: by this it appears that this dreadful famine by these insects was longer than of one year’s continuance, and perhaps countenanceth the Jewish conjecture of four because four sorts of insects are mentioned. These in the late years devoured the fruit of the earth, but now God will restore the fruits.
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The locust, & c.; all recounted Joe 1:4, with little variation of the order wherein named.
My great army: see Joe 2:3-11.
Which I sent: there was somewhat extraordinary in these armies of insects by which the people then living and afflicted by them might see they were sent immediately from Heaven, though history do not report it to us.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And I will restore to you the years that…
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten,.... Or "I will recompense to you the years" (m); give you fruitful ones, as a full compensation for those in which the locust ate up the fruits of the earth for some years running:
the canker worm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm; of which see Joe 1:4;
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my great army which I sent among you; as in Joe 2:11; the Targum of the whole is,
"and I will recompense unto you good years, in the room of the years in which the people, nations, and tongues, the governors and kingdoms of vengeance, spoiled you, my great army which I sent among you;''
and Kimchi observes, that the sense of the Targumist is, that this verse is a prophecy of the days of the Messiah; as no doubt it is, in which the Lord has done for his people, as Moses prayed he would, "make them glad according to the days wherein he afflicted them, and the years wherein they had seen evil", Psa 90:15; the times of the Messiah, in which so many good things come to the people of God, are a sufficient recompence for what they endured in times past. Of the Mahometan notion of locusts being the army of God; see Gill on Joe 2:11.
(m) "et rependam vobis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Vatablus, Tarnovius; "compensabo", Grotius, Cocceius.
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 Restore - Make up to you.
Restore - Make up to you.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 25. I will restore - the years] It…
Verse 25. I will restore - the years] It has already been remarked that the locusts not only destroyed the produce of that year, but so completely ate up all buds, and barked the trees, that they did not recover for some years. Here God promises that he would either prevent or remedy that evil; for he would restore the years that the locusts, cankerworm, caterpillar, and palmerworm had eaten.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Joe 2:25-27. And I will restore to you the…
Joe 2:25-27. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten — I will compensate you, or make you amends, for what the locusts have eaten in the foregoing years, by an extraordinary plenty of the fruits of the earth. This verse proves, beyond a doubt, that they mistake who interpret this prophecy of a hostile invasion of Judea; for it seems to be a general rule in the prophecies, that when any thing of a common nature is expressed by metaphors, that which is the literal sense of these metaphors is generally signified in the conclusion, that there may be no mistake about it. Of this many instances have been given; and perhaps no instances of the use of metaphors in the prophetic writings, about things of a common nature, can be brought, but that in the end the metaphor is explained, and what is meant by it expressly declared. But here, instead of any indication in the conclusion of a metaphor’s being used, or what is meant by that metaphor, the locust is literally spoken of as being the cause of that calamity, and, indeed, in such very express terms, that the passage cannot, without great violence, be interpreted of a hostile invasion. “We have here,” says Archbishop Newcome, “a key to the grand and beautiful description which runs through these two chapters. And if we consider Joe 2:7, and the propriety of the adjuncts, as applicable to locusts, and often to locusts only, there can remain no doubt but that the prophet is to be understood in a literal sense, as foretelling a plague of locusts. Every reader of taste must be struck with the poetical and sublime manner in which the allegory is conducted. There is not a more splendid piece of poetry extant.” And my people shall never be ashamed — Provided they continue to serve me. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel — God’s giving tokens of his especial blessing and protection to his people, is expressed by his dwelling among them, or in the midst of them, Joe 3:17; Lev 26:11-12; Eze 37:26. This is a favour he never promises, but upon condition of their sincere and steady obedience: as appears in the fore-cited places. And that I am the Lord your God, and none else — You will then be convinced that I am always ready to protect you, and you need not apply yourselves to any other gods in your wants or troubles. And my people shall never be ashamed — Shall not be any more disappointed of the trust they place in me, nor be reproached by the heathen, as if I had forsaken them.
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 And I will restore to you the years that…
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten - The order in which these destroyers are named not being the same as before, it is plain that the stress is not on the order, but on the successiveness of the inroads, scourge after scourge. It is plain too that they did not come in the same year, or two years, but year after year, for he says, not “year,” but in the plural, “years.” The locusts, although not the whole plague, intended, are not excluded. : “As the power of God was shewn in the plagues of Egypt by small animals, such as the cyniphes, gnats so small as scarce to be seen, so also now,” in creatures so small “is shown the power of God and weakness of man. If a creature so small is stronger than man, “why are earth and ashes proud?” The locusts, small as they are, are in God’s hands “a great army,” (and from this place probably, Muhammed taught his followers so to call them) and mighty empires are but “the forces of God and messengers of His Providence for the punishing of” His people “by them,” “the rod of His Anger;” and when they have done their commission and are cast away by Him, they are as the vilest worms.
: “Since then after repentance God promises such richness, what will Novatus say, who denies repentance or that sinners can be reformed into their former state, if they but do works meet for repentance? For God in such wise receives penitents, as to call them His people, and to say, that they “shall never be confounded,” and to promise, that He will dwell in the midst of them, and that they shall have no other God, but shall, with their whole mind, trust in Him who abides in them forever.”
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Through repentance all which had been lost by sin, is restored. In itself deadly sin is an irreparable evil. It deprives the soul of grace, of its hope of glory; it forfeits heaven, it merits hell. God, through Christ, restores the sinner, blots out sin, and does away with its eternal consequences. He replaces the sinner where he was before he fell. So God says by Ezekiel; “If the wicked will turn from all the sins which he hath committed and keep all My statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die; all his transgressions that he hath committed shall not be mentioned unto him” Eze 18:21-22; and, “as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness” Eze 33:12. God forgives that wickedness, as though it had never been. If it had never been, man would have all the grace, which he had before his fall.
So then also, after he has been forgiven, none of his former grace, no store of future glory, will be taken from him. The time which the sinner lost, in which he might have gained increase of grace and glory, is lost forever. But all which he had gained before, returns. All his lost love returns through penitence; all his past attainments, which were before accepted by God, are accepted still for the same glory. “Former works which were deadened by sins following, revive through repentance” . The penitent begins anew God’s service, but he is not at the beginning of that service, nor of his preparation for life eternal. If the grace which he had before, and the glory corresponding to that grace, and to his former attainments through that grace, were lost to him, then, although eternally blessed, he would be punished eternally for forgiven sin, which, God has promised, should “not be remembered.”
God has also promised to reward all which is “done in the body 2Co 5:10. What is evil, is effaced by the Blood of Jesus. What, through His Grace, was good, and done for love of Himself, He rewards, whether it was before anyone fell, or after his restoration. Else He would not, as He says He will, reward all. And who would not believe, that, after David’s great fall and great repentance, God still rewarded all that great early simple faith and patience, which He gave him? Whence writers of old say , “It is pious to believe that the recovered grace of God which destroys a man’s former evils, also reintegrates his good, and that God, when He hath destroyed in a man what is not His, loves the good which He implanted even in the sinner.” : “God is pleased alike with the virtue of the just, and the meet repentance of sinners, which restored to their former estate David and Peter.” “Penitence is an excellent thing which recalleth to perfection every defect.” : “God letteth His sun arise on sinners, nor doth He less than before, give them, most large gifts of life and salvation.”
Whence, since the cankerworm, etc. are images of spiritual enemies, this place has been paraphrased ; “I will not allow the richness of spiritual things to perish which ye lost through the passions of the mind.” Nay, since none can recover without the grace of God and using that grace, the penitent, who really rises again by the grace of God, rises with larger grace than before, since he has both the former grace, and; in addition, this new grace, whereby he rises.
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 Host. God could have hurled his thunderbolts, or mountains,…
Host. God could have hurled his thunderbolts, or mountains, to destroy all mankind; but he chooses to shew their insignificance, (Calmet) by employing the vilest insects, which they cannot withstand. (St. Jerome)
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).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain locust . . . cankerworm . . . caterpiller…
locust . . . cankerworm . . . caterpiller . . . palmer worm--the reverse order from Joe 1:4, where (see on Joe 1:4) God will restore not only what has been lost by the full-grown consuming locust, but also what has been lost by the less destructive licking locust, and swarming locust, and gnawing locust.
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 25. By means of the bountiful harvest promised in…
25. By means of the bountiful harvest promised in Joe_2:24 Jehovah will restore to the people the loss they have suffered through the locusts.
Years — The calamity was not limited to one year, and it is not easy to see how the effects of a calamity like that described in chapter i could have been confined to one year.
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Locusts — For the names see comment on Joe_1:4; here they occur in different order, an indication that the names cannot refer to locusts in successive stages of development.
My great army — The locusts are identified with the “army” of Joe_2:11 (compare Joe_2:2); that takes us back also to Joe_1:4, proving that the prophet is concerned throughout with locusts as such, and not as symbols of hostile armies.
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 25. Abundance in place of the deprivations of Joe_1:4.
25. Abundance in place of the deprivations of Joe_1:4.
And I] The discourse of the prophet passing imperceptibly, as often, into that of Jehovah: cf. e.g. Isa_3:4; Isa_13:11; Isa_56:7; Isa_60:7; Isa_60:21.
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the years] The expression shews that the visitation of locusts, spoken of in ch. 1, was not confined to a single year.
the locust …, the cankerworm, the caterpillar, and the palmerworm] the swarmer …, the lapper, the finisher, and the shearer: see on Joe_1:4. Army, as Joe_2:11.
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 (25) I will restore to you the years—i.e., the…
(25) I will restore to you the years—i.e., the years which would have been necessary in the ordinary course of nature for the land to recover from the ravages of the “great army.”
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 Vers. 25-27. Twofold restoration.
Vers. 25-27. Twofold restoration.
"And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten," etc. These words refer to a twofold restoration.
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I THE RESTORATION OF LOST MATERIAL MERCIES. "I will restore you the years that the locust hath eaten," etc. That the prophet has here in view the plague of locusts described in ch. 1., cannot well be doubted. The names, though placed in a different order, are identical with those there specified. My great army. " They are called God"s great army, a name still given to them by the Arabs. Though a scourge lasted only one year, yet, as they not only destroyed the whole produce of that year, but also what was laid up in store for future years, the calamity was great. The loss of these God promises to recompense or make good by not only furnishing them with an abundance of temporal enjoyments, but affording them a delightful experience of his presence and favour as their covenant God. This promise is amplified in vers. 26, 27. Restoration in God"s peculiar work. Who can restore the earth but him? An insect may destroy a giant; but God alone can restore the life of a dying flower. Restoration is God"s constant work. From death he brings life to all nature. Spring is the grand annual illustration of it. God restores lost temporal blessings to his people in two ways.
1. By giving back the same in kind, as in the case of Job.
2. By bestowing that which answers the same purpose.
II THE RESTORATION OF LOST RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES. What are these?
1. Worship. "And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the Name of the Lord your God, that hath dwelt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed." True worship is one of man"s greatest and most original privileges of his being. True worship is supreme love for the supremely good. The loss of this has been man"s crime and ruin; the restoration of this is his salvation. When men come to praise the Lord as they ought to, they reach the heaven of their being.
2. Communion. "And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else." Loving fellowship with the infinite Father is also another privilege which we have lost. The restoration of this is the consummation of blessedness. "In thy presence is fulness of joy." This last restoration is the most urgent and the most glorious one. The restoration of lost material mercies to a man, community, or country, is a Divine work for which gratitude should be cherished and practically exemplified; but the restoration of lost religious privileges, the true worship of God and true fellowship with him, is the transcendent restoration. When this is realized, the world"s redemption is completed. 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 I will restore to you the years which the…
Joe_2:25
I will restore to you the years which the locust hath eaten.
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The great Restorer
Locusts are happily unknown in England. We have only the harmless grasshopper here. Where plagues of locusts are known no one could Wonder that the writer of this book should represent them as a veritable army, leaving the desolations of war in their train, a desolation which would naturally take whole years to repair. Herein is a picture of some years in the life of humanity. A German philosopher has summed up our earthly state in the words, Man has two and a half minutes here below--one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies. It is so apart from God. He is the only Restorer. Deny God, and the locusts are victorious for ever; the desolation is final and complete. Some years in some lives, and some lives as a whole, do seem to have fallen a prey to the locusts. We all know when we are wronged. And most of us feel keenly wrongs endured by others. The words of the text are spoken to a repentant nation. I will restore. God is pledged to do so by His very being. To that He must be true. So great is this necessity that God--may I say it?--does not trouble to be consistent on any lower plane. He is ever true to that name, which means far more than anything we know under the name Love. Years may be apparently eaten by locusts which are not really so. When Gods hereafter is recognised, what possibilities of restoration appear! The Incarnate Word came to do the work of restoration from sin, and the miseries it has caused and causes. (W. A. Cornaby.)
Lost years
Lost years can never be restored literally. Time once past is gone for ever. The locusts did not eat the years--the locusts ate the fruit of the years labour, the harvests of the field: so that the meaning of the restoration of the years must be restoration of those fruits and of those harvests which the locusts consumed. You cannot have back your time; but there is a strange and wonderful way in which God can give back to you the wasted blessings, the unripened fruits of years over which you have mourned. The fruits of wasted years may yet be yours. By giving to His repentant people larger harvests than the land could naturally yield, God could give back to them, as it were, all they would have had if the locusts had never come; and God, by giving you larger grace in the present and in the future, can make the life which has hitherto been blighted, and eaten up with the locust, the caterpillar and the palmer-worm of sin, and self, and Satan, yet to be a complete, a blessed, and useful life to His praise and glory. Linger over this mystery of love. Picture the spirits of evil, year after year bearing away from the fields of human life all their harvests. Whither have they borne the precious products? The fruits of wasted years are gone--gone past hope. Yet the Lord wilt bring forth life out of the tomb; those long-lost spells shall be restored. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Does not the very difficulty, yea impossibility, of the enterprise make it the more worthy of the Almighty? To him that believeth all things are possible. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The cankered years
The moral not the picturesque aspect of the visitation of locusts is uppermost in the prophets mind. He proclaims it as a punishment for the peoples sin, and as a call to repentance. If they shall repent, he promises a blessing which shall amply atone for past suffering. Wasted and blasted years are a fact in most human lives. The appalling thing is the years which have been eaten up by little, scarcely appreciable agencies, like a caterpillar or a canker-worm. Years which have gone, frittered away, we do not know how, and for which we have nothing whatever to show, years devoured in trifles; years that fleeted, as on the wings of a hurricane, in the wild rush of dissipation, and out of which are left only the broken strains of old songs, and a few dry leaves of withered garlands. The exquisitely bitter thought in this vision of wasted years is that of our own share in the desolation; and when our eyes are once fairly opened to the waste, our first impulse is to cast about for some method of restoration. How does God deal with facts like these? Does His economy include any law of restoration? It is evident that any economy of restoration must not only be based on superhuman wisdom, but must include superhuman compassion. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap, is a law which God does not violate in morals any more than in the fields. Viewed simply as a matter of law, the wasted years cannot be restored. The element of expiation only evades the difficulty. It does not meet it. Suffering is not a fair equivalent for the results of neglect or of wilful wrong. How contrition may affect ones moral relations to God is one thing; how it affects the results of his wrong-doing or idleness is quite another and a different thing. An ocean of tears will not give hack life nor innocence. Repentance is a great power, but there are some things which repentance cannot do. On this side the truth is awful in its inflexibility. I pity the materialist when he comes to the question of repairing moral waste. I pity the positivist before the frantic appeal of a remorseful soul. If God does not ignore the action of the physical law, which is none the less His law, that law must at least be taken up and carried somehow in the sweep of a larger law. Perhaps it is not possible to formulate that larger law. At any rate it is not necessary, however desirable it might be. We want to know how it touches a man standing penitently in view of his eaten years. Some things may give us consolation and hope.
1. We have the general sweeping promise of God. I will restore the eaten years. We might fall confidently back on that alone. Restoration, according to the Divine ideal, is a possibility and a fact in the Divine economy. And some features of the process we know. For example, God turns the man entirely away from the thought and the work of literal restoration. He does not ask him to make good, in the sense of a literal equivalent, the waste of the past. His concern is with the present and the future, not with the past. Whatever God may do with the faultful past, a penitent soul can only leave it in Gods hands. His work now is not to make good the past, but to give himself to the development of his new life as a new creature in Christ Jesus. The self-scrutiny of a repentant and forgiven man ought to be directed not at what he has been, but at what he is. Still, it is not restoration, that a man should simply leave the past behind him. God gives certain things which were forfeited in the wasted years of sin. God does not let the darkness of a mans past come up like a cloud between the man and the outraying of His Divine tenderness. The faultful past may, and often does, poison human affection. Human nature forgives hesitatingly, and there is a background of suspicion behind reinstated confidence. But God believes in the possibility of a genuine repentance, and frankly accepts it. Repentance is a factor of immense meaning in Gods economy of restoration. When God heals a mans backslidings, He loves him freely. Restoration is included in restored sonship. There are certain incidents on the line of actual restoration which are noteworthy. God has a wonderful power of bringing good out of evil, and of getting interest even out of the evil of wasted years. In manufacturing communities, large fortunes are sometimes made out of what is technically called waste. God discerns facts and possibilities in waste which we cannot see and could not be trusted to see. Illustrate from the story of John B. Gough. God strikes at the evil, but He saves the power out of the wreck, and the man carries the matured power over to the side of Gods kingdom, and makes it an instrument of spiritual victory and conquest. We do not, and we cannot know what God does with the irrevocable and the irremediable in mens evil past; but we do know that He makes those barren and blasted heritages bloom again, and bring forth thirty, sixty, and an hundredfold. Both the Bible and Christian history are full of the grand fruitful work of restored men, men with large tracts of blasted years behind them. The best thing in restoration is getting back to God. Renewal, fruitfulness, peace, are not in our new resolutions, not in our turning to new duties; they are in His presence, His touch upon us, His guidance. The promise of restoration shall have a higher fulfilment by and by. In God all lost things are found, and they who habitually plunge themselves in God and abide in Him, never become too rich. Nay, they find more things than they can lose. Let us not, however, presume upon all this to neglect our heritage. Let us not be tempted by this revelation of Gods amazing goodness and restorative power, to think lightly of blight and bareness. Gods promise of restoration is no encouragement to presumption. It does not make any less terrible the blight and canker which are due to our neglect or waste. God help us all! These lives of ours have been so faulty, so fitful, so unproductive. What shall we do? Surely not unduly mourn over the past, when He says, I will restore. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)
Twofold restoration
These words refer to a twofold restoration.
I. The restoration of lost material mercies. I will restore you the years that the locust hath eaten. Restoration is Gods peculiar work. Who but He can restore the earth? An insect may destroy a giant; but God alone can restore the life of a dying flower. Restoration is Gods constant work. From death He brings life to all nature. Spring is the grand annual illustration of it. God restores lost temporal blessings to His people in two ways--
1. By giving back the same in kind, as in the case of Job; and
2. By restoring that which answers the same purpose.
II. The restoration of lost religious privileges. What are these?
1. Worship. And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and My people shall never be ashamed.
2. Communion. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else. (Homilist.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 2:25 The Lord promised restitution for the terrible damage…
2:25 The Lord promised restitution for the terrible damage done by the locusts (see 1:4, 10, and corresponding study notes).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.