Joel 3:1-8

Yahweh will Recompense with Punishment the Nations that have Oppressed His People. In that Day, when Yahweh will restore the fortunes of His people, He will bring into the Valley of Jehoshaphat all nations, and there confront them, as defendants in a law-court, with the charge that they have parcelled out His land among colonists and dispersed His people into far countries, selling them into slavery for contemptuously small sums which they have expended upon the satisfaction of their lusts. Especially the Phœ nicians and Philistines are named. Acting thus were they, asks Yahweh, repaying a grudge they had against Him? Or were they injuring Him without provocation? (read mg. in Joel 3:4). In either case swift shall be His vengeance. Not content with robbing His people of their treasures they have sold their persons to the Greek slave-traders. Yahweh will gather again His people from exile, and deliver their oppressors into their power. The Jews will sell them to the Sabeans, who will dispose of them to a nation still more remote: such is Yahweh's pronouncement.

Joel 3:1. bring again the captivity: many more Jews remained in exile in distant lands than came back at the Return; possibly, however, the phrase had become proverbial in the sense restore the fortune.

Joel 3:2. the valley of Jehoshaphat: no actual valley will suit the description, which is largely imaginative; the name is chosen because of its meaning, Yahweh judges. plead with: in the legal sense, maintain a cause against. The word is from the same Heb. root as the latter part of Jehoshaphat.

Joel 3:4. what are ye to me: rather, what were ye for doing to me?

Joel 3:5. temples: the word may equally well be rendered palaces; the reference is not exclusively, if at all, to the vessels of the Temple.

Joel 3:6. that ye might: Heb. delights to represent the inevitable consequence of an action as though it were deliberately designed.

Joel 3:8. sell into the hand of: a regular phrase for deliver into the power of. Sheba: the Sabeans were a wealthy trading people cf. SW. Arabia (1 Kings 10*). to a nation: rather for a nation. The Sabeans, like the Phœ nicians, are middlemen. Observe the exactness of the recompence.