Joel 2:1-32
1 Blow ye the trumpeta 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;
2 A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of manyb generations.
3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
4 The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run.
5 Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array.
6 Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness.c
7 They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks:
8 Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword,d they shall not be wounded.
9 They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.
10 The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:
11 And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?
12 Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning:
13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, 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.
14 Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God?
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly:
16 Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.
17 Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule overe them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?
18 Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people.
19 Yea, the LORD will answer and say unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith: and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen:
20 But I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.
21 Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the LORD will do great things.
22 Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength.
23 Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.
24 And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.
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.
26 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.
27 And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed.
28 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
29 And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.
32 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call.
Joel 2:1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, to convoke a solemn assembly for fasting and humiliation. Numbers 10:2.
Joel 2:2. A day of darkness, nigrum esse. The army of locusts obscured the light while flying through the air. More than twenty travellers are agreed on this subject. An army of locusts sometimes is a mile, and sometimes ten miles broad in the air. In a moral view, darkness implies the greatest of national disasters.
Joel 2:3. A fire devoureth before them. The inhabitants in their feeble way make fires to stop their progress, and fires behind them to annoy them by the smoke, and force them to depart. Ditches also are dug that they may fall into them and perish. The fields of corn, wherever these insects alight, are devoured in a few hours: they eat the blade and the ear, leaving only the stalk. The pastures, after the devastation, have the appearance of being burnt. The foliage of the tree is wholly destroyed, and the tree itself is so very much weakened that it cannot bear fruit till the second year after the spoliage. Sir Hans Sloane's Nat. Hist, of Jamaica: vol. 1:29.
Joel 2:5. Like the noise of chariots shall they leap. The French Encyclopædia, on the article locust, affirms that they can leap two hundred times the length of their own bodies. But there are various kinds of locusts. Those described in Exodus 10., are large; but those which visited Languedoc in 1686, the year after the persecution of the protestants commenced, were about an inch long, and of a greyish colour.
Joel 2:11. His camp is very great. I have followed the majority of critics in applying the above to the plague of the locusts; but I ought to apprize the reader, that though some translators understand it of the Assyrian, or of the Babylonian invasion, yet the locusts are here described because of the mode of their destruction: Joel 2:20; Joel 2:25. God promises to restore the product of the years which the various insects had eaten.
Joel 2:23. The latter rain in the first month. It should read, “the latter rain as aforetime.” The first month was exactly the time of the barley harvest. The English version has copied the error from Piscator. See Deuteronomy 11:14.
Joel 2:28. Afterwards, or in the last days, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. The prophets mostly poured comfort into the wounds of their hearers. There is no period of jewish history to which this prophecy can be applied, but to the day of Pentecost, and to the Spirit given to gentiles, as well as to the jews. Acts 10:44.
Joel 2:30. I will shew wonders in the heavens. These signs were foretold by our Saviour, and are mentioned by Josephus. A fiery meteor was long seen over Jerusalem before its fall.
Joel 2:32. There shall be deliverance. The followers of Christ, having been forewarned of their danger, were delivered by flight, at the time Jerusalem was destroyed. Matthew 24:15.
REFLECTIONS.
In this and the former chapter we have a fine specimen of Hebrew poetry, employed on a most serious occasion. Nothing can exceed it in sublimity and beauty. It traces the calamity and aims at the salvation of the country, by exciting all classes of men to recollection and repentance. Hence the subject is resumed, and probably as Joel delivered it by the divine Spirit at different times. The first was a charge to the fathers to instruct posterity in the judgments of the Lord; the second was an exhortation to the rulers to convoke a solemn assembly, and humble themselves before Him who chastises offending man by weight and measure.
Fasting and prayer are highly expedient, while God is denying food to man and beast. When all classes of men, properly impressed with the visitations of heaven, do humble themselves, notwithstanding many defects in their devotion, it is a fruit of an inward change; it gives evidence of their not being that hardened and obstinate people against whom the vengeance was denounced, but tender, contrite and suppliant. Hence a whole nation became claimants for a reverse of the sentence.
The gracious characters of God are highly encouraging to repentance. He is gracious and merciful; he pardons iniquity, and receives the penitent into favour and confidence. In dealing with his frail creatures, he prefers the glory of grace to the glory of justice. His slowness to anger, and the partial manner in which he punishes sin, fully demonstrate his readiness to pardon, and to seek our reformation by the exterior strokes of wrath. Hence Joel exhorts them to repent without delay, that the Lord might drive away the noxious insects before they had devoured the whole, and while there was yet a meat-offering and a drink-offering in corners of the land.
When the righteous pray for crumbs, the Lord will give them harvests. He will be jealous for the honour and happiness of the land. He will send corn, and wine, and oil; yea he will restore all arrears of waste made by the locusts. He will rejoice both man and beast with an overflowing portion of covenant mercies.
The Lord makes the temporal prosperity of Israel a uniform type of the spiritual and eternal prosperity of his people. When he sends the former and the latter rain to make the floor overflow with wheat, and the vat with wine, he promises to pour out his Spirit on all flesh, both jew and gentile; to multiply visions and dreams of divine things to the aged and the young.
He promises to raise up a new order of ministers in the church, not of the priests and levites, but of servants and handmaidens. He promises to fill the church with grace and gifts to prophesy and preach; yea, and that it should be an age of devotion, in which whosoever called on the name of the Lord should be saved. This began to be accomplished on the day of pentecost, and shall continue to the glory of the latter day. God has made no covenant with any order of priests to be his ministers exclusively; it is ignorance and pride which prompt men to claim this honour. The christian ministry is a ministry of the Spirit; and he who would silence those who pray and preach in the Spirit, must show his authority before he can command our assent. Besides, the christian ministry in the primitive days did most extensively employ women to help and instruct their own sex. Many of them were ordained deaconesses, and carried the sacred elements from the communion table to their sick sisters; the ministers of that age not having access to women, as was the custom, and which still prevails in many places of the east.
A time of great mercy is also a time of severe judgments, when the season is misimproved. Blood, fire and smoke, with the darkening of the jewish sunshine of national prosperity, are denounced against that infidel age. This passage is expressly applied by our Saviour, and by St. Peter, to the destruction of Jerusalem. Matthew 24:29; Acts 2:19. The omens and prodigies, with the particulars of the siege, as related by Josephus, are a full comment on the passage. And while the jews were punished with a most bloody carnage, there was deliverance for the christian remnant whom the Lord had called by his grace. What a luminous prophecy, and what a striking confirmation of the truth of christianity! Let us wait for the residue of the Spirit.