_The word of Jehovah which came to Joel, the son of Pethuel_. He names here his father; it is hence probable that he was a man well known and of some celebrity. But who this Pethuel was, all now are ignorant. And what the Hebrews hold as a general rule, that a prophet is designated, whenever his fat... [ Continue Reading ]
_Hear this, ye old men; and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land: has this been in your days, and in the days of your fathers? This declare to your children and your children to their children, and their children to the next generation: the residue of the locust has the chafer eaten, and the res... [ Continue Reading ]
He then adds, _Tell it to your children, your children to their children, their children to the next generation. _In this verse the Prophet shows that the matter deserved to be remembered, and was not to be despised by posterity, even for many generations. It appears now quite clear that the Prophet... [ Continue Reading ]
He adds what that judgment was, — that the hope of food had for many years disappointed them. It often happened, we know, that locusts devoured the standing corn; and then the chafers and the palmer worms did the same: these were ordinary events. But when one devastation happened, and another follow... [ Continue Reading ]
The Prophet adds this verse for the sake of amplifying; for when God sees men either contemptuously laughing at or disregarding his judgments, he derides them; and this mode the Prophet now adopts. ‘Ye drunkards,’ he says, ‘awake, and weep and howl.’ In these words he addresses, on the subject in ha... [ Continue Reading ]
Of what some think, that punishment, not yet inflicted, is denounced here on the people, I again repeat, I do not approve; but, on the contrary, the Prophet, according to my view, records another judgment of God, in order to show that God had not only in one way warned the Jews of their sins, that h... [ Continue Reading ]
He afterwards adds, that _his vine had been exposed to desolation and waste, his fig-tree to the stripping of the bark. _God speaks not here of his own vine, as in some other places, in which he designates his Church by this term; but he calls everything on earth his own, as he calls the whole race... [ Continue Reading ]
The Prophet now addresses the whole land. _Lament_, he says; not in an ordinary way, but like a widow, whose husband is dead, whom she had married when young. The love, we know, of a young man towards a young woman, and so of a young woman towards a young man, is more tender than when a person in ye... [ Continue Reading ]
Here, in other words, the Prophet paints the calamity; for, as it has been said, we see how great is the slowness of men to discern God’s judgments; and the Jews, we know, were not more attentive to them than we are now. It was, therefore, needful to prick them with various goads, as the Prophet now... [ Continue Reading ]
The Prophet goes on here with the same subject, and uses these many words to give more effect to what he said; for he knew that he addressed the deaf, who, by long habit, had so hardened themselves that God could effect nothing, at least very little, by his word. This is the reason why the Prophet s... [ Continue Reading ]
The Prophet says nothing new here, but only strengthens what he had said before, and is not wordy without reason; for he intends here not merely to teach, but also to produce an effect: And this is the design of heavenly teaching; for God not only wishes that what he says may be understood, but inte... [ Continue Reading ]
The Prophet now concludes his subjects which was, that as God executed judgments so severe on the people, it was a wonder that they remained stupefied, when thus reduces to extremities. _The vine_, he says, _has dried up_, and every kind of fruit; he adds the _fig-tree, _afterwards the רמון _remun_,... [ Continue Reading ]
Now the Prophet begins to exhort the people to repentance. Having represented them as grievously afflicted by the hand of God, he now adds that a remedy was at hand, provided they solicited the favor of God; and at the same tine he denounces a more grievous punishment in future; for it would not hav... [ Continue Reading ]
He afterwards adds, _sanctify a fast, call an assembly, gather the old, all the inhabitants of the land. _ קדש _kodash _means to sanctify and to prepare; but I have retained its proper meaning, _sanctify a fast_; for the command had regard to the end, that is, sanctification. Then a_fast proclaim _—... [ Continue Reading ]
It now follows, _Alas the day! for nigh is the day of Jehovah. _Here the Prophet, as it was at first stated, threatens something worse in future than what they had experienced. He has hitherto been showing their torpidity; now he declares that they had not yet suffered all their punishments, but tha... [ Continue Reading ]
He repeats the same thing as before, for he reproaches the Jews for being so slow to consider that the hand of God was against them. _Has not the meat, _he says, _been cut off before our eyes? joy and exultation from the house of our God? _Here he chides the madness of the Jews, that they perceived... [ Continue Reading ]
He shows the cause of the evil, _Rotted have the grains in the very furrows. _For they call seeds פרדות _peredut _from the act of scattering. He then calls grains by this name, because they are scattered; and he says that they rotted in the fields when they ought to have germinated. He then adds, _T... [ Continue Reading ]
The Prophet amplifies his reproof, that even oxen as well as other animals felt the judgment of God. There is then here an implied comparison between the feeling of brute animals and the insensibility of the people, as though he said, “There is certainly more intelligence and reason in oxen and othe... [ Continue Reading ]
When the Prophet saw that he succeeded less than he expected, leaving the people, he speaks of what he would do himself, _I will cry to thee, Jehovah. _He had before bidden others to cry, and why does he not now press the same thing? Because he saw that the Jews were so deaf and listless as to make... [ Continue Reading ]
He afterwards adds _The beasts of the field will also cry _(for the verb is in the plural number;) the beasts then will cry. The Prophet expresses here more clearly what he had said before that though the brute animals were void of reasons they yet felt God’s judgment, so that they constrained men b... [ Continue Reading ]