Joel 3:18

in that day In the era beginning immediately after the judgement on the nations. Cf. on Amós 9:11.

the mountains shall drop down sweet wine, and the hills shall flowwith milk A hyperbolical description of the fertility of the soil (cf. Job 29:6). The words are evidently based upon Amós 9:13 "The mountains shall cause sweet wine to drop down, and all the hills shall melt." On "sweet wine," see on Amós 9:13.

rivers channels, as Joel 1:20. The streams will then no more dry up through a drought, as they had done recently (Joel 1:20).

and a fountain, &c. A stream issuing forth from the Temple will water the "Wâdy of the Acacias," which (from the context, as well as probably from the name) must have been some particularly dry and unfruitful Wâdy in Judah. The two parallel passages which ought in particular to be compared are Zacarías 14:8, where it is promised that -living" (i.

e. running) waters, flowing alike in summer and winter, shall come forth from Jerusalem in two streams, one going down into the Dead Sea, and the other into the Mediterranean Sea; and Ezequiel 47:1-12, where, in his vision of the territory of the restored people, the prophet sees waters issuing forth from under the Eastern threshold of the Temple, which gradually swelled into a deep stream descending into the Arábah, fertilizing the soil along its banks, and entering finally the Dead Sea, the waters of which it sweetened, enabling fish to live in them.

Probably the thought of these passages was suggested by the "waters of Shiloah" (Isaías 8:6: cf. Salmo 46:4; Juan 9:7), which actually gushed out beneath the Temple hill in a perennial stream, fertilizing (as they do still) the parts of the Wâdy of the Kidron in their immediate neighbourhood, though not abundant enough to flow further; and the idea which the three prophets share in common is that these waters should be increased in volume to such an extent as to be capable of fertilizing effectually the barren parts of Judah, especially the Wâdy of the Kidron, the deep and rocky gorge which runs down from Jerusalem into the Dead Sea (see the next note).

the valley of Shittim the Wâdy of Shittim(or of the Acacias). The word is quite a different one from that rendered -valley" in Joel 3:2; Joel 3:12; Joel 3:14, and means a gorge between hills containing a watercourse, with or without water, as the case might be (see on Amós 5:24).

What Wâdy is meant, is however uncertain. According to many, the reference is to the -Meadow of Shittim (orof the Acacias)" part of the broad plain into which the Jordan-valley expands immediately before the river enters the Dead Sea, and now identified generally with the Ghôr es-Seisebânwhich was the last camping-ground of the Israelites before they crossed the Jordan (Números 33:49; also called simply The Shittim, or The Acacias, ib.

Números 25:1; Josué 2:1 al.). But the depression through which the Jordan flows has a special name, the Arábah, and is never called a Wâdy(naḥal); and it is hardly likely that Joel would picture the stream as crossingthe Jordan, and fertilizing the soil on the opposite side.

Others, therefore (as Credner, Hitzig), prefer to think that the "Wâdy of the Acacias" was the Kidron-Wâdy itself, which starting (under the name Wâdy el-Jôz) a little N.W. of Jerusalem, bends round so as to run along the E. of the city, separating it from the Mount of Olives (cf. above on Joel 3:2), and then, as a deep, rocky gorge (now called, perhaps from the "furnace-like" heat of its lower stretches, the Wâdy en-Nâror "the Wâdy of Fire") runs down in a S.

E. direction towards the Dead Sea, which it joins at about 10 miles from its N. end (see Plate iv. in G. A. Smith, Geogr.): though in winter-time there is sometimes water in the bed of this naḥal, it is in general quite dry, the soil is rocky, and it runs through the arid and desolate region known as the "wilderness of Judah" (cf. Smith, l.c.p. 511 f.). There is little doubt that this was the naḥalthrough which Ezekiel pictured the fertilizing waters as flowing, in his vision, ch.

47. For Acacias on the W. shore of the Dead Sea, see Tristram, Land of Isr., pp. 280, 295. Wellhausen thinks of the Wâdy on the S.W. of Jerusalem usually identified with the Wâdy of Elah of 1 Samuel 17:2 which still bears the corresponding name, Wâdy es-Sunṭ(or Sanṭ): this forms part of the direct route from Jerusalem to Tell eṣ-Ṣâfiyeh (probably Gath), and Ashkelon (cf.

G. A. Smith, Plate iv., and pp. 226 f.). The reason why Joel specifies the Wâdy of the Acacias is to be found, no doubt, in the fact that the Acacia (as Jerome, on Isaías 41:17, already observes) grows in dry soil it is abundant, for instance, in the peninsula of Sinai; and hence the name might well be given to an arid Wâdy, such as needed fertilizing. Comp. Apocalipsis 22:1-2.