Joe 1:1 The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. The name Joel signifies "Jehovah is God," or "whose God is Jehovah." We read in Scripture of several of the same name, but the prophet is distinguished as "the son of Pethuel," a name signifying "the sincerity of God," or "godly simplicity." We are not certain of the exact period at which Joel prophesied, but he is generally believed to have been the earliest prophetic writer of the southern kingdom, and one of the earliest of the twelve minor prophets, while Jonah is generally thought to have been the earliest prophetic writer whose book has found a place in the sacred canon. It is at least certain that Joel preceded Amos, who begins his prophecy with a passage from Joel (comp. Joe 3:16 with Amos 1:2). and borrows from Joel another towards the close (comp. Joe 3:18 with Amos 9:13). Besides, Joel speaks, in the second chapter, of the plague of locusts as yet future; while Amos, in the fourth chapter of his prophecy, refers to it as past. He likewise prophesied before Isaiah, who also borrows, in Isaiah 13:6, a sentence which occurs in Joe 1:15. Joe 1:2-7, These verses describe the invasion of the locusts, with an exhortation to reflect on and lament for the calamity. Joe 1:2 Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Joe 1:3 Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. The prophet thus draws attention to the event which be is about to relate, or rather predict, a8 a calamity unknown in the memory of living men, unheard of in the days of their fathers, unparalleled in the past experience of their nation, and one affecting all the inhabitants of the land. He challenges the old men whose memory went furthest back, and whose experience had been longest and largest, to confirm his statements; he calls on the inhabitants of the land to consider an event in which they were all concerned, and to recognize the hand of God in a disaster in which all would be involved. But, though the visitation with which they are threatened had had no precedent or parallel among the generation then present, or that which preceded it, or for many long years before, it was not to remain without memorial or record in the time to come. To this end the prophet commands his countrymen of Judah to relate it to their children, to their grandchildren, and even to their great-grand-children. The expression reminds us of Virgil’s— "Yea, sons of sons, and those who shall from them be born." It reads like a reminiscence of what is recorded of one of the plagues—the plague of locusts—in Egypt, of which we read in Exodus 10:6, "Which neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers’ fathers have seen, since the day they were upon the earth unto this day;" while the direction to have it transmitted by tradition seems an echo of what we read in the second verse of the same chapter: "That thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt." Similarly, it is written in Psalms 78:5, Psalms 78:6, "He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children." The solemn manner in which the prophet draws attention to this by "Hear," "Give ear," and the earnestness with which he insists on the record of it being handed on from generation to generation, are intended to impress on the people the work of God in this visitation, its severity, the sin that caused it, and the call to repentance conveyed by it. Joe 1:4 That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. Some interpreters consider, and rightly, we think, that the prophet enumerates in this verse four different species of locusts. The common or general name is arbeh, from rabhah, to be many; the gazam, or palmer-worm, is the gnawer, or biter, from a root (guzam) which signifies "to gnaw, bite, or cut off;" the yeleq, or canker-worm, is the licker, from yalaqlaqaq, to lick, or lick off; the chasil, or caterpillar, is the devourer, from chasal, to cut off. Thus we have the locust, or multitudinous one, the gnawer, the licker, and the devourer, either as (1) four different species of locust; or (2) the gnawer, licker, and devourer are poetical epithets of the locust, or multitudinous one. These names do not denote the locust (1) at different stages, according to Credner. Nor (2) can we with propriety understand them allegorically, with Jerome, Cyril, and Theodoret, of the enemies of the Jews, whether (a) the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Chaldeans, (b) Medes and Persians, (c) Macedonians and successors of Alexander, especially Antiochus, and (d) the Romans; or the hostile kings, (a) Shahnaneser, (b) Nebuchadnezzar, (c) Antiochus, and (d) the Romans; or those other kings, (a) Tiglath-Pileser, (b) Shalma-neser, (c) Sennacherib, and (d) Nebuchadnezzar. The most celebrated Hebrew commentators understand the passage of locusts in the proper and literal sense. Thus Rashi says, "The palmer-worm locust, cankerworm, and caterpillar are species of locusts; and the prophet prophesies about them that they will come; and they came in those days, and they devoured all the fruit of the trees and every herb of the field." Abon Ezra says, "This the prophet prophesied in reference to the locust which should come to destroy the land. In the days of Moses there was one kind of locust alone, but now, with the arbeh, there are the gazam and yeleq and chasil, and these three kinds are joined." He also quotes Japhet as saying "that gazam is equivalent to gozez, cutting, and the mere is like mere in chinmam reykam; and yeleq, that which licks (yiloq) with its tongue … and chasil of some signification (yachsele-nenu) as shall consume it." In like manner Kimohi gives the derivation of the words as follows: "Some say that gazam is so called because it cuts (gozez) the increase; and arbeh, because it is numerous in species; and yeleq, because it licks and depastures by licking the herb; and chasil, became it cuts the whole, from ’And the locust shall consume it’ (Deuteronomy 28:38)." When, however, Kimchi distributes the comings of the locusts into four separate and successive years, we must reject his interpretation in that respect. He says, "What the gazam left in the first year, the locust ate in the second year; for the four kinds did not come in one year, but one after another in four years; and he says, ’ I will restore to you the years the locust hath eaten.’" Joe 1:5 Three classes are called on to lament—the winebibbers, the husbandmen, and the priests. The verses before us (Joe 1:5-7) contain the prophet’s appeal to the drunkards. Their sin had not alarmed them; the danger with which their soul was imperilled bad not aroused them; now, however, the heavy visitation that awaited them would affect them more vehemently, touching them more nearly. Deprived of the means of their favourite indulgence, they are urged to awake from their stupid slumber and perilous day-dream. They are summoned to weep, shedding silent but bitter tears, and howl, venting their so,row and disappointment in loud and long lamentation: Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine! He backs this exhortation by a most cogent and unanswerable reason—because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. The word asis is explained by Kimchi thus: "Wine is called עסיס, and so every kind of drink that goes out (is pressed out) by bruising and treading is called עסיס, according to the meaning of the root עסס in Malachi 3:1-18:21. Joe 1:6 For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number. The loss of the wine and of the sweet juice of the grape would be a source of genuine sorrow to the drinkers of wine; that loss would be occasioned by the destruction of the vines. In this and the following verse the prophet explains the instrumentality by which that destruction would be brought about. The prophet, fully identifying himself with his countrymen, speaking in their name and as their representative, says "my land." Kimchi understands the suffix to "land," like "my vine" and "my fig tree" in the next verse, as referring either to the prophet himself or to the people of the land; while some refer it to Jehovah, the great Proprietor, who had given the land to his people for their inheritance while they observed his covenant and obeyed his commandments. The locusts ore called a nation, just as the "ants are a people not strong," and the "conies are" said to be "but a feeble folk." Kimchi lays that "every collection of living things is called a nation (qoy); accordingly the prophet applies ’ nation’ to the locust." Nor deem the weed "nation" thus applied support the allegorical sense any more than the Homeric— "Even as go the swarms [literally nations] of closely thronging bees." This army of locusts is characterized by the two qualities of strength and number. The preterite עָלָה, though past, really refers to the future, to express the certain occurrence of what is predicted; so with שָׂם in the following verse, of which Kimchi says, "The past is in place of the future;" and Aben Ezra more fully, "A thing that is decreed to take place is spoken of in the past." This army has peculiar weapons, yet nothing the less powerful. Whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great lion; or, lioness. Different descriptive terms are applied to lions—the lion’s whelp is גּוּר; the young lion, which, though young, is no longer a whelp, is כְּפִיר; also the lion, from its hoarseness at a certain age, is called שַׁחַלֹ; the lion, from its cry, is called by onomatopoeia, לָבִיּא; the lion, from its strength, is called לַיִשׁ; while the common name of a lion, derived probably from אָרָה, to pluck or tear, is אַרְיֵה. Having compared the invading locusts to an army powerful and countless, the prophet proceeds to speak of the weapons wielded by these warlike and hostile invaders. They are their teeth. While the common name for locust respects their multitude, the other names are of the nature of epithets, and all, as we have seen, derived from the vigour and voracity with which they use their teeth. Those teeth, so destructive, are compared to those of a lion and the molars or grinders of a great, stout, old lion or lioness, for the word has been translated in each of these ways. Joe 1:7 He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree (margin, laid my fig tree for a barking): he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white. We have here a detailed description of the destruction and devastation caused by this locust-army in its invasion of the land of Judah. The most valuable and most valued production of that land, the vine and fig tree, are ruined. The vine is laid waste, so that the vineyard becomes a wilderness: (1) "he has barked the fig tree"; or rather, (2) "he has broken the branches." The word קְצָפָח denotes a fragment or something broken, branches broken off, and so the LXX; "hath utterly broken (εἰςσυγκλασμόν);" while (3) Aben Ezra explains it, "Like foam on the face of the water, in which there is nothing;" i.e. a thing of nought. The locusts, by gnawing, had stripped off the bark, or by their excessive weight had broken off the branches. The next clause, which speaks of making it clean bare, is explained by the Chaldee of peeling off the bark, but that, according to the first rendering, has been already expressed. It is rather more than this—it is stripping off the leaves and fruits or flowers; the barked or broken branches and twigs of vine and fig tree are then cast away or down to the ground. And all that is left are the whitened branches from which the bark has been stripped off. The casting away or down to the earth may refer to the bark; thus Kimchi: "He removes the bark; and so Jonathan explains, ’He quite removes the bark and casts it away;’ and the explanation is that he casts the bark to the earth when he eats the juicy parts between the bark and the wood; or the explanation may be that he eats the rind and casts the vine blossom to the earth, and, lo, it is bared." Some, again, understand it of what is uneatable, and others of the vine itself. Joe 1:8-13 The consequence of such ruin and havoc is great and general lamentation. The drunkards were first called on in the preceding verses to mourn, for the distress came first and nearest to them. But now the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn; things inanimate, by a touching personification, join in the lamentation—the land mourneth; the husbandmen that till the ground mourn. Joe 1:8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. 1. The verb here, which is an ἅπαξλεγόμενον, is (1) imperative feminine; the subject must, of course, correspond. That subject has been variously supplied: (a) the ground, according to Aben Ezra; (b) naphshi, my soul, i.e. the prophet’s address to himself; (c) the daughter of Zion, or virgin daughter of Zion; but (d) the congregation or people of Judah, as suggested in the Chaldee, is the real subject. (2) The LXX. has θωρήνησονπρόςμε, evidently combining two readings, or rather two punctuations, of the same word, viz. hsilgnE:egaugnaL\אֵלִי), to me, and אֱלִי, lament. 2. The mourning is of the deepest, bitterest kind, like that of a virgin for the husband of her youth. It is either the case of a maiden betrothed to a youthful bridegroom, whom she sincerely loves, but he dies before they are married, and thus, instead of the wedding dress, she puts on the garment of mourning, the sackcloth of rough hair; or she has been married, and her husband, still in youth, is snatched away from her by death, and she is clothed in widow’s weeds—in her case real weeds of woe, and outward tokens of sincere, not simulated, sorrow. The expression reminds us of Isaiah’s "wife of youth," and of the Homeric expression frequently translated "virgin or youthful spouse," though more correctly "wedded wife." Such is the lamentation to which the people of Judah are called. Joe 1:9 The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn. While all the inhabitants of the land are called to lament, and have abundant cause for lamentation, different classes of society are specified, and the grounds of their sorrow particularized. 1. The meat offering and drink offering accompanied the morning and evening sacrifice, and that sacrifice, with its accompaniments, being an expression of gratitude to God by a daily presentation to him of the firstfruits of his own mercies, was a visible memorial of Jehovah’s covenant with his people; while the fact of its being cut off implied the cessation or suspension of that covenant and the people’s exclusion from the covenanted mercies of God. 2. But the ministering priests in particular had cause of mourning, indeed a twofold cause: (1) their occupation was gone when there were no materials at hand wherewith to minister; their office could no longer last, as they wanted the appointed means for the discharge of its prescribed functions; (2) their livelihood depended largely on those offerings in which they were allowed to have a share, but, when these ceased through failure of the means of supply, the support of the priests of necessity ceased also, or was so curtailed as to threaten the entire want of the means of subsistence. Joe 1:10 The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. This verse is closely connected with the preceding, for the failure of the meat offerings and drink offerings was owing to the devastation of the country and the destruction of its crops by the locust-plague. The field was laid waste by them, nor was it a field here and there, or a solitary district; it was the whole land without exception or exemption that had cause to grieve, "if aught inanimate e’er grieves." This is expressed by one of those paronomasias of which the Hebrews were so fond, thus, shuddad sadheh, abhelah adhamah, equivalent to "field falls, ground grieves;" or "field fruitless, land laments." The oblation, or meat offering, consisted of flour mingled with oil; the libation, or drink offering, consisted of wine. There were also firstfruits of corn and wine and oil; while all the produce of the land was tithabla. Now, however, the corn was wasted and the oil languished; and therefore the meat offering had partially failed or entirely ceased; the new wine was dried up, and therefore the drink offering must needs have been given up. The mention of corn and wine and oil in particular is owing to their connection with the temple service, for the firstfruits, tithes, oblations, and libations depended largely upon them. Joe 1:11, Joe 1:12 Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen. The verb from בּושׁ (formed from יַבֵשׁ), to be or feel ashamed, or turn pale with shame; חָפֵר is "to blush or turn red with shame." It is written defectively, to distinguish it from הוֹבִישׁ, which occurs in the tenth verse and again in the twelfth, and which is the Hiph. of יָבֵשׁ, to be parched or dried up. Their hope was disappointed through the destruction of their wheat and barley—their most serviceable and valuable cereals; while disappointment of hope causes shame; hence we read of a "hope that maketh not ashamed, because it never disappoints as empty hopes do. Howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the harley; because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth. There is a transposition here which is a species of the figure chiasmus, so called from the form of the Greek letter chi (χ). The husbandmen are put to shame on account of the destruction of the wheat and barley—the entire failure of their field crops and ruin of their harvest; while the vinedressers have reason to howl because of the loss of their vines and the languishing of their fig trees. The prophet, after particularizing the vine and fig tree, proceeds with the enumeration of other important fruit trees that had perished by the teeth of the locusts. The pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered. The pomegranate, though abundant in that region, had shared the fate of the fig and vine; even the palm tree, the date palm, though a vigorous tree and little subject to injury, having no juice in the leaves or fresh greenness in the rind, ceased to flourish; and the apple tree—the medicinal apple, as Virgil terms it—suffered in like manner. Nor was it the fruit trees only that were injured; the hardier forest or timber trees—all the trees of the field—shared in the calamity. Thus Jerome represents the prophet as asking, "Why should I speak of the corn, wine, oil, and barley? when even the fruits of the trees have been dried up, the fig trees have languished, with the pomegranate and palm and apple; and all trees, whether fruit-bearing or not, are consumed by the devastating locusts." Because joy is withered away from the sons of men. This clause is connected by" because" with "howl," the intermediate words being treated parenthetically or passed over. Joy here is either (1) literal; while "withered" is figurative, and signifies "has ceased or been taken away;" or (2) "joy" is figurative, denoting the means of joy, and" withered" may then be understood literally. The min, from, is a pregnant construction, that is, "is withered from" being equivalent to "is withered and taken away from" the sons of men. Thus Kimchi: "Because joy is withered—is withered, as if he said, ’it has ceased because the products and the fruits are the joy of the sons of men,’ and so Jonathan explains it, ’because joy has ceased;’ or the meaning of ’withered’ may be by way of figure." Joe 1:13 Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God. The invitation, or rather exhortation, here is to something more than lamentation and mourning; for, however natural in the circumstances, affliction itself could not avert or remove the calamity. They are urged, therefore, to repentance as well as lamentation. They were to assume the outward signs of the inward grace: they were to gird themselves with sackcloth, the outward symbol of their inward sorrow; next they were to enter the temple or house of God; they were to spend the night there in the attitude and garb of mourners; night and day they were to bewail their sins with humble, penitent, and contrite hearts. The priests are the persons first addressed, and that not only because, in discharge of their priestly functions as ministers of Jehovah and ministering at the altar, they had been specially touched by the present distress; but also because of their official position they were to present an example to the people whose leaders they were and on whose behalf they ministered. Kimchi gives a correct exposition of this verse: "Gird, that is to say, gird on sackcloth, and he explains afterwards, pass the night in sackcloth, because even by night ye shall not remove the sackcloth from off you; perhaps Jehovah will have mercy upon you. And he says, ’ministers of the altar,’ and adds, ’ministers of my God,’ because the ministry was as the altar to God; and he connects the ministry to God—to the altar, as wherein they minister to Jehovah." For the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. This is the reason assigned for the urgent call to repentance; and it is much the same with that in the beginning of the ninth verse. Joe 1:14-20 After urging the priests to lead the way in the matter, he proceeds to summon all classes of the people, and particularly the elders, to engage in penitence, fasting, and solemn supplications, in order to avert the calamities that were impending, or to escape from them if they had already begun. Joe 1:14 Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord. The command is addressed to the priests as the representatives and rulers of the people in all matters of religion; they communicated to the people the commands of Jehovah. This verse directs attention to three things—the duty commanded; the persons called upon to discharge it; and the place of its performance. 1. The duty required was a fast and a solemn assembly; and the priests are strictly enjoined to see to it that both these shall be duly announced and rightly observed. The fast was abstention from food in token of sorrow for sin; it was intended to be the external evidence of penitential sorrow for sin. The solemn assembly, or "day of restraint," as it stands in the margin, was a public meeting of the people for the purpose of solemn supplication that the Almighty might be entreated to deliver them from the sore calamity with which he had seen fit to visit them. It was a season during which they were restrained from all servile work, and attention given exclusively to humiliation and prayer. 2. The persons summoned for this purpose were the elders, those who were so both by age and office—the magistrates as examples to others, and as having been implicated in the sins from which they now suffered. With the word "elders" are joined all the inhabitants of the land—the whole of the people, poor ann rich alike; all had had their share in the national sin, all were sharers in the national suffering, and it therefore behoved all to repent of their sins and seek the Lord. 3. The place of assembly was the house of the Lord; that is, the temple, or that portion of it called "the court of the Israelites." Nor were they to assemble there without an errand; the purpose of their assembling in that sacred place was to supplicate the Lord to alleviate their distress, or rather remove it altogether. They were directed to cry mightily to the Lord; to cry unto him with vehement earnestness and importunate perseverance till he would be pleased to send relief. The proclamation of a fast was a common expedient, to which people, Jewish and Gentile, according to their respective light, resorted in the day of their difficulty and distress. We read of it on many occasions; for example, by King Jehoshaphat in prospect of a hostile attack by the allied armies of Moab, Ammon, and Edom; again in the reign of Jehoiakim; also by Ezra in the day of danger; and by the people of Nineveh in consequence of the preaching of Jonah. Joe 1:15 Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Some understand these words as suggested by the prophet to the people, that they might use them in their solemn and sorrowful appeal to the Almighty. This is favoured by the Syriac, which adds, "and say," as if the prophet prescribed to them the substance of their address. We prefer taking them as the prophet’s own words, which he era-ploys to justify the urgency of the appeal contained in the two preceding verses to the ministers of religion, the priests, to the magistrates, the elders, and to all the mere-bets of the community, even all the inhabitants of the land. The day referred to is the time of the judgment that was coming on the land through the locusts. The day of the Lord, first mentioned, it is said, by Joel, is the day when he inflicts judgments on sinners, as in the present instance; it may be a presage of that judgment that brought ruin on their city, temple, and nation. It may be an emblem of that judgment that wound up their nation by the destruction of their capital, or even of the final judgment when God shall destroy impenitent sinners and deliver his saints. This day of the Lord comes suddenly, secretly, and irresistibly; and, when it comes, it is a destruction from the Almighty, or, according to the Hebrew paronomasia, keshod misshaddai, equivalent to "ruin from the Resistless." The day of God’s anger against Judah is a presage of that day when, as Judge of all, Jew and Gentile, he will take vengeance on his enemies. Joel’s prophetic glance reached onward and forward, not only to the close of the Jewish, but to the conclusion of the Christian, dispensation. Joe 1:16-18 These verses contain manifest proofs that the day of the Lord was coming, and coming as a destruction from the Almighty. Is not the meat cut off before our eyes? The food for daily sustenance, and the food for Divine service—the corn and wine and oil, as mentioned in Joe 1:10—had vanished while they beheld the process of destruction, but could not binder it. "These locusts," says Thomson, in ’The Land and the Book,’ "at once strip the vines of every leaf and cluster of grapes, and of every green twig. I also saw many large fig orchards ’clean bare,’ not a leaf remaining; and, as the bark of the fig tree is of a silvery whiteness, the whole orchards, thus rifled of their green veils, spread abroad their branches ’made white’ in melancholy nakedness to the burning sun." He then refers to the exclamation in Joe 1:15, and to that in the words before us, "Is not the meat cut off before our eyes?" and then proceeds," This is most emphatically true. I saw under my own eye not only a large vineyard loaded with young grapes, but whole fields of corn, disappear as if by magic, and the hope of the husbandman vanish like smoke." Yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God. Not only had the food necessary for the support of daily life perished—"The food of the sinners," says Jerome, "perishes before their eyes, since the crops they looked for are snatched away from their hands, and the locust anticipates the reaper,"—but the offerings used in Divine worship had ceased. Owing to the destruction of the crops, the firstfruits, as a matter of course, failed; the thank offerings could not be procured. Consequently, the joy that usually accompanied the presentation of these and other offerings was also cut off. When the Hebrews of old brought their burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, heave offerings, vows, free-will offerings, and firstlings of herds and flocks, it was a joyful season, a time of rejoicing before the Lord, as we learn from Deuteronomy 12:7, "There ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households." All this joy and gladness, so graciously associated with the worship of Jehovah, were now things of the past. The seed (margin, grains)is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered. This was a fearful aggravation of their calamity. Their present distress thus prolonged itself into the future, as there was no prospect of a crop in the following year to cheer them. The rotting of the seed that had been sown and carefully covered in the earth was occasioned by the drought. The visitation of locusts, as Stanley says, "came, like all such visitations, in the season of’ unusual drought—a drought which passed over the country like flames of fire." The rotting of the seed, and the withering of the corn, if the mouldering seed germinated and put forth a blade at all, rendered barns useless, and granaries, or the larger storehouses, unnecessary. The barns were left to decay and tumble down; and the granaries were desolate, and so there was no further use for them. Several difficult expressions occur in this verse, Perudoth is from parad, to scatter about, or to sow broadcast, and hence signifies "scattered things,"—seed or grain sown. עַבַשׁ is to dry up, moulder, wither; and is said of seeds that lose their germinating power Megraphoth are clods of earth, the root being garaph, to wash away (Judges 5:21); the noun, therefore, denotes a clod of earth rolled together by water and swept away. Otsaroth were the storehouses, but these were allowed to moulder away, as there was no reasonable prospect of a harvest or of grain to store in them. The mam-megurah or megurah, viz. the barns, had now become a useless appendage of the farmstead. How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. The drought that preceded and accompanied the plague of locusts destroyed the pasture-grounds, and thus the herds of cattle were bewildered, being deprived of pasture and water; they were perplexed to know where to find food to satisfy the cravings of hunger, and water to quench their thirst; in their perplexity they sought both, but found neither. The flocks of sheep, too, that are more easily satisfied and accustomed to browse on grass shorter and sparser, were desolate for want of nourishment, or, as the word ashem may be translated, "expiate the sin of man," inasmuch as they suffered from its consequences. This also was true to the life, as Thomson assures us. After quoting this verse (Deuteronomy 12:18) he adds, "This is poetic, but true. A field over which this flood of desolation [the locusts] has rolled shows not a blade for even a goat to nip." What with the locusts devouring what appeared above ground, and the drought destroying the seeds sown under the surface, the havoc was complete; famine and distress afflicted both man and beast. In tile progress of this visitation the cereals—corn, and wheat, and barley, and other grains—were ruined; the fruit trees—vine, and olive, and fig, and pomegranate. and apple, and palm—were destroyed. But not only were the herbs for the service of man eaten up, but the grass for the cattle perished. Stanley refers to it in the following eloquent words: "The purple vine, the green fig tree, the grey olive, the scarlet pomegranate, the golden corn, the waving palm, the fragrant citron, vanished before them; end the trunks and branches were left bare and white by their devouring teeth. What had been but a few moments before like the garden of Eden was turned into a desolate wilderness. The herds of cattle and flocks of sheep so dear to the shepherds of Judah, the husbandmen so dear to King Uzziah, were reduced to starvation. The flour and oil for the ’meat offerings’ failed; even the temple lost its accustomed sacrifices." The remarks of Kimchi on some of the difficult or unusual words of this verse deserve attention. On עבשו he observes, "It is equivalent in meaning to עפשו, for the beth and the pe belong to the same organ." In his note on perudoth he says, "They are the grains of seed that are under the earth; and he says another curse will be that the seed will be destroyed and rotten under the earth, and shall not bud; and what shall bud, the locusts shall eat it. Or the grains of seed shall rot because of the rains which do not descend upon them, for there shall also be in like manner a great drought [literally, ’ restraint of rain’] in those years." On the garners (otsaroth) being laid desolate, and the barns (mammeguroth) broken down, he observes on the former, "The garners for the produce are laid desolate, for there was nothing to bring into them, and, lo! they are laid desolate. In reference to the latter he says, "He (the prophets) repeats the matter in different words; for mammeguroth is the same as otsaroth, and so ’is the seed yet in the barn, megurah’ (Hosea 2:20), gives proof of this." And he accounts for their being broken down either (1) because they brought nothing into them, or (2) they were broken down because they had no caretaker to repair them after the custom from year to year, and so they fell and were destroyed." Of the perplexity of the herds he gives the following explanation: "He speaks collectively (i.e. the verb is singular, agreeing with the noun), and afterwards individually (the verb being plural); perplexed has the meaning of confusion, as a man who is confused in his knowledge, and does not know what to do, and so they (the herds) are confused in the land," in other words, they wandered up and down, and knew not where to go for drink or pasture. He (Kimchi) adds, in his further explanation. "that the flecks of sheep sometimes find pasture where the oxen do not find it, because that they (sheep) go up upon the mountains and upon the hills—a thing which the oxen do not in general do." Joe 1:19, Joe 1:20 O Lord, to thee will I cry. In consideration of man and beast—creatures rational and irrational being subject to so much hardship and suffering—the prophet appeals in intense earnestness of spirit to God, and all the more so because of the encouragement of his own Word, as it is written, "Lord, thou preservest man and beast." For the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field. The fire and flame here referred to denote the fiery heat of the drought which burnt up the meadows and scorched the trees. Some seem to understand the terms literally, as applied to setting on fire the heath, or even the trees, in order to check the progress of the locusts or turn them aside by smoke and flame. This, however, is refuted by the following verse, which mentions the rivers of water being dried up: The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness. In like manner we read in Jeremiah 14:4-6, "Because the ground is chapt, for there was no rain in the earth, the ploughmen were ashamed, they covered their heads. Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass. And the wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no grass." The various animals suffering from hunger and thirst express their distress in loud and lamentable, though inarticulate, cries. The Hebrew words which respectively denote the cries of the different animals are, according to Rashi, the following: ערג expresses the cry of deer; נהם (also שׁאג), to roar like lions; נעה, to low as oxen; צחל, to neigh like horses; ציפצוף (rather צִפְצִף, fulfil), to twitter or chirp as birds. Further, the subject is plural, but the verb is singular, for the purpose of individualizing. Joe 1:1 The value of the Divine Word. The prophet gives us no intimation of the time when he wrote, nor of the tribe to which he belonged, nor of the family of which he was a member; he merely mentions the name of his father, probably for sake of distinguishing himself from others of the same name. 1. He is mainly occupied with the solemnity of the message which he had received, and the source whence it came; nor yet does he inform us of the mode in which the message reached him—whether by an audible voice, or vision by day or dream by night. Information of this kind might gratify curiosity, but would not tend to edification. Certain he was that the word came from God, and he hastens to assure those whom he addressed of the same. 2. God speaks to us in many ways. Joe 1:2-4 A retrospect and a prospect. The former was sufficiently gloomy, the latter might prove salutary in its tendency. The oldest are challenged to look back on the past and recall all the years that had been, and then say if they could find any parallel for the disasters of the calamitous time through which they had just passed or were passing. The prophet did not need to name or specify the calamity; somewhat indefinitely or abruptly he asks, "Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?" He knew well that the thought then uppermost in every heart was the calamity that had pressed so sorely, or was probably still pressing upon them. I. THE DUTY OF IS TAUGHT US HERE. Why should a tale so doleful be put upon record and transmitted to children and children’s children, that is, grand-children (for which there is no corresponding word in Hebrew), and onward still to great-grandchildren, and from them yet forward to another generation? We car easily understand why the memory of God’s mercies should be kept up; but why keep a record of miseries so crushing and cruel? Obviously not for the purpose of distressing posterity. The object, there can be no reason to doubt, was to perpetuate a standing memorial of those great and grievous calamities, in order by such memorial to set up a solemn warning against the great and heinous sins that had entailed those calamities. II. THE THINGS THAT MAY MAKE THE MEANS OF . These locusts—"gnawer," "licker," "devourer"—whether different species of locusts, or different stages of their development, or merely poetical epithets rhetorically to characterize the destructive processes or modes of operation, were weak and mean instrumentalities by themselves and in their individual capacity. Joe 1:5-8 The lessons taught by this calamity. The lessons which God intended to teach his people by the calamitous events here recorded are solemn as salutary. Among them may be reckoned the ends for which they were sent, the alarming extent of them, and the effects produced. I. THE ENDS OF THE THEN ON THE PEOPLE OF JUDAH. 1. It was designed to rouse them out of their sinful slumber. Previous intimations of Divine displeasure had failed. Now God speaks to them in a way which they could no longer mistake or withstand. 2. He had spoken to them by the word of his prophets, now he speaks to them by the rod of his wrath. 3. The nature of their sufferings remind them of the nature of their sins, filling them with remorse, not so much, if at all, because of their sins, but because they are debarred the indulgence of those sins. Their regretfulness arises from their besetting sins becoming impossible to them. II. THE EXTENT OF THE . III. THE EFFECTS ARE . The effects as here detailed prove the extremity of the distress. Every green thing perished before this terrible locust army of invasion; every succulent herb was devoured by them; then the trees were attacked—their fruitage, their sheltering leafage, their branches, their bark. No wonder they are again called on, both in their individual and national capacity, to mourn, and lamentation behoved to be of the most sincere and sorrowful kind. When God’s judgments are abroad in the earth men learn righteousness. Joe 1:9-13 The calamity has fallen upon all, and therefore the wail of woe proceeds from all. All classes are summoned to this sorrowful work; no office in the state is exempt; things animate and inanimate; priests and people—the Lord’s priests who ministered at the altar, and the people to whom they ministered; the whole land and the fields into which it was partitioned; the tillers of the soil and the dressers of the vine. I. POVERTY TENDS TO THE DECAY OF PIETY. As a rule neither the depth of penury nor the height of prosperity is favourable to religion; in the one case corroding cares, in the other worldly pleasures, interpose between the soul and God. II. THE BLIGHT IS BROUGHT BY SIN. The blessing of God makes rich, the smile of God makes all things joyful. III. THE OF WORLDLY SHOULD LEAD MEN TO SEEK . On the kindly fruits of the earth rich and poor were, as they still are, alike dependent. While the rich could afford the finest of the wheat, and the poor had to content themselves with such bread as barley yielded, both alike derived their support from the bounteous earth. They had looked forward for their supply from the harvest of the earth as usual without any dread or apprehension. 1. The pleasantest period of the year became the most painful. 2. The joy of harvest may be withheld, and all joy of an earthly kind or from an earthly source may be withered from the sons of men; but there are spiritual joys which no accidents, as men call them, can touch. 3. The children of God are independent of worldly pleasures. IV. DUTIES . In times of emergency the duties of humiliation, fasting, and prayer are properly enjoined, and should be rightly observed. 1. The persons that are called on to lead the way in discharging such duties are the ministers of religion; as sharers in the common calamity, as having had a share in the sins that occasioned it, above all because of their prominent position as teachers and guides of the people in sacred things, they are bound to take a principal and prominent part in public humiliation, penitence, and prayer. 2. The first duty at such times is confession of sin; to this duty they are to address themselves at once, girding themselves for it. 3. With this full confession of sin with the lips, there must be real contrition of heart; of this the outward sign and symbol, as usual, in the East was clothing the body in sackcloth. While contrition without confession is defective, confession without contrition is hypocritical. 4. Nor is this grief for sin confined to the daytime; it extends into the night-watches. Joe 1:14-20 Calamity removed. I. THE OF THE DUTIES IN A RIGHT WAY. After the prophet had summoned the ministers of religion to realize their responsibility and humble themselves under a due sense of sin—its sinfulness in God’s sight—he further intimates its calamitous consequences to a country, to a community both in a temporal and spiritual sense; he then proceeds to point out the proper method of going about repentance and reform, urging the work with suitable motives. 1. There was to be a fast in all the homesteads of Judah, and by all the people of the land, with due preparation for its observance. "Sanctify ye a fast." 2. Then a proclamation of a solemn assembly was to follow. 3. The persons to be convened are specified. They were the public office-bearers and persons of influence, and along with them the whole people—high and low, rich and poor, young and old, alike. Thus a very promiscuous multitude, consisting of the whole body of the people with their rulers, was summoned to this great convocation. 4. The place of meeting was the house of God; for if we would worship God acceptably, we must follow the method he has prescribed. 5. And when all this preparation had been duly made—the proclamation made, the persons assembled, the place of convocation thronged—there was prayer, solemn, public, earnest, energizing prayer, to be engaged in—a simultaneous uplifting of heart and voice to the Lord, a crying unto the Lord their God. II. CERTAIN WEIGHTY MOTIVES ARE ADDED. . 1. We see in all this the sad effects and ruinous consequences of sin. Under its blighting influence the fairest spot on earth becomes a wilderness, the most fruitful land becomes a desert, and the richest region is turned into a barren waste by the iniquity of them that dwell therein. 2. The only way of relief is by returning to God. "Whither should we go with our cries but to him from whom the judgment we dread comes? There is no flying from him but by flying to him; no escaping from the Almighty but by making our submission and supplication to the Almighty; this is taking hold on his strength that we may make peace." 3. The prophet stimulates those that are backward to engage in this duty by his own example. "O Lord," he says, "to thee will I cry;’ as though he said, "As for others, let them do what they please; as for myself, I will do that which conscience and God’s own Word tell me to be the right thing to do, and the right as well as only safe course to take." 4. Our dependence on God both for daily bread and spiritual nourishment. BY J.R. THOMSON Joe 1:2, Joe 1:3 Tradition. The generations of mankind succeed one another upon the face of the earth; but they are not disconnected, isolated, independent. Each receives from those who have gone before, and communicates to those who shall come after. Hence the continuity of human history; hence the life of humanity. I. ALONE IS AN BASIS FOE . It is well known that oral tradition is liable to corruption. Inaccuracy creeps in, and the truth is distorted, by the weakness of memory, the liveliness of imagination, the power of prejudice. Hence the importance of a "book-revelation," which has been often but unjustly reviled. The Scriptures are a standard by which correctness of belief may be tested, by which ignorance may be instructed, and errors avoided. There were traditions in the apostolic age which originated in misunderstanding, and which were corrected by the evangelists. II. HAS, HOWEVER, A PLACE IN . 1. Memories of Divine goodness and interposition are thus preserved. The Passover may be adduced as an example. The children of a Hebrew family asked, when partaking of the Paschal meal, "What mean ye by this feast?" and an opportunity was thus given for the father to relate the story of Israel’s emancipation from the bondage of Egypt. 2. Instances of Divine displeasure and wrath following upon human sin were thus handed down. Joel alluded especially in this passage to such purposes as these: Calamities came upon the land; the people were sorely chastened; and the prophet enjoins upon the old to communicate, to their posterity—to their children’s children—the awful events by which Jehovah signalized his indignation with national unfaithfulness and disobedience. 3. Piety was thus promoted. One generation would learn from another what are the Divine laws, what the principles and methods of the Divine government. In this manner the fear of the Lord, and confidence in his faithfulness, would evidently be promoted and perpetuated.—T. Joe 1:5 Awake! This solemn appeal to those who are designated and denounced as drunkards is fraught with implicit lessons of wisdom and faithfulness for all devout readers of God’s Word. I. IT IMPLIES THE OF SLUMBER. Such is the state of those who are immersed in the cares and the enjoyments of this earthly life, who are deaf to the thunder of the Law and to the promises of the gospel, who are blind to the visions of judgment or of grace that are passing before their closed eyes. II. IT SLUMBER AS SIN AND FOLLY. The body needs sleep and repose; but the soul should never be insensible and indifferent to Divine and eternal realities. Such a state is one of indifference to the presence and to the revelation of him who has the first claim upon the hearts he has framed. Slumber such as this is fast deepening into death. III. IT CALLS FOR AND NEWNESS OF LIFE. There is implied a power to respond to the Divine summons. And certainly the first thing for the sinner to do is to shake off sloth and indifference, to look about him, to listen to the voice that speaks from heaven, to catch the welcome accents of the gospel, which is the message of God to the souls of men. Blessed be God, this is the appeal: "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light!"—T. Joe 1:9 Religious privation. The old covenant was one especially characterized by human ministrations and external observances and solemnities. Apart from priests and sacrifices its purposes could not have been accomplished, and its witness to the world would have been unintelligible and vain. No wonder that to the Hebrew mind no prospect was more terrible than the cessation of public worship, of public offerings, of sacerdotal services. In the spiritual economy under which we live, the case is somewhat different. Yet no enlightened mind can contemplate without concern, without dismay, a state of society in which religious offices should be suppressed and religious ministrations silenced. I. THE OF THE OFFICES OF WOULD INVOLVE THE OF THE PUBLIC OF GOD’S WILL TO MAN. II. IT WOULD INVOLVE THE OF HUMAN IN THE AND THE MOST . III. IT WOULD INVOLVE THE OF A UNITED AND PUBLIC OF THE DUE FROM MAN TO GOD.—T. Joe 1:12 The withering of joy. The description given by the prophet of the devastation and misery caused by the horrible plague of locusts is so graphic and so frightful, that the very strong language in which the effect produced upon the inhabitants of the land is portrayed cannot be deemed exaggerated. The husbandmen are covered with shame, and joy is withered in all hearts. I. JOY IS NATURAL TO MAN, AND IS THE OF A CREATOR. It is occasioned by the plentiful produce of the earth, by the possession of health and by circumstances of comfort, by the solace of human affection. Joy is a motive to activity, and diffuses itself from heart to heart, and raises the tone of society. A joyless life man was not designed to leach II. THE OF MAY WITHER JOY. It is a plant of great beauty, but also of great delicacy. Exposed to the fierce winds of adversity, this fair plant withers and decays. Such is the constitution of the world, and such the changeable. ness of life, that this event does sometimes occur, as in the circumstances described in this passage by the Prophet Joel. III. EVEN THE OF JOY MAY BE AND FOR GOOD BY TRUE . It may lead the afflicted to seek consolation and happiness in a higher than any earthly source. Especially does the gospel of Christ, by revealing unto us as our Saviour "a Man of sorrows," teach us that there are joys of benevolence and self-sacrifice which are preferable to all delights of sense, to all enrichments of worldly prosperity.—T. Joe 1:14 A fast. The afflictions which befell Judah are represented as producing a deep impression upon the whole nation, and as justifying the calling of a general fast. I. THOSE WHO FAST. This is an exercise which cannot be performed vicariously. 1. All the inhabitants of the land take part in it. 2. The elders of the people, as representatives and leaders, are especially summoned to attend. II. THE TOKENS OF FASTING. Mere abstinence from food or from delicacies is not religious fasting. Humiliation and contrition are the essentials. Yet these may express themselves in renunciation of ordinary pursuits, refusal of ordinary pleasures, the assumption of mourning garments, the refusal of wonted repose and comfort. III. THE ASPECTS OF FASTING. There must be acknowledgment of sin before God, with confession and contrition. The Lord’s house must be sought. The confession must be general and public. The cry of prayer must be heard in the sanctuary. Such a fast will not be observed in vain. It will prepare the way for the day of reconciliation, and for the feast of gladness.—T. Joe 1:15 The day of the Lord. This phrase is peculiarly Joel’s, and it is apparently used by him in different senses. Of these we notice three. I. THE DAY OF THE LORD IS A DAY OF AND . This is plain from its further designation as a day of destruction, and from the prefatory exclamation "Alas]" with which it is introduced. Superstition, no doubt, has often misinterpreted the calamities of human life; yet it would be insensibility and spiritual blindness not to recognize the presence of God in the day of adversity. Such a day is the Lord’s, as reminding us of the Lord’s Kingship over creation, and as summoning us to sincere repentance towards God. II. THE DAY OF THE LORD IS A DAY OF . The retribution of the present is an earnest of the day of recompense to all mankind, when the Judge of all shall summon all nations to his bar. III. THE DAY OF THE LORD IS TO HIS PEOPLE THE DAY OF AND . SO the Apostle Peter interprets the language of the Prophet Joel. The outpouring of spiritual blessing, the effecting of spiritual deliverance, the fulfilling of the purposes of infinite mercy, shall all come about in that promised and expected day.—T. Joe 1:17,Joe 1:18 The desolation of the land. Whether actually and literally by a plague of locusts, or by a hostile incursion such as a plague of this kind might well typify, Judah was overrun, afflicted, and cursed. The picture is one of unrelieved gloom and misery. I. THE OF GOD REACH MEN THROUGH THE CROPS OF THE FIELD, AND THE HERDS AND FLOCKS OF THE PASTURE. The necessaries of life, the constituents of wealth, are in the hand of God. He rules not only in heaven but upon earth. It may be doubted whether we are at liberty confidently to attribute to Divine displeasure the sufferings which befall nations in the way of disaster and famine; but in this passage this interpretation is given upon prophetic authority. II. SUCH ARE TO SUMMON THOSE WITH THEM TO AND . It may be that only by some such means can the hard heart be broken, and brought to true humiliation and penitence. III. SUCH SHOULD LEAD MEN TO SEEK THEIR HIGHEST GOOD, NOT IN , BUT IN . To many men poverty, losses, worldly ruin, have been the means of the highest happiness. Well is it if, losing the gifts, we find the Giver; losing the streams, we find the Fountain. The soul may learn to cry, "Thou art my Portion, O my God!"—T. Joe 1:19, Joe 1:20 Trouble leads to prayer. When Scripture depicts human misery and destitution, it does not leave the matter, as though there were nothing further to say. Always a way of escape is pointed out; always a gleam of light is let in upon the darkness; always a remedy is offered for the disease whose symptoms are described. I. THE CRY TO WHICH TROUBLE LEADS IS A CRY OF . God has not afflicted the greatest sufferer beyond his deserts. The distressed soul gives utterance to the acknowledgment, Against thee, thee only, have I sinned. II. THE CRY WHICH TROUBLE PROMPTS IS A CRY OF . The soul may have called upon others, and in vain. There is no answer, no deliverance, when help is sought from man. Perhaps the soul addresses itself last to the Helper who should have been sought first, before all III. THE CRY WHICH TROUBLE PROMPTS IS A CRY OF FAITH. God has said, "Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee." The promise is remembered, acted upon, and pleaded. Believing the Divine assurance, the afflicted lifts up his eyes unto the hills whence cometh help. IV. THE CRY WHICH TROUBLE PROMPTS IS A CRY WHICH IS HEARD AND . God delights to hear the suppliant’s entreaty, the sinner’s confession, the earnest petition of interceding friends. Such cries come up into the ear of God. The sacrifice is accepted; the sin is forgiven; the grace is accorded; the chastisement is removed; the blessing is bestowed.—T. BY A. ROWLAND Joe 1:1 The life-work of an obscure prophet. The literary style of this book deserves the consideration of every student of Scripture. With the exception of Isaiah and (as some think) of Habakkuk, Joel surpasses all his brethren in sublimity. His pictures of the disasters following upon sin are marvellously vivid, and his promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit was still living in the memory of the Jews when Peter, on the day of Pentecost, declared that its fulfilment had come. The first half of the book describes the Divine judgments which were at hand, and the second half (beginning with the eighteenth verse of Joe 2:1-32.) unfolds the promise of Divine favour. Its readers pass from darkness to light, from grief to joy, from estrangement to reconciliation; and in this book, as in experience, the transition hinges on the penitential prayer to which it was the prophet’s mission to summon the people. We know scarcely more of Joel than the fact that he was the son of Pethuel. But the meaning of his name—"Jehovah is God"—was suggestive; for it was none other than the cry of the people on Carmel, when fire came down from heaven in answer to Elijah’s prayer, and would therefore serve as a reminder to his auditors of their solemn acknowledgment of Jehovah’s supremacy and claims. I. THE WHICH JOEL FOR WORK is described in the single phrase, "The word of the Lord came to Joel." This was the one fact necessary to authenticate his message. If God was speaking through him, then—whoever he might be—the world was bound to listen to him; his word was a declaration from the Unseen. There is now a general forgetfulness of the possibility of such revelation. It is accepted by some as an axiom that the God who created the world and set it going cannot interfere further with his own handiwork; that if he exists at all, he lives at an infinite remove from mundane affairs, as did the god of Epicurus. If we speak of works done which cannot at present be accounted for by the laws we have deduced from observed ordinary phenomena, and urge that men have had glimpses of an outlying sphere of energy which surrounds what is visible, we are regarded as credulous enthusiasts. But in an earlier age there were men whom scientists would be the first to condemn, who, having never seen a comet blazing in the sky, nor heard of such a phenomenon, would have laughed to scorn its possibility. Yet the world now not only believes in the existence of comets, but has found out the law of their return, and has assigned them their own places in the planetary system with which once they appeared to have nothing in common. Is it not possible that the same process will take place in regard to what we now call supernatural? There are psychical phenomena still awaiting explanation which have convinced us that we have influence over each other, apart from physical contact; and if one human spirit can affect another, surely it is not incredible that the Father of spirits was able to touch the springs of thought and feeling in those ancient prophets. Indeed, this was not peculiar to them; it is an experience of to-day among the devout and prayerful, who obey the command of their Lord, "What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light." II. THE OF WORK with which Joel was content. His was the spirit of John the Baptist, who was willing to remain only the "voice" of God. The world little thinks how much it owes to its silent workers in literature, in politics, and in religion. Many are living in quiet homes, or in poor lodgings, whose names are never heard, whose duties are not suspected, who by their pens are leading the nation in ways of righteousness. God’s most faithful servants are sometimes personally obscure. Some are patiently plodding away at monotonous work, and bear in the spirit of their Master many an injustice and cruel slight. Others in business stretch out the helping hand to weaker brethren who, but for such timely aid, would sink in a vortex of ruin. And ministering angels still venture into haunts of vice to seek and to save those who are lost. The Father who seeth in secret will hereafter bestow some of the highest places in his kingdom on those who all their life long have been without honour or applause. III. THE OF JOEL’S WORK it would not be easy to over-estimate. Several of the later prophets were indebted to him for suggestive thoughts and phrases. Peter quotes his prophecy about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; and John, in his Book of the Revelation, makes use of his image of the locusts. It is thus that God builds the temple of truth. We see its stately proportions and exclaim, "Behold what manner of stones and what buildings are here!" but how often we forget the quarries from which the stones were dug. and the workmen who did the first rough work of shaping them for the Master’s use! It is not so with God. We often admire the hero who, in advocacy of the truth, compels the world to listen; but the germs of his character may be traced to the nurture of a gentle mother, whose character and teaching, with God’s blessing, made her son what he is. He is the living witness of the issues flowing from her obscure work. IV. THE COURAGE AND which Joel showed in his work. All was dark around him, and he knew things would be darker still before the sunshine came. He was living in a kingdom which, after the revolt of the ten tribes, was about equal in area to the county of Suffolk, and even with the addition of the district belonging to Benjamin was not so large as Yorkshire. Yet he boldly looks forward to a time when that kingdom would be the centre of light to the world. We talk of the "materialism of the old dispensation;" but here is faith in spiritual force which may put us all to shame. We ought not to be unduly discouraged by statistics which compare the numbers of Christians with the numbers of heathens. We should reflect that on the side of Christ are the leading nations of the world—not those falling into decay, but those which are planting the future empires which will rule the future. Yet, with all our thankfulness for this, our confidence must be not in it, but in him who can and will work through these peoples till all the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of our God.—A.R. Joe 1:14 Religious reformation. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/pulpit-commentary/ Joe 2:1-11 These verses contain a further description of the calamity occasioned by the locusts and the appearance presented by them; the calling of a congregational meeting for penitence and prayer; the reason assigned in the coming of the day of the Lord. Joe 2:1 Blow ye the trumpet (margin, cornet) in Zion, and sound an alarm (or, cause it to sound) in my holy mountain. The shophar, or far-sounding horn, and probably the chatsoterah, the hazar or silver trumpet, were called into requisition. The priests are urged with great vehemence, as tiqu shophar and hariu imply, to apprise the people that the day of Jehovah’s terrible judgment was near at hand, and to prepare for it. This alarm was to be sounded from Zion, the dry or sunny hill, the holy moun-rain. The noun qadosh like tsadiq, is applied to persons, therefore the noun qodshe is used. It rose to an elevation of 2539 feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea. It was the place of the ark in David’s day, and so of the visible symbol of the Divine presence, and therefore the holy mountain, though subsequently Moriah was chosen as the temple-hill. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand. The effect here precedes the cause, as if what is upper. most in the heart comes first to the lips; while the abruptness may, perhaps, express the excitement and intensity of feeling. But how could the Lord’s day be said to have come (ba is perfect), and yet to be near at hand? Hengstenberg replies that, in the intuition of the prophet, it had already come, though in reality it was only drawing near. Keil’s solution of the difficulty is more satisfactory: every particular judgment that takes place in the history of God’s kingdom is the day of the Lord, and yet only approaching as far as the complete fulfilment was concerned. Joe 2:2 A day of darkness and of glooming, a day of clouds and of thick darkness. It was, indeed, a day of Divine judgment, a day of sore distress. Besides the common terms for "darkness" and "cloud," there are two other terms, אֲפֵלָה, thick and dense darkness, such as ensues after sunset; the root אָפַל, though not used in the Hebrew, is cognate with the Arabic afala, properly, to "set as the sun:" compare naphal, nabhal, abhal; while עְרָפֶל is blended from the triliterals עָרִיף, a cloud, and אָפַל, to be dark (compare ὀρφνός and ὀρφνή), darkness of donas, thick clouds. (1) Some understand this darkness literally, as in the description of the plague of locusts in Egypt it is written, "They covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened." (2) Others understand it figuratively, as light denotes prosperity, and darkness adversity. Thus Kimchi says, "Affliction is likened to darkness, as joy is likened to light." At the same time, he mentions the literal exposition: "Or," he says, "through the multitude of the locusts the land is darkened;" and refers to Exodus 10:15, "For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened." As the morning spread upon the mountains. (1) Some explain this of the locust-army stretching far like the morning light, as it breaks over the hills. Thus Pococke, "If shachar be rendered, as most generally, the morning, and the light thereof meant, then the meaning thereof seems to express the sudden coming and the widespreading of the thing spoken of, so as not to be hindered, in that resembling the morning light, which in a moment discovers itself on the tops of the mountains (on which it first appeareth), though at never so great a distance one from another." The wide and quick diffusion of this plague, like that of the morning light, is the thing meant. But (2) Keil understands shachar of the yellow light which proceeds from swarms of locusts as they approach, and translates, "Like morning dawn spread over the mountains is it" (i.e. the glimmer on their wings). "The prophet’s meaning," he adds, "is evident enough from what follows. He clearly refers to the bright glimmer, or splendour, which is seen in the sky as a swarm of locusts approaches, from the reflection of the sun’s rays from their wings." Thus the subject is neither yom nor ‛am, which the Vulgate, contrary to the accents, joins to it. (3) Others. again, connect the expression closely with the "darkness" preceding, and translate, "Like the morning twilight spread upon the mountains," that is, before it descends into the valleys. Rather, as Wunsche, "Like the gray of the morning," etc. (comp. Exodus 10:15 and שחוד and שיחור). Exposition (1) is confirmed by Rashi, who says, "The locusts and the palmer-worms are spread over the mountains, as the morning dawn is spread through (in) an the world." Similarly Aben Ezra, "Like the dawn which is diffused in an instant." Kimchi’s comment is fuller, but to the same effect: "As the morning dawn which is spread over the mountains as in an instant, for there is called the beginning of the sun in his going forth, because of their height; so then the locusts are spread and extended over the land in an instant." With this exposition of the clause we may compare Virgil’s— "Postera vix summos spargebat lumine montes Orta dies." "The following daybreak had scarce begun to sow the mountain-tops with light." There hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. This is a hyperbolic mode of speech, to denote the extraordinary and unusual severity of the disaster. The Hebrew commentators are at pains to reconcile what appears to them a discrepancy. They say, "It was never known before or since that four kinds of locusts came to-together;" as for the plague of Egypt;there was but one sort of them, they say. The correct explanation is that the like had not been in the same country, that is, the land of Judaea, though elsewhere there might have been the like, as in Egypt before, or in other countries since. Joe 2:3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth. (1) The fire was the extreme drought preceding them; and the flame refers to the devastation of the locusts, for the places laid waste by them presented the appearance of being burnt with fire, the locusts consuming not only the grain and grass, but the very roots. (2) Or it may refer to the locusts themselves; their destructive power being as though fire spread along before them. and flame swept the ground behind them. (3) Or the fire may have been literally such, the people, in self-de fence, kindling it to stop, or turn aside, or drive away the advance of the locust-army. (4) Keil explains this burning heat, heightened into devouring flames of fire, as accompaniments of the Divine Being "as he comes to judgment at the head of his army," like the balls of fire which attended his manifestation in Egypt, and the thunder and lightning amid which he descended at Sinai. The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness. This reference by the first of the prophets to the first book of the Bible is noteworthy. The country before them, with its fertile fields and valuable vineyards, its fruit trees, and pleasant plants, and various cereals resembled a paradise. As they proceeded the corn was consumed, fruit trees and forest trees alike stripped of leaves and left barked and bare, the grass and verdure withered; so that after them nothing was to be seen but a desolate wilderness. Yea, and nothing shall escape them. (1) That is, either nothing shall escape the locusts; or (2) Keil contends that the meaning is that "even that which escaped did not remain to it," and refers lo to the land. Joe 2:4-6 These verses describe the appearance of the locusts and the alarm which their presence causes. Joe 2:4 The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses. They arc said to resemble horses in the shape of the head; hence the Germans call them Heupferde, or hay-horses, and the Italians cavalette. This resemblance had been noticed long ago by Theodoret, who says, "If any one should examine accurately the head of the locust, he will find it exceedingly like that of a horse." And as horsemen, so shall they run. In rapidity of motion they resembled running horses (parashim). Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap. This is the next circumstance noticed about them, viz. the noise of their motion. Their motion was peculiar; it was springing or leaping, and, when they sprang or leaped, the noise they made resembled the rattling of a jerky two-wheeled war-chariot over a rough mountain-road. Joe 2:5 The first clause may be understood (1) according to the Authorized Version, whereby the leaping is attributed to the locusts, or (2) asper may be understood after chariots, and then the leaping is predicated of the chariots. The last clause of the same verse is capable of three constructions, namely (1) "They shall leap (yeraqqedim being supplied) as a strong people set in battle array;" or (2) "The noise (qol understood) shall be as the noise of a strong people set in battle array;" or (3) "They are as a strong people set in battle array." Kimchi interprets according to (2), "As a strong people that is set in array to fight with the people who is opposed to them, who make a great noise and shouting in order to strike terror into their enemies." Like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble. This was the noise made by them, not when they were properly in motion, but when alighting on a district they devoured every green thing in plant, or shrub, or tree—the noise, in fact, which they made when feeding. It resembled the crackling of flame ever a field of grain or stubble set on fire. Such was the noise they made when marching, and such the noise they made when foraging—the one was like the rattling of a chariot, the other the crackling of fire. Cyril notices this peculiarity as follows: "They say that their alighting in the fields is effected not without noise; but that a certain shrill noise is produced by their teeth, while they chew into pieces the prostrate grain, as of wind scattering flame." Thus Thomson also says, "The noise made in marching and foraging was like that of a heavy shower on a distant forest." As a strong people set in battle array. Their progress is thus described: "Their steady though swift advance and regular order resembled an army well equipped and in battle array on its line of march." Cyril says of them, "By reason of their innumerable multitude, not easy to be encountered, but rather very dangerous to be met with." Again he says, "They are an irresistible thing, and altogether invincible by men." Here again the prophet’s description is confirmed by the observation of intelligent eye-witnesses. Referring to Solomon’s statement, "The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands," Dr. Thomson says, "Nothing in their habits is more striking than the pertinacity with which they all pursue the same line of march, like a disciplined army. As they have no king, they must be influenced by some common instinct." Joe 2:6 Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. Peoples or nations writhe in pain or tremble at the sight of them, lest they should settle on their fields and gardens, destroying the "golden glories" of the one, and the "leafy honours" of the other. In the second member the word פָארוּר is (1) generally connected with פָרוּר, a pot, rad. פדר, to break in pieces, and translated accordingly. Thus the Septuagint: "Every face is as the blackness of a pot;" the Syriac also: "Every face shall be black as the blackness of a pot;" in like manner the Chaldee: "All faces are covered with soot, so that they are black as a pot." (2) But Aben Ezra connects the word with פֵאֵר, to beautify, glorify, adorn, and translates, "They withdraw (gather to themselves)their redness (ruddiness);" that is, they become pale. The ’Speaker’s Commentary ’ adopts this view of the expression, and illustrates it by Shakespeare’s fancy of the blood being summoned from the face to help the heart in its death-struggle— "Being all descended to the labouring heart; Who, in the conflict that it holds with death, Attracts the same for aidance ’gainst the enemy: Which with the heart there cools and ne’er returneth To blush and beautify the cheek again." The parallel usually cited in favour of asaph being employed in the sense of withdrawing is, "And the stars shall withdraw their shining" (Joe 2:10; Joe 3:15). This proceeds on the supposition that asaph and qabhats have the same meaning of "gathering "—gathering up, gathering in, withdrawing. But D. Kimchi quotes his father (Joseph Kimchi) as objecting to this rendering, on the ground of the distinction which he asserts to prevail between them. Asaph, he says, "is used of gathering together, or in, that which is dispersed, or net present; but qabhats is not so used." Joe 2:7-9 The prophet, having mentioned the consternation and terror occasioned by the approach of locusts, proceeds to compare them to an army well equipped and overcoming all impediments. Joe 2:7 They shall run like mighty men. This either refers to their extreme nimbleness or rapidity of motion (compare the Homeric πόδαςὠκὺσ̓Αχιλλεύςποδάρκης, and the like), or describes their running to an assault with intrepid valour and unwearied vigour. They shall climb the wall like men of war. This marks the success of their assault; they scale the walls and make good their attack. And they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks. Their march is as irresistible as it is orderly. In their onward march each pursues his way, allowing no obstacle to arrest or retard his course; while in a collective body they proceed and maintain their serried ranks unbroken. The verb עבט is probably cognate with עבת, to twist, and thus to turn aside. Thus the LXX.: "They shall not turn aside their tracks;" so also the Syriac and Jerome translate it; but the Chaldee compares it with עבוט, a pledge, and, as the deposit is detained till the pledge is redeemed, takes in the meaning of delay. Rosenmuller explains it in the sense of change or exchange, from the Qal, signifying "to receive on loan," and the Hiph; "to give on loan." Otherwise it is to "interweave" (equivalent to עבת), "change." The sense of the whole is their not diverging to either side, nor straggling out of rank. Joe 2:8 Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path. "And not one shall stand aloof from his brother." This is either the sequence of their not breaking rank, or perhaps it is a co-ordinate particular in the detail. They neither straggle away from each other, and so fall out of rank, nor do they crowd and crush and press each other while keeping rank. The order of their march is perfect, every one keeping his proper place and in the proper path. And when they fall upon the sword (margin, dart), they shall not be wounded. The meaning is either (1) that the weapons shall not wound them, or intransitively, as in the text, they shall not be wounded, כּצע, to cut, or break in pieces, being here synonymous with פצע, to wound; or (2) that they do not cut off, break off, or interrupt their course. No force of arms can stay their progress or step their advance. On this clause Kimchi remarks, "This army is not like other enemies, which you may hinder by the sword from coming upon you; but these light upon the swords, and are not wounded by reason of their lightness? He also remarks on גֶּבֶר, "Because he compares them with men and heroes, he uses גּבר, although this word does not apply except to the sons of men." Joe 2:9 They shall run to and fro in the city (or rush to the assault of the city. Wunsche, and so LXX; "They shall seize upon 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. In the first clause the comparison with an army still continues. The attack has succeeded, the city has been taken by assault, the victorious troops are running to and fro in the city; so far the locusts are fitly represented by an army vigorous in its advance, steady in its march, resistless in its assault, victorious in its attack, and masters of the captured city. The remainder of the ninth verse is not equally applicable to the figure and the fact in common, but belongs exclusively to the locusts themselves; they creep up the wall, climb up upon the houses, and find ingress even at the windows. "There is no road," says Jerome, "impassable to locusts. They penetrate into fields, and crops, and trees, and cities, and even the recesses of the bedchambers;" while Theodoret remarks of locusts that" not only when flying, but by creeping along the walls, they pass through the windows into the houses themselves." Thus there was no spot to which they could not find access, and no place secure from their assault. Yashoqqu. Aben Ezra and Kimchi both connect this word with shoq, a leg. The latter says, "It has the signification of shoq, a leg, and he mentions this word in respect to the locust, because its legs are long; and further, because it is continually going and seldom resting; and thus he (Isaiah) says, ’As the running to and fro of locusts shall he run upon them,’ as if he said, ’a continual going up and down.’" Joe 2:10, Joe 2:11 These verses picture the dreadful consequences of the then present and temporary visitation of the locusts, and of the future and final judgment of which it was a type. The earth shall quake before them; (1) the locusts. The heavens tremble. The alighting of the locusts on the earth would make it quake, and their flight through the heavens would make it tremulous. As applied to the visitation o! locusts, the language would be hyperbolical, unless we accept Jerome’s explanation as follows: "It is not that the strength of the locusts is so great that they can move the heavens and shake the earth, but that to those who suffer from such calamities, from the amount of their own terror the heavens appear to shake and the earth to reel." (2) Before him; i.e. Jehovah himself amid the storm; and all in accordance with fact. But a greater judgment than that of the locusts is typified by the language of the prophet. Kimchi observes on this (tenth)verse that "all the expressions are parabolical, or figurative, to set forth the greatness of a calamity; for this is the usage of Scripture, as, ’The sun shall be darkened in his going forth,’ and the like." So also Abarbauel on this verse: "Which all is a parabolical expression of the calamities of the Jews." Aben Ezra understands it differently: "Men of the earthquake." Rashi: "The heavens quake and tremble because of the punishment that comes upon Israel." The second part of the verse, as also the verse following, appear to us to indicate this. The sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining: and the Lord shall utter his voice before his army. That a storm succeeded and put an end to the plague of locusts, and that the darkening of the sun and moon and stars signified the obscuration of the heavenly luminaries by the storm-clouds that overspread the heavens and darkened the face of day, would fall short of expressions of such solemn grandeur as are here employed by the prophet, Besides, our Lord applies language of the same import to the last judgment in the Gospels: "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven." Thunder, no doubt, is the voice of the Lord, which he utters while marching at the head of his army to execute judgment and manifest his wrath against his enemies. 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? Three reasons are here assigned for the preceding sublime description of Jehovah coming to judgment at the head of his hosts. These are the following: the greatness of his army in number and might; the power with which his army executes his word of command; and the terrible character of the day of judgment when the vials of Divine wrath shall be poured forth. Joe 2:12-14 The judgment of the locusts was typical of the great day of judgment. The tartars of that day were designed to bring the people to repentance. Thus judgment was mingled with mercy. Joe 2:12 Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with great fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. At this period of sore judgment God, by the prophet, calls upon the people to return and repent, to fast and to weep, to grieve inwardly and mourn outwardly for sin. He also instructs them how to engage in the duty of humiliation aright and acceptably. The humiliation was to be that of the heart—sorrow of heart for the sins by which they had offended God, inward shame on account of those iniquities by which they had wronged their own souls and marred their own best interests. But while there behoved to be this inward contrition, outward expressions of it were also required. Genuine sorrow and shame for sin were to be accompanied by fasting, tears of penitence, and other indications of mourning. With all your heart. Kimchi comments thus: "That your repentance be not with a heart and a heart." Joe 2:13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God. Where there is real contrition of spirit because of sin, outward manifestations are both suitable and proper, though not by way of display or for sake of ostentation. But they were reminded, on the other hand, that mere outward manifestations avail nothing unless there also exist the deep inward feelings which are in harmony with and naturally underlie those manifestations. Out of such inward feelings those outward expressions properly originate; hence, after the exhortation to fasting and weeping and mourning, it is added, "Rend your heart, and not your garments." To rend the garments, among the Jews, was a token of great grief, and imported that the individual who did so was overwhelmed with excessive sorrow, or had encountered some terrible calamity. Thus we read of Jacob, on receiving his son Joseph’s coat of many colours, rending his clothes, putting sackcloth on his loins, and mourning for his son many days (comp. also 2 Chronicles 34:27). In these instances the sorrow was deep and genuine and bitter. It was possible, however, to exhibit the external signs of grief without any such corresponding inward feeling of sorrow; just as it is still possible for men to draw near to God with their lips while the heart is far from him. To prevent such hypocritical pretence they are commanded to rend their hearts, and not their garments only. There was no impropriety in rending their garments in token of great grief for sin and of great indignation against themselves for their folly, but the command imports that they were not to rest in the outward sign without the reality of the thing signified. For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. To the exhortation he subjoins the encouraging manifestation of the Divine character with which God, ages before, had favoured Moses, substituting for "truth" the trait of character best suited to the present emergency. tie is not an absolute God or an inexorable God, but their covenant God and Father who invites them even to himself, against whom they had so heinously sinned and whom they had so grievously offended. Joe 2:14 Who knoweth if he will return and repent; that is, return from and repent of his purpose of executing judgment. And leave a blessing behind him; that is, leave behind him when returning from the exercise of judgment to resume his seat on the heavenly throne, the blessing being a replacement of the harvest fruits which the locusts had consumed, even a meat offering and a drink offering, for the service of the sanctuary as well as sustenance to supply the people’s own bodily wants. Jerome explains the question of Joe 2:14 with much judgment as follows: "Lest perchance they might either despair on account of the magnitude of their crimes, or the greatness of the Divine clemency might make them careless." Besides (1) the interrogative rendering, there is (2) that of the Chaldee, followed by Rashi and Kimchi. The latter says, "He that knows the way of repentance, let him repent, and God will repent of this evil." Also in addition to (1) that is, Authorized Version, he (i.e. God) "shall leave a blessing," there is (2) that of Rashi and Aben Ezra, who explain as follows: "Perhaps God will repent, and that army shall leave a blessing, out of which they may make a meat offering and a drink offering." Joe 2:15-17 "The harsh blast of the consecrated ram’s horn called an assembly for an extraordinary fast. Not a soul was to be absent. Like the fiery cross, it convened old and young, men and women, mothers with infants at their breasts, the bridegroom and the bride on their bridal day. All were there stretched in front of the altar. The altar itself presented the dreariest of all sights—a hearth without its sacred fire, a table spread without its sacred feast. The priestly caste, instead of gathering as usual upon its steps and its platform, were driven, as it were, to the further space; they turned their backs to the dead altar, and lay prostrate, gazing towards the Invisible Presence within the sanctuary. Instead of the hymns and music which, since the time of David, had entered into their prayers, there was nothing heard but the passionate sobs and the loud dissonant howls such as only an Eastern hierarchy could utter. Instead of the mass of white mantles which they usually presented, they were wrapt in black goat’s-hair sackcloth, twisted round them, not with the brilliant sashes of the priestly attire, but with a rough girdle of the same texture, which they never unbound night or day. What they wore of their common dress was rent asunder or cast off. With bare breasts they waved their black drapery towards the temple, and shrieked aloud, ’Spare thy people, O Lord!’" Such is Dean Stanley’s vivid picture of the circumstances and scene described by the prophet in the above verses. A scene exceedingly similar occurs in the commencement of the ’OEdipus Tyrannus’ of Sophocles— "Why sit ye here, my children, younger brood Of Cadmus famed of old, in solemn state, Your bands thus wreathed with the suppliants’ boughs? And all the city reeks with incense, And all re-echoes with your hymns and groans; And I, my children, counting it unmeet To hear report from others, I have come Myself, whom all name OEdipus the Great." Joe 2:18-27 form the sequel of this chapter in the Hebrew, but five additional verses make up the chapter in the Authorized Version. These are divisible into two parts. In the first division the prophet assures his countrymen of the bestowal of temporal mercies, and in the second of the promise of spiritual blessings. Joe 2:18 The futures of this verse with vav consec, are properly taken as perfects; nor is there any inconsistency, provided we understand, as following Joe 2:17 and preceding Joe 2:18, the fact that the priests had engaged in the penitence enjoined, and offered the supplication to which they had been summoned; neither is the omission of any express mention of the circumstance thus supposed to intervene between these verses any valid objection, especially as the grammar favours the view in question. Then follows a manifestation of God’s mercy in answer to the assumed penitence and prayer of his servants. God’s jealousy and pity are both engaged—his jealousy for his land, and his compassion for his people. His jealousy is figurative, and the allusion is probably to that of a husband who is jealous on account of any dishonour done to his wife, and who resents it more keenly than a dishonour offered to himself. The pity is such as God ever manifests to his people when penitent; for "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." Joe 2:19 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. The Lord’s answer comes in the shape of a promise of relief of which man and beast were so sorely in need. The promise, with deliverance from distress, couples ample abundance. The corn and the wine and the oil—the three great temporal blessings, equivalent to food, refreshment, and ornament—which the locusts had destroyed, as we read in Joe 2:10, God hero promises to restore, and to restore not merely to the extent that was barely necessary, but in full and abundant measure, so that they would be satisfied therewith. (1) The verbs of fulness or want, clothing and unclothing, going or coming and dwelling, govern an accusative; hence שׂבע has the accusative here; sometimes it is constructed with áor .î (2) There are two constructions of a participle with a pronoun as subject—that in which the pronoun is written in its separate form in immediate connection with the participle, and that in which it is appended as a suffix. (3) The words dagan from dagah, to multiply; yitshar from tsahar, to shine; and tirosh from yarash, to take possession of the brain, have each the article prefixed, to emphasize the products restored by the Divine mercy. The article, no doubt, is prefixed to the names of classes of objects generally known. And I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen. No more would they be a reproach or byword among the heathen, sneered at, as though God had abandoned them in his sore displeasure, or through sheer impotence had been unable to help them. All this God promised to do in answer to the prayers of his people. Such was the result of penitence, and such the power of prayer. Cherpath is a second accusative, or, more correctly, an appositional accusative to ethkem. The construction with le frequently takes the place of the second accusative, as in the seventeenth verse of the same chapter. Joe 2:20 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. This verse promises the destruction of the devastator. The prophet here specifies the means by which the Eternal was going to restore the blessings of harvest. The order of sequence is inverted—the effect preceding the cause; thus, re. storation of prosperity and plenty goes before, and the cause thereof, being relief from invasion and loss, follows after. Nor is there anything singular in this, as men are more alive to recovery from a distressful state of any kind than to the remedy which effects it. The "army" of this verse we still hold to be the tribes of locusts, which, like an invading army, with its numerous regimental divisions, had overrun the land, scattering dismay and distress wherever it advanced; yet from this very verse, and the expression "northern" in particular, it has been argued that it cannot refer to locusts, but to human invaders symbolized by locusts and the havoc wrought by them. (1) The north is not the native land of locusts; it is rather the south—the Arabian, Lybian, or Egyptian desert. But (2) "northern" may denote the quarter from which the locusts appeared to the prophet in vision to enter the land; or, driven upward by a south wind which regularly blows, as we are informed, in those regions during spring, and then to the north of Palestine by an east wind which blows with similar regularity in summer, and again into and ultimately out of Palestine by the north wind blowing in the autumn. "In this case," says a writer in the ’Speaker’s Commentary,’ "the northern plague would have been a natural expression for an inhabitant of Jerusalem to use in speaking of the locusts; as natural as it would be for a Londoner to speak of a pestilence that had commenced its ravages in Great Britain at Edinburgh, as coming to him from the north, though it were originally imported from France or Spain." The word (3) may symbolically denote "calamitous," according to the explanation of some, since calamity is so frequently represented as coming from the north, so that the north is more or less identified with diasaster; thus we read in Jeremiah 4:6, "I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction." It may, however, be safely admitted that, by the locust, the northern or Assyrian enemies of Judah, who advanced from the north as the most accessible quarter for attack, are in a subsidiary sense represented. The expulsion of these enemies brings relief; they are driven into a parched, and so desert and desolate, land; "and there," as Kimchi observes, "they shall die because they shall find nothing to eat." That land may be either the Idumaean desert south of Judah or Arabia Deserta. Thus the main body of the great locust-army perishes in the southern desert; while the van of the army is driven into the Dead Sea, and the rear of it into the Mediterranean Sea. Or, more literally, the face of this locust-host was towards the east, or front sea, that is, as already intimated, the Dead Sea eastward; his hinder part toward the west, or hinder sea, that is, the Mediterranean westward. Thus they were driven in every other direction than that by which they came, namely, south, east, and west. In marking the quarters of the world, the Jews faced the east, so that the west was behind them, the south on their right hand, and the north on their left. We have thus a most vivid picture of the speedy and total destruction of the locusts. After expulsion, no danger was to be apprehended from them, for, blown into the sea or desert, they perished at once and for ever. The terms employed are very graphic; thus, me‛alekem is much more than mikkem would be, and imply that a heavy burden was lifted from upon, or up off the face of a desolated land, and the heart of a distressed people. And his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things; margin, magnified to do. The stench emitted from the putrefying bodies of those locusts would be sickening and stifling—sufficient to occasion a pestilence. Many testimonies from travellers and others prove the reality of both circumstances—the ill savour and its pestiferous nature. Several expressions in this verse are applicable enough to an army, as in the last clause, where he is said to do great things, or literally, "magnified to do," that is, magnified himself in his doings; it may, however, apply equally well to the great destruction by the locust-army. There is no doubt the superadded notion of haughtiness along with that of great doings. It really means that, as an instrument of God, they had effected a fearfully violent desolation, and this is assigned as a reason for the total destruction of those locusts. Joe 2:21-23 In these verses the land and beasts and men are addressed respectively. Thus the promise is fully developed. In Joe 2:21 the prophet summons the earth; in Joe 2:22 the beasts of the field; and in Joe 2:23 the sons of Zion; all are called to joy and gladness on account of the great deliverance from destruction which the Lord had wrought for them. They are all called on to rejoice in the great deliverance; the land, personified, is summoned to exult and rejoice for the great things God now promises to do or is doing to it. If the locusts had done great things in destruction, God will do great things in deliverance. The beasts are also personified, and forbidden to be afraid; for whereas they had groaned and cried for want of herbage when the pastures were burnt up, those pastures are now beginning to spring, and the fruit trees yield their strength. The children of Zion are invited to rejoice, not only in the delivered land, or springing pastures, or fruitful figs, or blooming vines, or other trees however useful or ornamental; but, as became them with their superior intelligence, in the Lord their God, as the Father of mercies and the Giver of every good and perfect gift, whether temporal or spiritual. At the same time, their temporal wants would be attended to, and their land fertilized by the suitable and sustaining shower. The prophet individualizes the earth, the beasts of the field, and the sons of Zion. Joe 2:21 Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things. The land had suffered severely from the drought connected with the locusts; but is now summoned to joy and gladness. The prophet assigns for this an appropriate reason: the locusts had done great things in damaging it; Jehovah now does great things in their destruction. When the earth clothes itself with verdure, and brings forth its fruits and flowers and various products, it is said, by a bold but beautiful personification, to rejoice and even exult. Thus the Latins said in like manner, Rident arva, ridet ager. Things are now reversed. Instead of mourning, is exultation; instead of mourning and its visible emblem in girding with sadness, there is joy and gladness; instead of the day of the Lord: very great and terrible or fearful, is "Fear not." Semāchi is fem. imper. Qal in pause for the ordinary simchi. Joe 2:22 Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field. The dumb animals had groaned in distress for food, but now they too have cause to rejoice, and are here called on to do so; and the suitable cause in their case is also specified. It is as follows: For the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength. He thus specifies the ground of gladness in their case also, pointing to the fresh green of the pastures and the fruit hanging in rich abundance and variety on the trees. The fruits of vines and fig trees are net, it is true, the food of the beasts of the fields; but the revival of vegetation in trees, the higher and larger growths, the chief factor in which is moisture, comprehends the revival of the smaller growths of herbs, grasses, and plants, the proper sustenance of cattle. Kimchi’s explanation is that "as the tree bears its fruit in the inhabited part of the world, so in the wilderness the places of pasture grow green." Aben Ezra, who never loses an opportunity of directing attention to contrasts wherever they exist, contrasts "Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field," in this verse with "the beasts of the field cry also unto thee" at the close of the preceding chapter; also "the pastures of the wilderness do spring" with "the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness;" likewise "the tree beareth her fruit" with "all the trees of the field are withered." It has been observed that all plants, even shrubs and trees, spring up at the first as the fresh young juicy green of plants, דֶּשֶׁא; then they develop into ירֶקֶ or חָצִיר, grass: into herb, עֵשֶׂב; and into tree, שָׂרַי עֵץ is not the plural for שָׂדִים, but singular, after the analogy of שָׁמַי (Psalms 96:12). Nasaperi, equivalent to "lift up, bear," is more poetical than asah peri, equivalent to "make fruit;" so in Latin, surgunt fruges. The expression, "yield their strength," puts the cause for the effect; the strength of the tree produces the fruit and centres in it. Joe 2:23 Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God. They had keenly felt and deeply bewailed the unparalleled catastrophe which had befallen laud and cattle and inhabitants, and also themselves among the number. The sons of Zion are the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the capital, in which was the national sanctuary for the worship of Jehovah. Not only are the inhabitants of Jerusalem included, but, as the capital often stood for the whole country, all the inhabitants of Judah are comprehended under the "children of Zion." The ground of their gladness and joy in God is: For he hath given you the former rain moderately (margin, a teacher of righteousness, or for righteousness), and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. Omitting for the present the disputed word hammoreh, we have the great blessing which was so much needed. The blessing bestowed was twofold—negative in the destruction of the locusts and deliverance from their ravages; and positive in the plentiful rainfall, geshem, the great and beneficent fertilizer of the dried-up and desolated land. But this abundant rain is more closely particularized as the early or October rain, moreh, which, falling at the seed-time in autumn, promoted the germination and growth of the seed just sown; and as the latter, or March rain, malqosh, which, bestowed in the spring season a short time before harvest, matured the crops. The geshem, or shower, may be regarded here as the generic name, and of these the two species are the moreh and malqosh, from laqash, to be ripe or late, just explained. The word hammoreh in the early part of the verse is translated (1) "teacher" in the Chaldee and Vulgate, by Jerome, by Abar-banel among the Hebrew commentators, who refers it to Messiah; among modern commentators by Hofman, referring it to Joel himself, by Hengstenberg, who understands it of the ideal teacher or collective body of messengers from God. Keil also renders, "the teacher for righteousness," and applies the expression to the instructions of Moses, the priests, and the prophets, not excluding Messiah himself. He also understands the prophet to speak of both spiritual and material blessings, giving a fuller exposition of the latter in verses 23-27, and of the former in verses 28-32 and in the last chapter. The two considerations that seem to have most weight with Keil in inclining him to this exposition arc the presence of the article with moreh, and the non-physical sense of litsdaqah; hence Ewald’s "rain for righteousness," i.e. a sign from God of their being adopted again into righteousness. But weight-stones and scales have tsedeq attached in the physical sense of correctness, while ethical rightness is only an inference or subordinate notion (see Leviticus 19:36; Psalms 23:3). The translation (2) of "rain" is, we think, justly entitled to the preference from the context. Among promises of repairing the damage done by the locusts, it would be obviously out of place to introduce the notion of "a teacher." Of the Hebrew expositors, Aben Ezra and Kimchi both understand the word in the sense of rain; the former says, "In my opinion it is the same as yoreh;" and the latter, "Hammoreh is the same as yoreh." So also Calvin, Rosenmuller, Hitzig, and Wunsche. The etymology also is favourable to this view, for both yoreh and moreh are from the verb yorah, to throw (Hiph; cause to throw), throw down as drops, wet, besprinkle, equivalent to זרק, and as the Qal and Hiph. sometimes coincide in meaning, we may safely conclude moreh synonymous with yoreh, the meaning of which is unquestionably "rain," specially ὑετὸςπρώιμος. (a) Rain in right measure, then, we take to be the true meaning; not (b) rain according to righteousness, as though God, in accordance with his righteousness, repented of the evil he thought to do unto them, and, in consequence of their forsaking their sins, sent the fertilizing rains. Again, barishon is rendered by some (a) as if keba-rishon were equivalent to "as in the former time;" thus the LXX; καθὼςἔμπροσθεν; Vulgate, Sicuti in principio. But we prefer (b) the rendering, "in the first month;" so the Chaldee, "In the month Nisan, or March." The Hebrew commentators explain it in like manner; thus Rashi, "In the first month—in Nisan;" Aben Ezra, "And the meaning of ’in the first’ is in the first month;" Kimchi, "The explanation of the rain that is called moreb, he sends it down to you in its season, which is Marchesvan, and he causes to descend to you in like manner the malqosh (the latter rain) in its season in the first month, which is Nisan." The blessing of the rain was thus greatly enhanced by being sent in the right measure and at the suitable season. Joe 2:24-27 In these verses the prophet pictures the blessed effects of the abundant rain on the parched and barren land. Joe 2:24 presents a contrast to Joe 2:10-12 of Joe 1:1-20.; while the promise of corn and wine and oil in Joe 1:19, with which the present is closely connected, is performed. The perfects exhibit the Divine promise as actually accomplished. (1) The word בּר, from בּרר, to separate, denotes the pure grain separated from the husk or chaff and straw. (2) שׁוּק is" to run," and in Hiph.," to cause to run" as of fluids, then overflow; and Pilel in Psalms 65:10, shoqeq, "to cause to overflow." (3) יקב, equivalent to נקב, is a vessel bored or hewn out, then the vat into which the wine trodden out in the wine-press, or the oil trodden out in the oil-press, flows; while גח is the press in which wine or oil, especially the former, is trodden out. I will restore to you the years. This denotes either (1) the greatness and violence of the destruction made by the locusts, or (2) it implies that, only for the timely interposition of Jehovah in destroying the locusts, the people would have had to sustain the loss of the harvest, not of one year only, but of several—in other words, the disastrous effects of their ravages would have been felt for a number of years; but (3) not that the locusts invaded the land several successive yours. The absence of the copula before yeleq, and its presence before the last two names, viz. ehasil aud gazam, prove that these three names, being thus co-ordinated, are either epithets or species of ’arbeh: thus, the losses of the years which the locust, or multitudinous one, hath eaten—the licker and the devourer and the biter (or gnawer)—were compensated. Abarbauel maintains these names of the locusts to refer to the four world-powers that one after another desolated Palestine: "For they," he says, "were the army of Jehovah and the messengers of his providence to punish Israel by their means." The effect of the plentiful supply of their wants and of the full satisfaction enjoyed thereby becomes the occasion of devout acknowledgment of God as their Protector and Patron, and of the warmest expressions of gratitude for his goodness, so they praise the Name of the Lord their God, that had dealt wondrously with them; literally, had acted towards them even to the doing of wonders. Then follows the practical conclusion, very poetically expressed, and comprising the assurance of the presence of God among his people, his sole Divinity and sure protection of them, a guarantee of his grace to them at all times, freedom from reproach and shame evermore. Thus closes the promise of temporal or material bless-tugs. "Ye shall recognize," says Kimchi, "that I am in your midst, hearing your cries." Joe 2:28-32 These verses form a chapter (the third) by themselves in the Hebrew text, but in the LXX. and the Authorized Version they conclude Joe 2:1-32. In them the prophet passes on to spiritual blessings. Joe 2:28, Joe 2:29 And it shall come to pass afterward (’acharēkhen). This intimates the time when the promised blessing is to be bestowed, and must be read in the light of New Testament exposition; for Peter, in quoting the words (Acts 2:17, etc.), varies the prophet’s note of time by substituting an explanatory phrase, viz. ἐνταῖςἐσχάταιςἡμέραις, "in the last days"—an expression which, as is acknowledged, refers to the days of the Messiah or the last days of the old dispensation. The apostle thus defines more closely the somewhat indefinite expression of the Hebrew. After this specification of the time, he proceeds to state the blessing to be bestowed. I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. The word shaphak, employed by the prophet to express the outpouring of the Spirit, implies the bestowal of the gift in great abundance, as Calvin clearly pointed out: "For shaphak," he says, "does not mean merely to give in drops, but to pour out in great abundance. But God did net pour out the Holy Spirit so abundantly or copiously under the Law, as he has since the manifestation of Christ." The Spirit was indeed communicated in Old Testament times, but that communication was restricted in two ways in quantity, and in the number of recipients; the former was comparatively scanty and the latter few, whereas the word here applied to its communication implies a rich supply, like a copious rainfall. After the specification of the time, and the mention of the blessing, with its implied plentifulness, comes its wide diffusion, or general distribution—"all flesh," or "all mankind," as the Hebrew expression denotes; and that without regard to age, or sex, or state. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit. Sons and daughters without distinction of sex; old men and young men without reference to age; servants and handmaids without regard to social position. Thus it is with the Spirit of God as with the Son of God, of whom the apostle says, "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uucircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." The blessing of salvation through the Son of God and by the Spirit of God is wide as the world in its offer, and free to all who accept it—without national distinction, for there is neither Jew nor Greek; without social distinction, for there is neither bond nor free; without sexual distinction, for there is neither male nor female; without ceremonial distinction, for there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision; without intellectual or educational distinction, for the barbarian and even the Scythian, the lowest type of barbarian, are free to share the blessing. The vegam before the "servants" and "handmaids," rendered in the citation by Peter, not as in the LXX. by a simple καὶ, but by καὶγε, and in the Authorized Version "and also," is an emphatic addition to the previous enumeration, equivalent to "nay more" and implying something extraordinary and unexpected, that not only the weaker sex, but the meanest of both sexes, were to participate in the blessing. "Not a single case," says Keil, "occurs in the whole of the Old Testament of a slave receiving the gift of prophecy." The mode in which spiritual commmunication is (1) according to some is that of visions to the young, whose fancy is more vigorous; that of dreams to the old, in the decadence of their mental powers; while to the sons and daughters the gift is prophesying. Others more correctly (2) understand prophecy as the general term for speaking under the Spirit’s influence or instructing by Divine inspiration; while the two forms of prophetic revelation are dreams when the mental "faculties are suspended by natural causes," and visions or trances when "suspended by supernatural causes," the communication in either case being supernatural. This prediction began to be fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. Joe 2:30 And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. Along with the wonderful distribution of gifts and graces at the Day of Pentecost, attention is directed to portents of destructive visitation; after a dispensation of mercy follows a dispensation of wrath; mercy and judgment thus succeed each other in the providence of God. The visitation of mercy may, by way of contrast, suggest that of judgment; or the connection of this and the following verses with the preceding may be the plague of the locusts, the mind passing on from that visitation to the visitation at the destruction of Jerusalem, as also to that which shall take place at the judgment of the last day. Our Lord, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, seems to mingle the portents which were to precede the destruction of Jerusalem with those that shall usher in the judgment-day. There may Be some doubt whether the expressions before us are to Be understood literally or figuratively. In either case coming events were casting their shadows before; and the appearances enumerated, whether taken in a literal or figurative sense, were symbolical of great revolutionary changes. The expressions themselves reflect the miracles of Egypt. Of the wonders on earth which the prophet first mentions, the blood brings to mind the changing of the Nile-water into blood; the fire reminds us of the fire that ran along upon the ground, mingled with the hail; while the smoke carries back our thoughts to the wonderful events of the wilderness and of the encampment at Sinai, when, as Jehovah descended upon the mount, "Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace." Joe 2:31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. These wonders in the heavens follow the wonders on earth, and these obscurations of the heavenly bodies—the darkening of the sun and the dull blood-like appearance of the moon—were portents of coming judgment. These miraculous phenomena, if literally employed, may refer to those portentous sights which, as the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus testify, were witnessed, both by besiegers and besieged, during the siege and before the destruction of Jerusalem. But taken symbolically, as is preferable, blood symbolizes bloodshed; fire, the firing of a town in time of war; and pillars of smoke, the clouds of smoke rolling up to heaven from the burning or smouldering ruins of a town or city set on fire by the enemy; while the darkening of the sun and the turning of the moon into a dull blood-red would portend approaching judgment, and a change, political and ecclesiastical, in the existing constitution of things. Here particularly, by reading Joel’s prophecy in the light of the New Testament, we shall understand with tolerable clearness the meaning of the symbols of the sun and moon. The symbolic language of Joel’s prediction found its fulfilment, at least in part, within less than half a century from the time when Peter spoke. Scarce forty years from that Pentecostal outpouring and the ruling powers, civil and ecclesiastical, of the Jewish nation came to an end. The Jewish Church and Hebrew commonwealth went out in darkness. The moon of the latter began to wane from the first day the Roman power was set up in Palestine, but at the destruction of the capital the light of that moon was extinguished for ever; the sun of the former was long getting obscured by clouds, but at last it underwent a total and final eclipse. But why, it may be asked, are sun and moon thus symbolic of rulers superior and inferior, or of rulers of greater and less importance, or of rulers in Church and state? By the original constitution of these luminaries, as specified in the record of Creation, they were actually appointed to this, and so naturally enough the physical here, as elsewhere, underlies the symbolic, as we read, "God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night." Thus what was commenced when Judaea became a Roman province was completed when Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple burnt by the Roman army under Titus. "The day of the Lord" is an expression very common with the prophets, and always expressive of some severe visitation or special judgment. Thus we read in this same Book of the Prophet Joel, "The day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come." Again in Amos 5:18, "The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light." But other days of judicial visitation were not to be compared with this. The day of Babylon’s destruction is called by Isaiah simply "the day of the Lord;" so Jeremiah speaks of the day of the destruction of Pharaoh’s army at the Euphrates as "the day of the Lord;" and Joel himself designates the day of Jerusalem’s destruction of Nebuchadnezzar as "the day of the Lord." But the day mentioned in the text before us is "that great and notable day of the Lord," and so it was the day of the final destruction and desolation of Jerusalem. Joe 2:1-3 The purposes for which a trumpet was blown and an alarm sounded. I. THE PURPOSE ON THIS . II. THE PLACE WHERE THE WARNING WAS GIVEN. III. THE PRIESTS WHO WERE TO SOUND THE ALARM. We are informed in Numbers 10:8 that it was the "sons of Aaron, the priests," that were to blow with the trumpets, either in sounding the alarm of war, or convening an assembly of the people, or for the journeying of the camps. Similar is the duty of the ministers of religion. IV. THE PERSONS TO WHOM THE WARNING IS . They are all the inhabitants of the land without exception, for all more or less add their quota to the national sin, share consequently in the national danger. V. THE OF THE SO VIVIDLY BY THE PROPHET. While the peculiar circumstances of the visitation which the prophet portrays intensify the approaching disaster, they at the same time emphasize his preceding exhortation. In this picture of the prophet we have (1) his description of the day of the Lord, and (2) the destruction that succeeded. The description represents that day as a day of darkness and, by way of gradation, of gloominess, that is, of still greater darkness; as a day of clouds and of densely dark clouds; as the morning gray, the darkest hour between midnight and dawn, spread upon the mountains. The locust-people that made it so were great in number and great in strength, unequalled in the past and unparalleled in the future, through all the rolling years of many generations. The destruction was terrible in the extreme, as if a devouring fire went before them and a burning flame followed them. The havoc they made reduced a garden to a desert, and Eden itself to a wilderness; in a word, it was unescapable. Joe 2:4-11 The way in which God executes his judgments. In these verses we are taught many important and solemn lessons in connection with the Divine judgments and their execution. I. THE AGENTS . 1. These may appear to us in themselves very insignificant; but when executing his commission and armed with his wrath they are truly terrible. To the eye and to the ear that terror made its appeal; the sight of them was awe-inspiring, the sound of them frightful. Both on the march and while feeding they caused sounds harsh and horrible. 2. The natural effect of their approach was pain and fear. The people to whom they came were affrighted by their appearance, but still more were they alarmed for their property, which they well knew was exposed to havoc and utter destruction. How men should stand in awe of the judgments of God, and especially of sin as that which brings down those judgments! "Stand in awe, and sin not!" II. THE OF THEIR MISSION. 1. The ministers of the Divine vengeance do their work speedily. Never did mighty men do their work more speedily, and never did men of war, with all their training and organization, do it more thoroughly. They do their work systematically, each marching according to the appointed plan, while none leaves his proper path or quits his allotted rank. Without either struggling or jostling, they advance directly and determinedly to accomplish the work assigned them. They in consequence do their work surely. Resistance is in vain and escape impossible; it is thus with the agents and instrumentalities which God employs for the purposes of deserved wrath. 2. Should not men, when sent as messengers of his mercy, observe like order and regularity, like system in arrangements and speed in execution? It is thus with the heavenly messengers; for God makes his angels swift as the winds and strong as the fiery flames in bearing God’s messages and in ministering to God’s saints. III. THE ALARMS OF MINOR . Weak and mean as the instruments of his wrath were individually, God made them by their multitudinous masses a mighty engine for spreading desolation and terror. It needs but a slight touch of his finger to lay men’s possessions, or comforts, or enjoyments in the dust. Joe 2:12-17 These verses summon the people To humiliation for sin, and thanksgiving for mercy. God, by his prophet, does not forbid the outward sign of sorrow, so customary among Orientals and common among the Jews; he rather insists upon the presence of the thing signified, without which the sign was more a mockery than a reality. I. THE OF THE . It Was an earnest time with the people of the southern kingdom. Terrible desolation had been made in the land of Judah. An army of locusts had been the agents of Divine vengeance; sin had been the cause; the author of the punishment was God. "The prophet had described at length the coming of God’s judgments as a mighty army. But, lest amid the judgments men should (as they often do) forget the Judge, he represents God as commanding this his army, gathering, ordering, marshalling, directing them, giving them the word when and upon whom they should pour themselves. Their presence was a token of this. They should neither anticipate that command nor linger. But as an army awaits the command to move, and then, the word being given, rolls on instantly, so God’s judgments await the precise moment of his will, and then fall." II. THE NATURE OF THE . III. THE MOTIVES TO . IV. THE METHOD OF THEIR . 1. A great variety of circumstances is to be attended to. (1) There is the signal to be given: "Blow the trumpet in Zion." (2) Serious preparation made for a fast: "Sanctify a fast." (3) The summoning of a solemn assembly: "Call a solemn assembly." (4) The convocation of the people: "Gather the people" (’am); and, (5) when they were thus convened and in consequence came together, they were consecrated into a solemn assembly (qahal): "Sanctify the congregation." (6) The constituent elements of the assembly embraced the oldest and the youngest, with ages intermediate—elders and sucklings, and even children of tender years; nor could the newly married, who at other times were exempted from war or pressing duties, claim exemption now; nay, on the very day of their bridal, the bridegroom was called forth out of his chamber and the bride out of her closet to join the multitude of mourners, and share in the public humiliation and national sorrow. 2. The services of the occasion were to be conducted in an orderly and becoming manner. Everything connected with the house and service of God requires to be done decently and in good order. Thus, in the passage before us, nothing is left to haphazard; nor did anything remain to be improvised on the spur of the moment, and after the assembly met. (1) The persons who were to conduct the solemn service were appointed—the priests, the ministers of the Lord; (2) the place they were to occupy was pointed out—between the porch and the altar; This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/pulpit-commentary/ Joe 3:1-3 These verses describe the deliverance of God’s people and the destruction of his enemies because of their injurious, insulting, and ignominious treatment of his people. Joe 3:1 The time referred to: In those days, and in that time, is the first point to be determined. The reference is obviously to the period spoken of in the twenty-eighth verse of the second chapter, where we read, "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flush." This seems to fix the date at least of the commencement of the events recorded in these verses. These events must have been subsequent to that Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But a still closer specification of the time is added by way of apposition, namely (asher supplemented by bahem or bah), when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem. This form of expression includes, beside the restoration of God’s people from their dispersion and redemption out of captivity or distress of any kind, their elevation also to a higher position of dignity and to greater prosperity than they had ever before enjoyed. Thus of Job we read (Job 42:10)," And the Lord turned the captivity of Job … also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." The ki which introduces the verse gives assurance that the blessing promised in the concluding verse of the preceding chapter shall be realized; while the hinneh directs attention to the novelty and importance of the subject introduced in the first verse of this present chapter. Joe 3:2 represents pictorially God’s passing sentence on the nations that had been hostile to his people, with a general summary of the injuries inflicted on them. I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat. More than eight centuries before the Christian era King Jehoshaphat had gained a splendid victory over the allied army of the neighbouring peoples—Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites—who had united their forces against Jerusalem. The king had been assured of this victory by the prophecy of Jahaziel. Songs of praise had preceded the battle, and songs of thanksgiving had succeeded the victory; hence the place was called the valley of Berachah, or blessing. The remembrance of such a remarkable deliverance, not more than half a century before the prophet’s time, would make a vivid impression on the mind of the prophet and his people. Accordingly, this splendid piece of past history is interwoven with the prophet’s prediction of the future, and forms its groundwork. It is as though he said, "On a memorable occasion and in a well-known valley God was pleased to vouchsafe to his people and prince a glorious victory over the combined forces of their enemies; so at a future period, under the reign of Prince Messiah, God will subdue and destroy the Gentile nations that had oppressed his people." It matters little whether we understand the valley of Jehoshaphat in the literal sense, as perhaps the valley of the Kedron between Jerusalem and Olivet, or in a figurative sense; the representation is equally appropriate, and the imagery equally impressive. "This," says Aben Ezra, "was the war in which the children of Moab and Ammon and Seir combined their force together to a very great multitude, while Jehoshaphat had out of Judah and Benjamin mighty men of valour; and the valley of Jehoshaphat is the valley of Berachah, for Jehoshaphat called its name so." Kimchi gives the following alternative sense: "There shall be the war, and this valley belonged to King Jehoshaphat; perhaps he built there, or made there a work, and it was called after his name, and the valley was near to the city of Jerusalem; or it is called the valley of Jehoshaphat after the name of the judgment, as he said, ’I will plead with them there.’" And will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations. God would plead, or contend, with the nations, and pass sentence upon them on account of their dispersion of his heritage—nachalathi, his peculiar people, and their partition of his land, ’artsi, or kingdom. This must be referred to the long subsequent time when Palestine became a Roman province, and its capital levelled with the ground; then the great dispersion of the covenant people among the nations commenced, and continues till the present day. Joe 3:3 They have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink. Such was the contumely with which they were treated at the time of the great catastrophe referred to. The captives were distributed by lot among the conquerors; these in turn sold them to the slave-dealers for the merest trifle—a slave-boy for the hire of a harlot, or a slave-girl for a glass or draught of wine. Such treatment had been predicted ages before, and was verified by contemporaneous history (comp. Leviticus 26:33, sqq; and Deuteronomy 28:36 for the prediction; and Josephus, . De Bell. Jud; 6. 9. 2, 3, for the fulfilment). Ninety-seven thousand prisoners were disposed of as follows: those under seventeen years of age were publicly sold; some exiled to work in Egyptian mines; others reserved to fight with wild beasts in the amphi-theatre. Also in the time of Hadrian four Jewish captives were sold for a measure of barley. Nay, more, the Syrian commander, Nicanor, bargained by anticipation for the sale of such Jews as should be taken cap-tire in the Maccabean war. The prophet, moreover, looks forward in prophetic vision to the day of final judgment, when God will, in just retribution, pour out the vials of his wrath on all the oppressors of his Church and people. Joe 3:4-8 In these verses the prophet pauses before proceeding to describe the final judgment of the world-powers for their hostility to and oppression of his Church, and points out the bitter enmity of neigh-bouring nations to the covenant people in the prophet’s own day, with a prediction of the righteous retribution that awaited them. Joe 3:4 The northern sea-board of the Phoenicians, including the famous cities of Tyre and Sidon, also the southern sea-coast and plain of the Philistines, with their five principalities, are joined by vegam with the nations notorious for injuring and oppressing the people of God. The words rendered in the Authorized Version, What have ye to do with me? rather mean, What would ye with me? or still better, What are ye to me? that is. how worthless and despicable in my sight! The disjunctive question which follows becomes clearer by adopting the rendering of Keil and Wunsche, Will ye repay me a deed, or do anything against me? that is, will ye repay me some wrong-doing which ye fancy I have inflicted on you? or will ye, without such supposed provocation, and of your own free will, do or attempt to do anything against me? The double question with veim instead of im repeats, in other words or in a modified form, the preceding question; while the question itself, as often, implies a negative sense to the effect that they had neither right nor reason for averting themselves on the people of God—for God here identifies himself with his people—nor for attempting wantonly and gratuitously to harm them. The consequence would only be a swift and speedy return of the mischief on their own head, so that, as is usual with the wicked, they fall themselves into the pit which they dig for others. The idea of revenge rather than of punishment gets too great prominence in the old versions and commentators. The comment of Kimchi is instructive, though more in harmony with the rendering of the Authorized Version than with that which we prefer; it is as follows: "What have I to do with you, that ye enter my land while ye are neighbours? and it behoved you to do good to my people, but ye have not done so; but when ye saw that the kings of the nations (Gentiles)came upon them, ye allied yourselves with them to plunder and spoil … . Why is it, then, that ye are doing evil to me, if ye think to avenge yourselves of me because I have done you evil? When did I do you evil? Or if you will say that of yourselves ye are doing evil to me now, for he that does evil to Israel from his thought of doing evil to me, they are my children … swiftly and suddenly will I return your doing on your own head." Joe 3:5, Joe 3:6 The prophet proceeds to enumerate the injuries sustained by his people at the hands of their enemies, and the evil attempted against himself. (1) My sliver and my gold. The silver, gold, and precious or desirable things, whether taken immediately from the temple of God or plundered mediately from the palaces or wealthy mansions of his people, they transferred to their temples and suspended as trophies therein—a custom common among ancient nations. (2) The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians. The part which the Phoenicians had in the transaction was the purchase and sale of the Jewish captives who had fallen into the hands of the Philistine conquerors. The mention of Grecians, or sons of Javan, brings for the first time the Hellenic and Hebrew races into contact—a contact sad and sorrowful for the latter. That ye might remove them far from their border. This was at once the climax of their cruelty and the aggravation of their crime. The object which their enemies had in view in selling the Hebrew captives to the sons of Javan, or Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, was by that remote exile to prevent the possibility of their return to their own land. The historic reference is thought by some to be the event narrated in 2 Chronicles 21:16, 2 Chronicles 21:17, where it is written, "The Lord stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines … And they came up into Judah, and brake into it, and carried away [margin, ’carried captive’] all the substance that was found in the king’s house, and his sons also, and his wives." Joe 3:7, Joe 3:8 In these verses we have the recompense of reward so deservedly dealt out to the enemies of Israel. Joe 3:7 Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them. Instead of "raise," some prefer "waken," "rouse," or "stir up." The Judaeans would be roused out of the countries into which they had been sold, and restored to their own land, and the measure which had been meted to them meted in turn to their enemies. The deliverance mentioned here may be exemplified, if not realized in part, in the time of Alexander the Great and his successors, when Jewish captives in many lands were set at liberty. Thus Demetrius, in his letter to Jonathan, writes, "I also make free all those Jews who have been made captives and slaves in my kingdom." And will return your recompense upon your own head; better rendered, and will turn back your doing upon your head. A righteous retaliation awaited Philistines and Phoenicians. They in turn would fall into the hands of the Judaeans, and be made prisoners of war, and, as they had done, so should it be done to them. Joe 3:8 And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off. The Hebrew expression does not mean "to sell by the hand of," as it is erroneously rendered by some; but "to sell into the hand," that is, to deliver over into the power of the children of Judah. The Sabeans were the inhabitants of Sheba, in Arabia Felix, a people actively engaged in trade, and related to the Pales-tinians in the south, as the Grecians in the north. They were a people as far off (or more so) in an easterly direction as the Greeks of Ionia in a westerly; and so Kimchi, "They were far off from their land more than the Javanites." "As the Tyrians sold Jewish prisoners to the maritime people of the far West, so the Jews should sell Tyrians to traders of the far East." The LXX; mistaking שבאים for the plural of שְׁבִי, translate the clause, "They shall sell them into captivity to a far-distant nation." If we are not to understand these predictions, with Hengstenberg, as an application of the general truth that God shall gather again the dispersed of Judah and the captives of Israel, we may find their fulfilment in such events as the following: the defeat of the Philistines by Uzziah, "when he went forth and warred against the Philistines, and brake down the wall of Gath, and the wall of Jabneh, and the wall of Ashdod, and built cities about Ashdod, and among the Philistines;" their defeat also by Hezekiah, when "he smote the Philistines even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city;" and the temporary subjection of portions of Palestinian and Phoenician territory to the Jews in Maccabean times, together with the siege and destruction of their cities, as narrated by the Jewish historian Josephus and in the First Book of Maccabees. We learn also from Diodorus that thirteen thousand captive Tyrians were sold into slavery after the victory of Alexander the Great. Joe 3:9-17 After a parenthesis of five verses, viz. 4-8, detailing the injurious treatment of the Jews by some of the surrounding nations, and the righteous retribution visited on those nations, the prophet resumes the subject broached at the beginning of the chapter, especially in Joe 3:2, about the judgment to be visited on the nations in general. The verses now before us describe very graphically the execution of that judgment. Joe 3:9 pictures the proclamation and other preliminaries of war. Heralds are sent out to make proclamation among the nations. Prepare (margin, sanctify) war. Certain formalities of a religious nature were customary among the heathen when war was proclaimed and prepared for. Thus also among the Jews supplication was made and sacrifices offered, as we read in 1 Samuel 7:8, 1 Samuel 7:9, that before the battle with the Philistines at Mizpeh, the people urged Samuel to make earnest supplication and sacrifice for them, when in compliance he "took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord: and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel;" and thus a preparation for war was a consecration of war by religious rites. Wake up the mighty men; or rather, (1) according to Keil, waken up or arouse the mighty men. (2) A preferable rendering, according to Wunsche, is, "Wake up, ye mighty men;" while he understands the whole address as directed to the covenant people. It is observable theft one manuscript has העיזו, equivalent to "make strong," i.e. the heroes. In either case, the heroes may be conceived as enjoying peaceful repose when they are rudely roused by the declaration of war; and as the word "war" is indefinite through the absence of the article, it implies, "What a war! how great and terrible!" Let all the men of war drew near; let them come up. The terms here used are technical military terms, summoning the warriors to advance and march onward in haste to the place of conflict. Joe 3:10 Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears. The weapons of war are to be provided; and the speediest way in which the manufacture of those weapons could be effected was by turning their implements of husbandry into them. The figure may, perhaps, have been suggested by the interest King Uzziah took in, and the encouragement he consequently gave to, husbandry and vine-culture, if we may presume Joel to have been in part contemporary with that king, of whom we are informed that "he had much cattle, both in the low country, and in the plains: husbandmen also, and vinedressers in the mountains, and in Carmel: for he loved husbandry." It is also a familiar fact that Isaiah and Micah reverse the expression in their description of Messianic times; while well-known parallels are quoted from the Latin classics. Let the weak say, I am strong; or, a hero. The approaching war was to be one in which no release, no excuse, and no exemption from any cause would be allowed, nay, the excitement of the occasion should warm the cold blood of the weakling into some degree of warlike enthusiasm. The address, it will be observed, of the previous verse is to the heroic chiefs; that of this verse, to the rank-and-file of the army. Joe 3:11 This verse expresses the precipitancy with which the procession of the hostile nations is hurried on in order to meet their doom, as also the prophet’s prayer for the descent of Jehovah’s mighty ones to the slaughter. Assemble yourselves, and come. It is rather, hasten, and come; the word עוּשׁוּ, only occurring here, being equivalent to חוּשׁוּ, equivalent to "hasten ye." The LXX. and Chaldee, indeed, favour the sense of "assemble;" the former has συναθροίζεσθε. But that idea is expressed afterwards by the verb קְבָּצוּ, which is an anomalous form of the imperative Niph. for הִקָּבְצו, though some take it for the perfect with vav consec. The word hanchath is usually and properly taken as the imperative Hiph; from nachath, to come down, the pathach taking the place of tzere on account of the guttural and the nun retained without assimilation, as the nun rarely falls away in verbs that have a guttural for their second stem-letter. The meaning (1) then, is, "Assemble yourselves." The margin, (2) however, has, "The Lord shall bring down," i.e. cause to succumb, destroy, "thy mighty ones," which must then signify "the mighty ones of the enemy." This, though supported by the Chaldee, Syriac, Vulgate, and Jerome, is less simple and obvious, necessitating also a corresponding change of the verbal form into חִנְחִת or הִנְחִית. The LXX. rendering is peculiar, and as follows: "Let the meek become a warrior." Joe 3:12 This verse points out the place where the great assemblage of the heathen is to hold, and the final decision in answer to the prophet’s prayer is to take place. Let the heathen he wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat. All the nations that have opposed the kingdom of God, as well as those hostile nations from round about Israel and Judah, in their more immediate neighbourhood; though these, no doubt, are primarily meant. The expression, "be wakened," of this verse corresponds to "waken up" of Joe 3:9. The force of coming up is explained by some (1) as implying the ascent to Palestine in order to reach the valley of Jehoshaphat. It is rather (2) to be understood in the general sense of advancing or marching on; otherwise "to come into the presence of the Most High God" may well be called "a coming up." The decision takes the form of a judicial process conducted by Jehovah, who as Judge takes his seat on a throne of judgment. Joe 3:13 The just decision being come to, and the righteous sentence passed, the execution follows. Jehovah’s mighty ones are summoned to execute it. By the mighty ones or heroes of Jehovah are meant his heavenly hosts or angels; thus Kimchi says, "Thy mighty ones are the angels;" so also Aben Ezra. (1) The execution of Jehovah’s command is represented under a double figure, that of reaping grain in harvest or treading grapes in the vintage. Similarly in Revelation 14:15, Revelation 14:18, we find the two figures—that of reaping the ripe grain, and of gathering the grapes and treading them. The ripeness of the grain and of the grapes is here, perhaps, the prominent idea. "He compares," says Kimchi, "those nations to the produce which is ripe, and its time for harvesting has approached, that man should thrust in the sickle to reap it. So with respect to these nations, their season to die by the sword in this valley has arrived." (2) Hitzig conceives that the twofold command of Jehovah is to cut off the grapes and then tread them in the wine-press. He proceeds on the wrong assumption that qatsir, harvest, is employed in the sense of batsir, vintage; that maggal (from nagal, unused to cut, pierce, wound) is for mazmerah, the hook of the vinedresser; while bashal, ripe, which he restricts to grapes, applies to grapes and corn alike. The passage in Revelation already cited decides us in favour of (1), the judgment being represented first by the reaping of ripened grain, and then by treading grapes in the wine-press. The verb רְדו, from radah, to trample underfoot, and not from yarad, to descend, is more poetic and emphatic than the usual דרד; though Kimchi maintains the contrary, saying, "Descend ye into this valley, for it is as it were the press which is full of grapes, when it is fit to tread them; so ye house of Israel, tread these nations in this valley, and thrust in among them the sword." The fulness of the vats, again, represents the masses of the sinful nations ripe and ready for destruction; what the wine-press is to the grapes, the wine-press of God’s wrath is to the wicked. Joe 3:14 This and the following verses, instead of expressly narrating the execution of the Divine command, present a picture of it. In one part the prophet sees in vision and shows us pictorially the multitudes of the nations pouring on in one continuous stream into the fatal valley. In another compartment of the picture, Jehovah is seen in the awfulness of his majesty and in the fearfulness of his judgments on the wicked, while he is a Refuge and Strength for his people. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. These multitudes are the tumultuous masses. Hamon is from the root הָמָה, to be noisy, or tumultuous. "It is identical," says Pusey, "with our ’ hum; ’ then noise, and, among others, the hum of a multitude, then a multitude even apart from that noise. It is used of the throng of a large army." The repetition emphasizes the masses as pits, pits, equivalent to "nothing but pits;" or ditches, ditches, equivalent to "full of ditches;" or it expresses diversity, equivalent to "multitudes of the living and multitudes of the dead." Decision is charuts, cut, something decided; (1) so sharp, severe judgment, from charuts, to cut into, sharpen, dig. (2) Others understand it in the sense of a threshing-wain, equivalent to charuts morag, a sharpened threshing-instrument. All things being now ready, the immediate proximity of the judgment is announced to be at hand. Joe 3:15-17 These verses picture the accompaniments of the judgment, yet not the judgment itself. Joe 3:15 The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The densely packed masses are already in the valley of decision, awaiting the judgment about to be executed upon them. But before the judgment actually bursts upon them, and in preparation for it, the sky is overcast; darkness, as a portent of the approaching storm, envelops them; the lights of heaven are put out. The pitchy darkness of a night in which neither moon nor stars appear is sufficiently dismal and awful; still more terrible, if possible, is darkness in the daytime, when the light of the sun is turned into blackness. The first accompaniment of the storm is addressed to the eye, and consists in the extinguishing of the greater light which rules the day, and the lesser lights which rule the night. The next accompaniment of the coming tempest is addressed to the ear, and consists in the voice of the Lord rolling in terrific peals along the heavens—the voice of the Lord like the roaring of a lion ready to pounce upon its prey: the utterance of the Divine voice when the God of glory thundereth. The third accompaniment is yet more awe-inspiring; consisting in a convulsion that pervades both earth and sky; the whole frame of nature shakes; the earthquake’s shock, so frightful to bird and beast and man, has a corresponding agitation in the heavens. Joe 3:16 Out of Zion. The presence of Jehovah is the immediate occasion of these terrors; and hence his voice proceeds from Jerusalem, or more particularly from Zion, where the visible symbol of his presence long dwelt. "For there," says Kimchi, "was his dwelling in Jerusalem; and as if from thence he roared and uttered his voice against them." Thus far the prophet pictures in very vivid, indeed terribly vivid, colours the frightful scene in the valley of decision: then stops short without describing the sad catastrophe resulting from the actual execution of the judgment. This he omits, either from revulsion of feeling from such misery. or the reader is left to imagine it himself. But the Lord will be the Hope of his people, and the Strength of the children of Israel. He shrinks, as we have seen, from describing the actual execution of judgment, and, breaking off with somewhat of abruptness, exhibits the bright side of the picture. With the destruction of his foes is joined, as usual, the deliverance of his friends. To his people he stands in the double relation of a Place of refuge (machseh) and a Place of strength (ma‛oz), that is, not only a place to which they may flee for safety, but a place in which, as a stronghold, they shall be kept safe. Joe 3:17 Jerusalem will be a sanctuary, and strangers will not pass through it any more. In the beginning of this verse Jehovah promises to be the God of his people; he points to the place of his abode, and purifies Jerusalem by judgment that it will be a true holy place, untrodden by the foot of Gentile stranger or Jewish unbeliever any more. His people would recognize his presence and his power by the wonderful deliverance vouchsafed to them. "Jerusalem," says Kimchi, "shall be a sanctuary, like the sanctuary which was forbidden to strangers; and strangers shall not pass through it any more to do injury to them as they have done up to this day. It may also be explained that strangers shall not enter into Jerusalem, for its holiness shall be great for the future. And as the temple was forbidden even for Israel to enter there, so all the city shall be a sanctuary into which strangers out of the nations of the world shall not enter." Joe 3:18-21 These verses picture Judah and Jerusalem as scenes of most abundant blessings, while Egypt and Edom are doomed to irretrievable barrenness and desolation. But, as the language must be understood figuratively, the prosperity of the Lord’s laud is set in contrast with the countries of the world-powers; but the contrast includes, as we think, the allotments of eternity as well as the destinies of time. Joe 3:18 In that day. These words express the state of things consequent on the judgment just executed. The mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow (margin, go) with waters. Thus the mountains are represented as covered over with vines of richest growth and terraced to the top; the hills as affording most luxuriant pastures and clothed with flocks; the rivers, dried up in summer and reduced to dried-up river-beds, flowing unintermittingly and coursing along with full stream. To exuberance of wine and milk is added, what is no less valuable in a thirsty Eastern land, abundance of water. The source of this abundant supply is a fountain; the fountain-head is the house of the Lord; thence proceeds a broad deep stream, which makes its way to the Jordan valley and across the river to the dry trans-Jordanic valley of acacias, as it is added: A fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim; from which statement we must conclude the figurative signification of the whole of this and the following verses. Parallels for some of the above expressions are not far to seek. Ovid’s description of the golden age, in which be speaks of rivers of milk and rivers of nectar and honey dropping from the green palm tree, is cited by Rosenmuller; while the ’Speaker’s Commentary’ quotes from the ’Bacchae’ of Euripides the lines about the plain flowing with milk, flowing with wine, and flowing with the nectar of the bees. Instead of the "hills flowing with milk," we should rather expect the milk to be spoken of as flowing; the hypallage, however, as we may consider it, makes the clause more symmetrical with those between which it stands. Thus Kimchi: "The meaning of ’They shall flow (go) with milk,’ is from the abundance of the flowing and running: he applies the name of flowing (going) to the hills, even although that the milk is that which goes and flows." And in reference to the following clause he says, "He uses the name of going to the channels." That is one side of the picture. We are now invited to look on this— Joe 3:19 Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom a desolate wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah. The curse of barrenness and utter desolation falls on the enemies of Judah—the nearer and the more remote—because of that very enmity and the violence which was its outcome. The Edomite enemies in the south revolted from Judah in the days of Jehoram; the Edomites compassed him in, and, by thus surrounding him, placed him in extreme peril; and though it is said he smote them, yet his expedition proved unsuccessful, for it is added by the chronicler that "the Edomites revolted from under the hand of Judah unto this day." The Egyptian enemies in the more distant south made a still more formidable attack on the capital city, Jerusalem, under the famous Shishak, in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam, plundering the palace and temple. What acts of violence were perpetrated in these or other wars unrecorded we know not. A more specific charge follows: Because they have shed innocent blood in their land. This is understood by some to refer to the blood of captive or fugitive Jews in the lands of their Edomite and Egyptian enemies. It seems preferable to understand the suffix answering to "their" of the laud of Judah, on the occasion of some hostile inroad into Jewish territory. Joe 3:20, Joe 3:21 The contrast which these verses present to what precedes is very striking. While Egypt and Edom are devoted to desolation and destruction, Judah, personified, shall dwell (margin, abide), and Jerusalem, or rather, as we think, Judah shall be dwelt in, as also its capital, from generation to generation. In the concluding verse a reason is assigned. For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed. The blood shed by the Egyptians and Edomites is proved by Jehovah to be innocent blood, because he promises to avenge it in the end, though for wise and good reasons he had delayed to do so. This closing thought is well explained by Keil in the words, "The eternal desolation of the world-kingdoms mentioned here will wipe out all the wrong which they have done to the people of God, and which has hitherto remained un-punished." When Jehovah thus wipes out the bloodguiltiness of the enemies of Judah by punishing them with destruction for their cruelties, while he exalts gloriously, finally, and for ever his people, he proves his sovereignty over them and his dwelling-place in Zion. The Hebrew interpreters, with the exception of Abarbanel, understand this passage (1) literally; thus Kimchi: "At that time (the day of the Lord), after making an end of the nations there, great goodness shall accrue to Israel;" the same is seen in the exposition of the last verse of the chapter. Rashi says, "Even if I shall cleanse them of the remaining transgression which is in their hands, and the evil-doing which they have done to me, the blood of the children of Judah I will not cleanse from them;" also in commenting on the same, Kimchi says, "For their silver and their gold which they took I will cleanse the nations, for Israel also shall take from them in the future, and they shall become their spoil; but for their blood which they have shed I will not cleanse them, but life shall be for life—the life of those that shed it, or of their children after them; for for all the silver and the gold that is in the world which they shall give as a ransom of their souls they shall not be cleansed of the blood which they have shed;" also, "For the ages of eternity shall his dwelling-place be in Zion, after that it shall return there in the days of the Messiah." (2) Some refer the passage to millennial times. (3) Others to the time of the consummation of all things. Thus Keil, comparing Ezekiel 47:1-23; Zechariah 14:1-21; Revelation 21:1-27. and 22; says, "This passage does not teach the earthly glorification of Palestine, and desolation of Egypt and Idumaea, but that Judah and Jerusalem are types of the kingdom of God, whilst Egypt and Edom are types of the world-powers that are at enmity against God; in other words, that this description is not to be understood literally, but spiritually;" he had previously intimated that spiritual sense, "For Zion or Jerusalem is, of course, not the Jerusalem of the earthly Palestine, but the sanctified and glorified city of the living God, in which the Lord will be eternally united with his redeemed, sanctified, anti glorified Church." Joe 3:1-8 Deliverance and destruction. The causal particle, with which the first verse of this chapter commences, connects it closely with the preceding. It not only introduces a further explanation, but confirms the statements there made. The course of the predictions contained in the foregoing chapter embraced the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost; the establishment of the Christian Church; the great catastrophes and troubles that should succeed; the destruction of the holy city and the dispersion of its inhabitants, here called "the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem;" the deliverance of a remnant from those troubles—at all events, the eternal salvation of the godly who cleaved to the Lord and his service. Of the general promise, a particular instance is given in the case of the Jews. But the promise to Judah and Jerusalem is a pledge of the spiritual deliverance of his Church and people, as also of temporal deliverance when and wheresoever such may be required. I. THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 1. The relation in which Israel stood to God is symbolical of the relation in which God’s people stand to him still. They are his people; "my people," he is pleased to call them; "my heritage," he names them. They are his "peculiar treasure," and "the lot of his inheritance," as he elsewhere designates them. Their land is his land. We thus see how dear God’s people are to him, and what a deep interest he takes in their persons and in their property—in fact, in all that concerns them. They are his for correction when that is needed; they are his for protection from their enemies; they are his to right their wrongs, and to take vengeance on their adversaries; they are his to preserve to them their possessions, and to punish all who trespass thereon, or expel them therefrom. He keeps them and all they have as in the hollow of his hand; and they are dear to him as the apple of his eye. 2. This promise comprehends in itself a series; it is, indeed, instanced in a single case, yet it is not confined to it, but multiplies itself. Just as the Israelites were delivered out of the bondage of Egypt, and Jerusalem out of the hands of Sennacherib in the reign of Hezekiah, and the Jews out of the captivity in Babylon, and other deliverances of the Jewish Church and people took place before the advent of Messiah, so has the promise repeated itself in the many deliverances of God’s people since then. Especially is it exemplified in the great deliverance from sin and Satan wrought out for us by Messiah; and shall have its complete consummation in the judgment of the great day. II. OF THE ENEMIES OF GOD’S PEOPLE. 1. Simultaneous with the year of the redeemed shall be the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion. The salvation of God’s people and the destruction of their enemies go hand in hand together. They are frequently connected in time, almost always in prediction. 2. The place as well as the time is indicated, namely, the valley where Jehoshaphat gained his notable victory, and where the allies slew one another, as if a similar fate awaited all the enemies of Israel; or the valley so called in the neighbourhood, and within view of Jerusalem, that their destruction might be within view of the very people they sought to injure; or, as the name denotes, the "valley of judgment," for whatever be the particular place intended, it will be a place of justice. 3. The destruction shall proceed according to strict justice. God will plead the cause of his people, in proof that he deals judicially, not capriciously, nor causelessly, with their enemies. In this way their destruction shall be seen to be the result of a judicial process, and fully deserved. 4. There is an enumeration of the pleas advanced, and an example of the pleading adopted. (1) Among the former are the dispersion of Israel among foreign and far-off nationalities, the division of their land, the distribution of the inhabitants, the contempt poured on them, the cruelty practised upon them, and the despoiling of their treasures, secular and sacred. (2) The method of pleading is expressive of deep and deserved indignation. Identifying himself with his people, he indignantly inquires—What have ye to do with me, that is, with my people? What injury have they done you? What provocation have they given you? Or, if we adopt the alternative reading of "What are ye to me?" the gist of this indignant interrogatory is—What interest have ye in me? What claim have ye upon me? Of what value are ye to me, that I should overlook such unjust and unjustifiable conduct on your part? Further, he asks—Will ye requite some supposed injury I have done you, or some imaginary provocation I have given you? Will ye requite me by taking revenge on my people, with whom I am so closely identified? Or do you mean to wreak your gratuitous malice on my people, and, out of sheer malignity, inflict on them injuries altogether unprovoked? Have you shut your eyes on the result of such conduct, which must be a swift and sudden recompense upon your own head? (3) The common maxim of "Ill-got, ill-gone," is exemplified in the conduct of these enemies of God and his people. What they got by one sin, they lavished on another. The Hebrew captives, whom they had taken by violence, they kept in home servitude for domestic drudges to themselves or others, or transported to a distant and foreign land, and sold into slavery, while the proceeds of the barter in the one case, or of sale in the other, they expended on their lusts. The silver and the gold and goodly pleasant things which they plundered from the people, or temple of the Lord, they squandered upon idolatry. It was a common custom among the ancients to hang up in temples spoils taken from the enemy, and trophies of victory; thus the ark of God, when captured by the Philistines, was transferred to the temple of Dagon, the fish-god. With what a black catalogue of crimes these enemies of the people of God were chargeable! There were violence and rapine, slave-dealing, drunkenness and lust, and idolatry. (4) The law of retaliation also applies here. They had sold the children of Judah and Jerusalem to the Grecians for expatriation to lands remote, where they would have no opportunity of combining for common safety, or whence they could never have the hope of returning to their country. Now, in turn, and as a just retribution, their children would be sold to the children of Judah, and by them to the Sabeans, a people far off. Whether this was accomplished, as some suppose, in the wars of the Maccabees, and their victories over the enemies of the Jews, or not, certain it is that the principle of retribution finds here a fitting place for its operation. The justice of this principle was acknowledged by Adoni-bezek, when he said, "Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me." This principle is very widely prevalent in the affairs of men, not only by way of retribution, but also in the matter of recompense. The evil that men do is returned on their own head; the good likewise has its reward. Joe 3:9-14 Providence, preparation, and prevention. Circumstances of great solemnity and grandeur shall usher in the day of vengeance on the wicked sinners of every class, especially such as persecute and oppress the people of God. I. THE GOD AT WORK. Men propose, God disposes; they pursue their own individual plans, and yet all the while they are only carrying out the Divine purposes. A remarkable example of the wonderful scheme of God’s providence is recorded in the fourth chapter of the Acts, when earthly kings and rulers were gathered against the Lord and his Anointed. "Of a truth," it is added, "against thy holy Child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together;" but in all they planned and purposed and performed, though following their own impulses, they only did "whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." So in the case before us, the Gentiles are assembling in great force and strenuously pushing forward their hostile movements against the people of God; and yet they, without thinking it and without intending it, are accomplishing the Divine purposes against themselves. They are hastening on their own destruction, and rushing on their own ruin. II. THE MADE. The preparation is heralded among the Gentiles by a formal and fearful proclamation. The warlike preparations are on the grandest scale; they mean the work of war in earnest. Not only mighty men and men of war are summoned to the strife; but, besides the men whose trade is war, husbandmen are called away from their peaceful occupations, their implements of husbandry are changed into weapons of war. Even the weak are for the time to gird themselves with strength. What is the object, one naturally asks, of all this immense assemblage, of their activity and energy and vast preparations? Every one in that huge multitude thinks his mission is to destroy the people and Church of the Most High, and imagines himself commissioned for that purpose; nor do those mighty masses dream that their own doom is sealed, and that they are convened, not for the annihilation of the people of God, but for their own. They are convoked to appear before the august tribunal of the righteous Ruler of the universe to receive their sentence—a sentence in agreement with unerring justice, and to be executed in accordance therewith. The executioners are already on the spot; they are agents appointed and armed for the express purpose. It matters not whether they are angels or men; perhaps the enemies themselves, engaging in internecine strife, as was the case with the confederates that once came to fight against Jehoshaphat, then turned their arms against each other. III. OF HIS PEOPLE’S FEARS. God repeats the summons to his enemies to assemble themselves for judgment. 1. This he does to persuade his own people that their fears are groundless, and to prevent them apprehending peril from the power and preparations of their enemies. To prevent them being troubled by the might and multitude of their enemies, he repeats his challenge, if I may so term it, for them to come on, one and all, with all their powers. Thus he means to show how puny and insignificant all those enemies were in his sight, and let his people know that his hand is in the whole business, overruling all and controlling all. 2. But he makes it evident that all his proceedings are in righteousness, that justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. He pleads before he punishes; he sifts the case judicially before he passes sentence. He sits to judge, taking sufficient time and pains, so that he is justified when he speaks, and clear when he judges. IV. PERIOD OF . Once judgment is pronounced and sentence passed, the execution is not long delayed. The ripeness of the harvest now ready for reaping, the fulness of the presses now fit for treading, and the overflow of the vats now waiting for the foot of the trampler, are figures easily understood, and of which the corresponding fact is the greatness of the wickedness. Harvest is used in a good sense, oftener in a bad sense; while the treading of the wine-press is always expressive of Divine wrath. The ripeness of the one and the fulness of the other imply not only the height of abounding ungodliness, but that the fulness of the time for punishment has arrived, as in the case or’ the old world, when all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, so that God said, "The end of all flesh is before me;" or as Sodom, when fire and brimstone were rained from heaven on its wicked inhabitants; or as when our Lord said, "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. "They," says Pococke, "were ripe in their sins, fit for a harvest, and as full of wickedness as ripe grapes, which fill and overflow the vats, through the abundance of the juice with which they swell" V. OF THE TO THE PLACE OF . The prophet himself is tilled with amazement at the assembling multitudes. He looks on for a time in wonder, as one mass of living beings follows in quick succession another, till at last, as if the procession would never come to an end, he is lost in wonder, and exclaims, in view of the assembling throngs and multitudes, "Whichever way he looked there were yet more of these tumultuous masses, so that there was nothing beside them. It was one living, surging, boiling sea; throngs upon throngs—mere throngs." The place of rendezvous is the valley of Jehoshaphat, or the valley of judgment, where Jehovah judgeth; but it is also the valley of decision. This is something more than mere judgment; it is the place of sharp, strict, severe judgment Joe 3:15-17 That day-the fear of the wicked, the hope of the just. These verses picture the dread accompaniments of the time and place of the destruction of the wicked. They give us a glimpse, and a most alarming one, of the final catastrophe. I. THE DAY OF SHALL BE A DAY OF , Apart from the decision itself and consequent execution of Divine wrath upon the ungodly—an execution which, as if baffling the power of words to describe, is left to imagination to conceive—the attendant terrors of that day invest it with the blackness of darkness. Not only shall sun and moon withdraw their shining and undergo a total eclipse, but the stars shall frown upon them. The lights of heaven shall be darkened, or those lights shall dwindle before the unspeakable brightness of the glory in which the Judge shall appear, just as the stars pale and disappear in presence of the sun when he rises in splendour above the eastern horizon. II. THAT DAY SHALL BE A DAY OF . Dreadful sounds as well as dreadful sights shall augment the terrors of that day. "As the failure of the light of the sun at our Lord’s passion betokened the shame of nature at the great sin of man, so, at the day of judgment, it sets before us the awfulness of God’s judgments, as though it dared not behold the severity of him who judgeth and returneth every man’s work upon his own head;" so the voice of God, when he shall roar out of Zion, shall be a voice of terror. Even when the voice of God speaks words of warning, it is compared to the roaring of a lion, as we read, "The Lord hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" How much more when that terrible voice is no longer a voice of warning, but a voice of wrath? III. THAT DAY SHALL BE A DAY OF . The frame of nature shall feel the shock of strong convulsions. The heavens and the earth shall shake, but this shaking is only a prelude to something still more awe-inspiring, even such convulsions as seem to betoken their dissolution. "Nor shall it be a slight shaking of the earth at his coming," says an old writer, "but such that all the dead shall be roused, as it were, from their sleep." And when the day of final decision comes, "the heavens," we are told, "shall pass away with a great voice, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." Minor judgments are premonitions of, and should be improved as, preparations for the judgment of the great day. "The day of wrath! that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away, What power shall be the sinner’s stay? Whom shall he trust that dreadful day? "When, shrivelling like a parched scroll, The flaming heavens together roll, And louder yet, and yet more dread, Swells the high trump that wakes the dead; "Oh! on that day, that wrathful day, When man to judgment wakes from clay, Be thou, O Christ, the sinner’s Stay, Though heaven and earth shall pass away." When God, in punishing his enemies, shakes as it were earth and heaven, causing such changes and commotions as seem to threaten a general upheaval and convulsion of the course of nature, it is not strange if the people of God should be agitated with fears and exercised with apprehensions lest the storm should burst over them. Accordingly, he vouchsafes to them promises to secure them against such fears and fortify them for the ordeal. I. HE IS THE HOPE OF HIS PEOPLE. He comforts his people so that the terrors of a time of great convulsions do not overwhelm them. As God is the Ground and Founder of his people’s hopes, so will he be their Crown and Consummation. He is their Harbour of refuge and their Fortress of safety. Fleeing to him, they shall not only be admitted to, but preserved, in safety. He is their Refuge on earth while the storm of wrath is sweeping over the wicked; he will be their Home in heaven at last. "The saints in the great day shall arrive at the desired haven, shall put to shore after a stormy voyage; they shall go to be ever at home with God—to their Father’s house, the house not made with hands." II. HE IS THE OF HIS PEOPLE. He is the Hope of his people and the Strength of the children of Israel. We are thus taught that while all are not Israel that are called Israel, so all who are really God’s people are the true spiritual Israel; and that all his spiritual promises to Israel in the past apply in the present, and may be claimed by all those who are Israelites indeed. When other men’s hearts fail them, God is the Strength of his people’s hearts and their Portion for ever. When the judgments of God are abroad in the earth, and sinners overtaken by them, God is a present Help to his people; and in that time of terror when the vials of wroth shall be poured out upon the wicked, joy and gladness shall be reserved for the righteous, while the joy of the Lord shall be their strength. Thus, amid all the trials of this mortal life, "in all time of our tribulation; in all time of our wealth; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment," God is the Hope and Happiness of his people, the Support and Strength of all his true Israel. III. HE IS THE OF HIS PEOPLE. While God is a holy God, heaven a holy place, the angels of God holy angels, even the Church militant is holy, and the redeemed of the Lord a holy people. But in this world the Church is a mixed society; there are tares among the wheat, chaff as well as good grain. It will not always be so. In millennial times, to which the passage points, there shall be higher degrees of holiness, of purity, of prosperity, and peace, than the Church has yet attained; but in heaven alone holiness shall be perfect and happiness complete. Meantime we are encouraged by the promise that God’s presence is enjoyed by his people. He himself is the Source of holiness; the Church on earth, like Zion of old, is made holy by his presence; the place of his people’s habitation, like Jerusalem of old, is a holy place; his people are a holy people. Strangers may force or find an entrance to the Church militant, or earthly Jerusalem, and pollute it; but the Jerusalem that is above, that is, the Church triumphant, shall never be trodden by stranger’s foot, nor entered by anything that defiles or works iniquity. None but the true citizens of Zion shall be there, and so only those that have a right to be there. Even here and now we have the happy consciousness that God, our own God—our own "as much as if possessed by none besides, filling all with gladness, yet fully possessed by each, as though there were none besides "—dwells with us, and in us, while hereafter we shall have "unvarying, blissful, hallowing presence, never withdrawn, never hidden, never shaded, but ever shining upon us." Joe 3:18-21 The promise of plenty. These verses contain the concluding promises of the closing chapter of this book of Scripture. I. THERE IS THE PROMISE OF PLENTY. Some understand the whole of this verse as referring to spiritual blessings, especially in millennial times. "But though the prophecy belongs eminently to one time, the imagery describes the fulness of spiritual blessings which God at all times diffuses in and through the Church; and these blessings, he says, shall continue on in her for ever; her enemies shall be cut off for ever." Others, understanding these blessings as promised to the Jeers when restored and converted, understand the last clause of the verse as relating to spiritual, and the preceding to temporal, blessings. In either case the language is beautifully poetic, and conveys the idea of exuberant blessings. The mountains, covered with vineyards, shall yield abundance of wine, or, without human toil, shall spontaneously pour it forth; the hills shall be clothed with flocks, or, of their own accord, shall yield abundance of milk; the rivers, even the tiny channels, never again reduced to dry river-beds, shall gush perennially, or overflow their banks. Thus there shall be abundance of wine for refreshment, of milk for nourishment, and of water for allaying thirst or fertilizing what would otherwise be a dry, parched land. The last clause can only be referred to spiritual blessings, both because of its source—the house of the Lord—and its course, extending to the valley of acacias, seven and a half miles to the east of the Dead Sea. This is the stream, "the Siloah," whose streamlets, i.e. the artificial fertilizing divisions, which made glad the city of God, shall make the wildest, driest spots of our mortality like the garden of the Lord. II. THERE IS THE PROMISE OF . While the enemies of God, like Egypt, the ancient oppressor of his people, and Edom, their constant enemy, are devoted to destruction, Judah the country and Jerusalem the city—all the members of the Church of Christ shall enjoy a perpetuity of blessing in time, and an eternity of bliss when time shall be no more. "Egypt and Edom and all the enemies of God shall come to an end; but his people shall never come to an end." The Judah that truly praise God, the Israel that without ceasing pray to God, shall outlive all the machinations of the wicked; the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church. "The enemy shall not destroy her; time shall not consume her; she shall never decay. The people of God shall abide before him and through him here, and shall dwell with him for ever." III. THERE IS THE PROMISE OF PURITY. This blessing contains the reason of all the rest. It is the cause of the plenty and perpetuity and all other privileges. If we accept the Authorized Version of the last verse, we conclude from it that all the guilt of sin, especially their bloodguiltiness, shall be purged away. The people of God, both Jew and Gentile, shall in the day of God’s gracious visitation be cleansed from sin and throughly washed from all iniquity; otherwise they could not be fit for full communion with God. As long as we are defiled by sin, we are odious to the holiness and obnoxious to the justice of God. It is only when washed in the opened fountain, and purified by that blood which cleanseth from all sin, that we are made meet for the holy companionship of heaven. Here in the Church below the lessons of the Divine Word, the ordinances of religion, the providences of God, sometimes pleasant, oftener painful, but above all and giving efficacy to all, the blood of atonement, purge away our sins. But whatever is amiss in the Church or the Christian on earth shall be amended, whatever is wrong shall be, rectified; and the Church, as the individual soul, shall be without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. BY J.R. THOMSON Joe 3:1 Restoration from captivity. It is believed that Joel was the earliest of the prophets who prophesied in Judah and Jerusalem. If so, it is remarkable how boldly he led the way in the general tone of his declarations and predictions, and especially with what poetic insight, with what religious fervour, he connected political events with lessons of eternal morality. In this chapter it would perhaps be possible to find nothing but history; yet the grandeur and solemnity of the language point rather to truths of Divine import and power as the real significance of the prophecy. The very captivity here foretold has its spiritual analogy, and the restoration of Judah is a type of the ransom of mankind. I. THE WORST IS THAT OF TO SIN. 1. This implies that sin is not the true and proper lord of our race, but that God has a claim to the loyalty and obedience of men. 2. And that sin is a tyrant, arbitrary, unjust, and basely oppressive. 3. And further, that in such bondage, no peace, no liberty, no satisfaction, are to be found. II. THE ONLY OF IS GOD HIMSELF. 1. His interposition is prompted by Divine compassion. 2. And is effected by supernatural means. In rescuing Judah from the captivity in the East, Jehovah was painting, as it were, beforehand a picture of what was yet to be. In Christ God laid help upon One who was mighty; his designation is emphatically the Redeemer. 3. The interposition is completed by the restoration of the ransomed to greater happiness than by their disloyalty they forfeited and lost. III. THE FROM ARE TO AND PRAISE. 1. TO obedience, because they have tasted the bitter fruits of rebellion, and have learned the lesson that true happiness lies in cheerful subjection. 2. To praise, because such mercy as they have experienced deserves grateful and unceasing acknowledgments.—T. Joe 3:2-8 Retribution. Joel’s prophetic foresight beholds the calamities that are to come upon the Jews, his countrymen. Looking back upon the past, we are able by the records of history to verify the justice of these predictions. The transportations into the East, the oppression under Antiochus, the dispersion by the Romans,—these awful events in Hebrew history rise before our view. But where shall we look for a fulfilment of the predictions of vengeance and of retribution? Surely God in his providence has spoiled the spoilers, and led captivity captive! There is but a name and a memory left of the proud conquerors and the mighty nations that oppressed and scattered Israel. An omen this of final judgment—a picture of the purposes of the Eternal. The Lord reigneth, and none can stay his hand. I. THE OF GOD’S PEOPLE BY THEIR FOES. 1. The laud is parted. The sacred soil is divided among strangers, for the tribes to whom it was allotted are dispossessed. The heirs become slaves, and toil upon their own inheritance. 2. The treasures are carried away. The silver, the gold, the pleasant things, which have been a delight to the eyes and an enrichment to the population,—these are carried off to adorn the palaces and temples of the conquerors and captors. 3. The inhabitants of the land are led into captivity, are scattered among the nations, far from the homes of their ancestors and the scenes of their childhood. 4. Nay, even worse, the children are sold as slaves, as worthless trifles, or as ministers to the luxury or the lust of heathen masters. II. THE RESCUE OF GOD’S PEOPLE FROM THEIR FOES. 1. The enemies and oppressors shall be themselves defeated and vanquished. The valley of Jehoshaphat, or "the judgment of Jehovah," is to be the scene of a righteous retribution, in which the cause of God’s people shall be maintained, and their enemies judged. 2. The people of God shall be restored to their dwelling-places, and their former happiness and privileges; the mischief shall be undone. 3. And the oppressors shall in turn endure the fate they inflicted upon the Lord’s people; they who sold Israelites into captivity in the West shall themselves be deported as slaves into the East. From this prediction the great lesson may be learned that the Lord reigneth—that he suffers nothing to happen to his people that he will not overrule for their good and for his glory.—T. Joe 3:9-13 War and judgment. This is truly prophetic language; for the writer is not merely relating historical facts, or foretelling future events; he is uttering great moral and religions principles. The form these utterances assume is determined by the circumstances of Judah in the time of the prophet; but the truth enunciated is one which is universal and all-important. I. A PICTURE OF WAR. 1. The vastness of the scale upon which it is conducted appears from the language employed to designate those who take part in it. They are "the Gentiles;" "all the nations." 2. The valour and renown of the combatants are set forth in the expressions," the mighty men," "the men of war," etc. 3. The military preparation and warlike accoutrements are brought before us very vividly and picturesquely in the representation of ploughshares fashioned into swords, and pruning-hooks into spears. 4. The warlike array is denoted by the directions to "assemble," to "come up," etc. II. A PICTURE OF AND . 1. The vast multitudes who intend to gather for battle prove in reality to have gathered for judgment. They came in battle array to contend with the Lord of hosts; and 1o! they find themselves standing at the bar of the great Judge of all. 2. The Lord sits upon his judgment-seat, his throne, whilst before him are gathered all nations. 3. Under two striking figures is set forth the judicial process and the punitive consequences which ensue. The harvest is reaped, the wine-press is trodden. The enemies of the Lord and of his people are, as it were, mown down by the hand of the reaper; their blood flows from the wine-press of the wrath of God. . The passage shows us the omniscient regard of God surveying all the sons of men, and the power of God defeating the counsels of rebels and foes, delivering the righteous from oppression, vindicating the cause of truth and obedience. The sway of the Supreme extends throughout the universe; and however we may be perplexed and baffled by seeming disorder, we may be assured that the sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of God’s kingdom, and that every enemy shall be put beneath his feet.—T. Joe 3:14 The valley of decision. A learned and interesting book has been written upon ’The Decisive Battles of the World.’ Often in the long history of mankind, the fate of races, of empires, as well as that of kings and heroes, has been settled upon the battle-field. Decisive conflicts often occur in the region of thought and belief, in the region of personal influence, where there is nothing to attract general attention. But even more overlooked and unnoticed is the perpetual Divine judgment which takes place in human life and human society; and even more forgotten is the day of judgment, which revelation assures us shall surely come. Not denying that there may be in this verse a reference to some special historical incident, we may yet take it as conveying a great and solemn truth applicable to the moral life of humanity. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/pulpit-commentary/