REMARKS ON THE PROPHECY OF JOEL.
By Uriah Smith
Joel was of the tribe of Reuben. The date of his prophecy is put in the 9th year of Manasseh, king of Judah, before Christ about 690. His book is one of great interest, from the fact that so much of it evidently applies to the last days. His language peals forth like a trumpet, to give a thrilling warning of the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. VERSE 1. The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. A very common expression used by the sacred writers, to announce that what they had to utter, they had received from the Lord. Joel’s prophecy, therefore, is one of the instances referred to by Peter (2 Pet. 1:21), of holy men speaking as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. VERSE 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? 3. Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. Joel wastes no time in introduction. With an abrupt appeal to all the inhabitants of the land he opens his discourse. And he excites attention and alarm by withholding his subject till he has indicated its nature. He calls upon the oldest men to say if anything had been in their day of so fearful a nature as that which he was about to announce. And still to heighten the effect he tells them, in verse 3, that it should be handed down as such to all generations. VERSE 4. That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. Here he reveals the judgment to which he refers. The terrible scourge of the palmerworm, locust, cankerworm and caterpillar, had fallen upon the land. He did not have to stop to announce or describe the calamity. All understood it. These scourges were frequent in that country; but this one is singled out as especially destructive. The different insects mentioned probably all refer to the locust in its different stages of development. These insects in all stages are simply organized and animated voraciousness. They leave no green thing behind them. The effects of their depredation upon the lands they visit, are described as appalling in the extreme. VERSE 5. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. 6. For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. 7. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white. 8. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. 9. The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn. 10. The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. 11. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. 12. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men. 13. Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. By a series of beautiful figures, and a vividly colored, but not overdrawn, picture, the prophet, in the verses last quoted, sets forth the effect of this great devastation of the locusts. They are compared to a nation coming up upon the land, every one having the teeth of a lion to devour, wasting the vineyard, and stripping the olive and the fig trees, even to the destruction of the bark, leaving their branches white and bare. All this the locusts literally did. Then the drunkards and drinkers of wine are called upon to weep and howl for the loss of their drink. The people were to lament like a young virgin, or, more properly rendered, bride, girded with sackcloth for her dead husband. And the priests were to mourn because, in the general devastation, no offerings could be supplied to the house of God. How could this judgment and its effects be set forth more vividly? This part of Joel’s description is considered by commentators as inimitably beautiful. VERSE 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. 15. Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. The day of the Lord was not anything that occurred in connection with the judgment upon Joel’s land in his day, which he has thus far described. But in that he saw a figure or illustration of a greater destruction that was to come to usher in the great day of the Lord. Hence with an easy and natural transition, he glances from the local judgments of his time to the judgments of the future, when the great day of the Lord should be at the door. This feature is common to the prophetic writings. Isaiah furnishes a notable instance, when in his prophecies respecting Babylon, he looks from the destruction of literal Babylon, over to the greater and more fearful destruction of mystical Babylon at the last day, and so in his fervid language passes from one to the other. See Isa. 13. Dr. Clarke acknowledges this double nature of the prophecy of Joel; though it did not occur to him to apply the more remote predictions to the end of time. The spirit of Joel’s language it will be profitable for us to study who believe we are living in the time to which it has its application. Let us drink into its spirit till we shall feel like gathering in a solemn assembly and crying fervently unto the Lord. The expression, “Alas for the day!” is emphatic. The Syriac, says Dr. Clarke, repeats it, and the Vulgate, Septuagint, and Arabic, have it three times: “Alas, alas, alas, for the day!” It is no ordinary day. As a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. It is no judgment that human hands or earthly agencies can inflict. What shall arouse the people to prepare for it? VERSE 16. Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God? 17. The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered. 18. How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. 19. O Lord, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field. 20. 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. These verses describe some of the features of this time that precedes the day of the Lord. The seed becomes unfruitful in the ground, and that which begins to vegetate is withered; for a terrible drought consumes the face of nature. The Lord is revealed as the only source of hope and help in that time. Alas! for those who have no interest in him then. A section of country devoured by locusts has every appearance of having been consumed by a terrific conflagration. As a counterpart of this the prophet’s eye is directed to the fearful drought and consequent famine that shall precede the day of the Lord. The angel who pours out the fourth of the seven last plagues, Rev. 16:8, 9, pours out his vial upon the sun and power is given him to scorch men with fire. This supernatural power given to the heat of the sun, will have precisely the effect described in Joel 1:19, 20, and it doubtless refers to the same time. The unnatural heat, as a natural consequence, must evaporate the water of the streams and rivers, wither the forests, and dry up the face of nature. Then the beasts become perplexed for lack of pasture, and groan under the dire calamity. And we may add that among the last judgments to come upon great Babylon, Rev. 18:8, famine holds an equal rank with death and mourning. But in this time of trouble the Lord will be the hope and stay of his people. The language of faith is:— “Although the vine its fruit deny,
Although the olive yield no oil,
The withering fig trees droop and die,
The fields elude the tiller’s toil,
The empty stall no herd afford,
And perish all the bleating race,
Yet will I triumph in the Lord,
The God of my salvation praise.”