Day 263. Joel 1-3

Most of the prophets—especially Hosea and Amos—are highly critical of the Jewish religious establishment and view it from the outside. Like Ezekiel, Joel does not. He is deeply involved in and concerned for the worship life of the community. This has led scholars to surmise that Joel—whose name means "Yahweh is my God"—was a temple-prophet--a member of the priestly establishment. He speaks his oracles after the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple but before Alexander the Great's destruction of the great Phoenician city-state of Tyre. So the book is a comparatively late one, written shortly before 348 B.C.
In a time of growing moral laxity, drunkenness (1:5), and religious indifference, the prophet Joel calls the people to repent and return to the LORD. Most of the other prophets deliver their oracles against the backdrop of political calamity—war or the threat of invasion. The crisis behind the Book of Joel is an ecological disaster, not a political one. Locust invasions were by no means uncommon in the ancient Near East; remember that the eighth of the plagues which accompany the exodus from Egypt was a blight of locusts—see Exodus 10:1-20. In our text it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the prophet is talking about an infestation of insects or the advance of an invading army. Locust infestations have a military quality to them. The prophet identifies four kinds of locusts (1:4), which are like soldiers in being differently armed for differing purposes. What one does not devour and destroy, another will until nothing is left.
The prophet sees the invasion of the locust army as a "sign" of the LORD's anger over the moral state of decay of his people. Joel's description is overwhelming in its vividness. The locusts descend upon the verdant land like an army, "powerful and innumerable," destroying everything before it. Everyone and everything—all creation mourns. The priests mourn because the regular offerings in the temple, the grain and the drink offerings, are cut off from the house of the LORD" (1:9) because of the locusts. The whole religious life of the nation is disrupted. Farmers mourn and are "dismayed" (1:11) at the loss of their livelihood. Plants and trees dry up, and "joy withers away among the people" (1:12).
In the face of ecological disaster, all the classes of society are summoned to "put on sackcloth and lament" (1:13). Joel the temple-prophet calls upon the "ministers of the altar" to lead this lament, gathering "the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD" (1:14) for special services of penitence and fasting. The "day of the Lord is near" (1:13). We have already read of the "day of the LORD" in the writings of Isaiah (13:6), Jeremiah (46:10), and Ezekiel (30:3), in which it is seen as the coming time when the LORD will intervene directly in history. Like other prophets before him, Joel describes it as a day of "darkness and gloom" (2:2).
As the day approaches, all of creation is in crisis and danger. There is drought and wildfires break out. "The seed shrivels" (1:17); "the animals groan"; "cattle wander about"; "sheep are dazed" (1:18); "even the wild animals cry. . . because the watercourses are dried up" (1:20). The alarm is sounded—the "day of the LORD is coming" (2:1). The locust-horde blots out the sun as if creation were being undone. Before them the "land is like the Garden of Eden, but after them a desolate wilderness and nothing escapes them" (2:3).
The insects "have the appearance of horses" (2:4). They swarm everywhere—"they leap on the tops of the mountains." The sound of their wings "is like the crackling of a flame of fire," devouring everything before it. They move forward with a single will, "like a powerful army" (2:5) under the command of an unseen general. They are like besiegers, overwhelming and looting—"they leap upon the city, they run upon the walls; they climb up into the houses, they enter through the windows like a thief" (2:9). And the unseen commander of this invincible army is the LORD himself. "How vast is his host!" the prophet marvels. "Numberless are those who obey his command" (2:11).
The coming of this inhuman army heralds the coming of the day of the LORD. "Who can endure it?" he asks. And then gives an answer—Those who whole-heartedly return to the LORD, who "rend [their] hearts and not [their] clothing" (2:12) will endure. Their hope is based not upon their own strength or goodness, but upon the character of God himself—"he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding a steadfast love, and relents from punishing" (2:13). But God is inherently mysterious and uncontrollable. "Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him . . .?" (2:14), the prophet wonders.
Who knows if he will have mercy? There is only one way to find out-- "sanctify a fast" (2:13). No one is to be excluded, not the very old or the "infant at the breast" (2:16). The priests again take a leading role as intermediaries in this liturgy of repentance, begging the LORD to spare his people and begging him not to bring shame upon his people and upon himself as their God. And the LORD responds to the pleas of the priests and people—he becomes "jealous for his land and [has] pity on his people" (2:18), vindicating them "among the nations," and himself in the process (2:19). He acts to "remove the northern army far from" them, driving the insect horde into the sea.
Joel proclaims the glad news to the soil and to the wild animals, and "the children of Zion," are bid to rejoice because God has begun to heal his creation by giving them "the early rain of [their] vindication" (2:23-24). The prophet hails the return of prosperity to the land. The LORD has pledged that he will "repay [his people] for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, [the LORD's] great army which [he has] sent against [them]" (2:23). And twice—for emphasis—he reports the LORD's pledge that his "people will never [again] be put to shame" (2:26, 27).
As we noted earlier, the "day of the LORD" is often pictured as a day of darkness and gloom, but Joel sees its positive outcome. "Afterward" he says, the LORD "will pour his spirit on all flesh" (2:28). In the Old Testament the spirit of the LORD is something that is poured out upon charismatic judges and military commanders—Gideon and Samson—and upon prophets. It is poured out upon kings as well, ritually in the rite of anointing with oil. But the prophecy of Joel looks forward to a day when everyone within the covenant community, even slaves—both male and female--will prophesy. (The early church saw this prophecy fulfilled in the events of Pentecost, and Peter uses this passage from Joel as the text for the sermon he preaches that day-- see Acts 2:1-21.) Joel breaks into apocalyptic language in describing the signs and "portents" that will surround the "great and terrible day of the LORD," but he assures his hearers even in
the midst of tribulation and confusion in the natural world, "everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved" (2:30-32)
Before the end there will be a day of judgment. The LORD who has scattered Israel in his great Diaspora—the word in Greek means "scattering"—will gather them into the "the Valley of Jehoshaphat." No such location can be identified-- the name Jehoshaphat means "the LORD has judged"-- the valley is simply the place where LORD will call his people to account (3:2) for their sins. Principally they are judged for selling Jewish youth into slavery, something strictly forbidden by the Law of Moses. This condemnation is extended to Tyre and Sidon because they had sold "the people of Judah to the Greeks." Because of the greed and cruelty their own children will be sold to the far-off Sabeans—residents of southern Arabia (3:8). (This was a time when the slave trade, though recognized as a great evil, was taken for granted as a fact of economic life.)
The day of judgment will take the form of a last great battle, the prophet says. The armies of "all the neighboring nations"—"multitudes, multitudes"—will be gathered in the valley of decision" (3:14). The armies of Israel will also gather in the "valley of Jehoshaphat," and in preparation for combat, they are bidden to "beat [their] plowshares into swords and [their] pruning hooks into spears." This is the reverse of the command of Isaiah in 2:4, but Joel sees the whole nation mobilized in a holy cause. On that day "let the weakling say, 'I am a warrior'" (3:10)--an injunction that has certainly been obeyed in the modern state of Israel.
Joel ends his prophecy with the triumph of Israel over its neighbors. "Jerusalem shall be holy"—purified of all foreign contamination—"and strangers shall never again pass through it" (3:17). Israel's enemies—Edom and Egypt—shall be desolated, but for the People of the Promise "in that day the Mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk" (3:18). The long tribulation will be finally over, and Israel shall live in peace and security. No one will dare abuse or interfere with them.
Joel's particularistic, nationalistic vision of Israel's future is quite different from Isaiah's revelation of the universal gathering of the nations to Mount Zion and to the temple. But Joel's horizon is more limited than Isaiah's. He is a "minor" prophet in this sense—he is more concerned with the preservation of Israel's identity and worship than with its ultimate mission to the world.