Book of Joel

“ But the reason why Joel is placed next to Hosea in the Hebrew canon, may possibly be found in the contrast which exists between the lamentations of the former on account of the all-parching heat and the all-consuming swarms of insects, and the dewy, verdant, and flowery imagery with which the book of Hosea closes. Amos then follows Joel, because he not only takes up again his denunciations of judgment, but opens with one of the utterances with which Joel closes (Joe. 3:16) : “Jehovah will roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem.” ”

“ Opinions differ widely; I cannot discuss them nor even cite them; but the old theory that Joel lived and preached about eight hundred and seventy-five years before Christ does not seem to me to be invalidated by modern criticism. He was a native of the Southern Kingdom; and at the time we have named, the King of Judea was Joash, whose dramatic elevation to the throne in his seventh year, by Jehoiada the priest, is narrated in the Book of Kings. It was a time of disturbance and disaster in Judah and Jerusalem ”

“ Joel starts, like any older prophet, from the facts of his own day, but these hurry him at once into apocalypse; he calls, as thoroughly as any of his predecessors, to repentance, but under the imminence of the Day of the Lord, with its “supernatural” terrors, he mentions no special sin and enforces no single virtue. ”

“ Unlike every other prophet, [Pg 376] except Haggai, “Malachi” and “Zechariah” ix.—xiv., Joel mentions neither Assyria, which emerged upon the prophetic horizon about 760, [1069] nor the Babylonian Empire, which had fallen by 537. The presumption is that he wrote before 760 or after 537. Unlike all the prophets, too, [1070] Joel does not charge his people with civic or national sins; nor does his book bear any trace of the struggle between the righteous and unrighteous in Israel, nor of that between the spiritual worshippers of Jehovah and the idolaters. ”

“ The literary parallels between Joel and other writers are unusually many for so small a book. They number at least twenty in seventy-two verses. The other books of the Old Testament in which they occur are about twelve. Where one writer has parallels with many, we do not necessarily conclude that he is the borrower, unless we find that some of the phrases common to both are characteristic of the other writers, or that, in his text of them, there are differences from theirs which may reasonably be reckoned to be of a later origin. ”

“ His literary criticism is as unsound as his textual. It is only by ignoring the beautiful poetry of chap. i. that he transplants it to the future. Joel’s figures are too vivid, too actual, to be predictive or mystical. And the whole interpretation wrecks itself in [Pg 396] the same verse as the allegorical, the verse, viz., in which Joel plainly speaks of himself as having suffered with his hearers the plague he describes. [1157]
We may, therefore, with confidence conclude that the allegorical and mystical interpretations of Joel are impossible ”

“ Thus Joel reaches the climax of his argument. Jehovah is near, His Day is about to break. From this it is impossible to escape on the narrow path of disaster by which the prophet has led up to it. But beneath that path the prophet passes the ground of a broad truth, and on that truth, while judgment remains still as real, there is room for the people to turn from it. If experience has shown that God is in the present, near and inevitable, faith remembers that He is there not willingly for judgment, but with all His ancient [Pg 410] feeling for Israel and His zeal to save her. ”

“ That Israel remained Israel, in spite of Greek arms and the Greek mind, was due to the legalism of Ezra and Nehemiah, and to what we call the narrow enthusiasm of Joel. The hearts which kept their passion so confined felt all the deeper for its limits. They would be satisfied with nothing less than the inspiration of every Israelite, the fulfilment of the prayer of Moses: Would to God that all Jehovah’s people were prophets! And of itself this carries Joel’s prediction to a wider fulfilment. A nation of prophets is meant for the world. ”

“ Merx has traced Joel’s relations to other prophets, and reflection of a late date in Israel’s history, with care and ingenuity; but his treatment of the text and exegesis of the prophet’s meaning are alike forced and fanciful. In face of the support which the Massoretic reading of the hinge of the book, chap. ii. 18 ff., receives from the ancient versions, and of its inherent probability and harmony with the context, Merx’s textual emendation is unnecessary, besides being in itself unnatural. ”

“ Hitherto Joel has spoken no syllable of the heathen, except to pray that God by His plagues will not give Israel to be mocked by them. But in the last chapter of the Book we have Israel’s captivity to the heathen taken for granted, a promise made that it will be removed and their land set free from the foreigner. Certain nations are singled out for judgment, which is described in the terms of Apocalypse; and the Book closes with the vision, already familiar in prophecy, of a supernatural fertility for the land. ”

“ Joel (they reason) would hardly have connected so common an adversity with so singular and ultimate a crisis as the Day of the Lord. Under the figure of locusts he must be describing some more fateful agency of God’s wrath upon Israel. More than one trait of his description appears to imply a human army. It can only be one or other, or all, of those heathen powers whom at different periods God raised up to chastise His delinquent people; and this opinion is held to be supported by the facts that chap. ii. 20 speaks of them as the Northern and chap. ”

“ But even the best of men do not see the full force of the truth God gives to them, nor follow it even to its immediate consequences. Few of the prophets did so, and at first none of the apostles. Joel does not hesitate to say that the heathen shall be destroyed. He does not think of Israel’s mission as foretold by the Second Isaiah; nor of “Malachi’s” vision of the heathen waiting upon Jehovah. ”

“ By just these means did Elijah and Amos bring God home to the hearts of ancient Israel. In Joel we see the revival of the old nature-religion, and the revenge that it was bound to take upon the elaborate systems which had displaced it, but which by their formalism and their artificial completeness had made men forget that near presence and direct action of the Almighty which it is nature’s own office to enforce upon the heart. ”

“ Now it is quite within the bounds of possibility that chaps. iii. and iv. are from another hand than chaps. i. and ii.: we have nothing to disprove that. But, on the other hand, there is nothing to prove it. On the [Pg 388] contrary, the possibility of all four chapters being from the same hand is very obvious. Joel mentions no heathen in the first chapter, because he is engrossed with the plague of locusts. But when this has passed, it is quite natural that he should take up the standing problem of Israel’s history—their relation to heathen peoples. ”

“ A large and growing majority of critics of all schools [1133] hold that Joel starts, like other prophets, from the facts of experience. His locusts, though described with poetic hyperbole—for are they not the vanguard [Pg 390] of the awful Day of God’s judgment?—are real locusts; their plague has just been felt by his contemporaries, whom he summons to repent, and to whom, when they have repented, he brings promises of the restoration of their ruined harvests, the outpouring of the Spirit, and judgment upon their foes. ”

“ God has to return to His people and to show His love for them before He pours forth His Spirit upon them. That is what Joel intends by the order he pursues, and not that a certain stage of physical comfort is indispensable to a high degree of spiritual feeling and experience. The early and latter rains, the fulness of corn, wine and oil, are as purely religious to Joel, though not so highly religious, as the phenomena of the Spirit in men. ”

“ The drought and the famine produced by the locusts were signs of His anger and of His divorce of the land. The proofs that He has relented, and taken Israel back into a spiritual relation to Himself, can, therefore, from Joel’s point of view, only be given by the healing of the people’s wounds. In plenteous rains and full harvests God sets His seal to man’s penitence. Rain and harvest are not merely physical benefits, but religious sacraments: signs that God has returned to His people, and that His zeal is again stirred on their behalf. ”

“ In the earlier stages of all religions, it is impossible to be both extensive and intensive. With a few exceptions, the Israel of Joel’s time was a narrow and exclusive body, hating and hated by other peoples. ”

“ For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be a
remnant, as Jehovah hath spoken,
And among the fugitives those whom Jehovah calleth.
[Pg 428] This prophecy divides into two parts—the outpouring of the Spirit, and the appearance of the terrible Day of the Lord.
The Spirit of God is to be poured on all flesh, says the prophet. By this term, which is sometimes applied to all things that breathe, and sometimes to mankind as a whole, [1239] Joel means Israel only: the heathen are to be destroyed. ”

“ He describes no slaying and no looting; but when he comes to the promise that Jehovah will restore the losses which have been sustained by His people, he defines them as the years which His army has eaten. [1150] But all this proof is clenched by the fact that Joel compares the locusts to actual soldiers. [1151] They are like horsemen, the sound of them is like chariots, they run like horses, and like men of war they leap upon the wall. ”

“ All alike, they are signs or accompaniments of the Day of Jehovah, and that Day has still to break. The prophet’s scenery is apocalyptic; the locusts are “eschatological locusts,” not historical ones. This interpretation of Joel has been elaborated by Dr. Adalbert Merx, and the following is a summary of his opinions. [1154]
After examining the book along all the lines of exposition which have been proposed, Merx finds himself unable to trace any plan or even sign of a plan ”

“ The Earlier Prophets comprise Joshua, the Judges, the two books of Samuel, counted as one, and the two books of the Kings, counted also as one. The Later Prophets comprise Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets, the last books in our Old Testament,--Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These twelve were counted as one book; so that there were four volumes of the earlier and four of the later prophets. Why the Jews should have called Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and the Kings books of the Prophets is not clear ”

“ Joel, then, describes, and does not unduly enhance, the terrors of an actual plague. At first his whole [Pg 405] strength is so bent to make his people feel these, that, though about to call to repentance, he does not detail the national sins which require it. In his opening verses he summons the drunkards, [1183] but that is merely to lend vividness to his picture of facts, because men of such habits will be the first to feel a plague of this kind. Nor does Joel yet ask his hearers what the calamity portends. ”

“ At first Joel saw only a confused waving of the green branches, and heard an indistinct murmur of voices; but as they came nearer, he caught the words, "Hosannah to the Son of David!"
"Look!" cried Rabbi Amos, laying his wrinkled, shaking hand heavily on Joel's shoulder. "Look ye, boy, the voice of prophecy! No Roman war-horse bears the coming victor! It is as Zechariah foretold! That the king should come riding upon the colt of an ass,—the symbol of peace. So David rode, and so the Judges of Israel came and went!"
Joel's eyes followed the gesture of the tremulous, pointing finger. ”

“ You forget you are only a [163] child, and might not be able to stand the hardships of such a journey."
"I am almost fourteen," said Joel, stretching himself up proudly. "And I am as strong now as some of the men who go with Him. He gave me back my strength, you know. Oh, you do not know how I love Him!" he cried. "When I am away from Him, I feel as you would were you separated from Jesse and Ruth and father Phineas. My heart is always going out after Him!" ”

“ The discovery seemed to make her forget what she had come to say, and she stood and stared at him; then she remembered. "Rabbi Amos told me of the offer you have had from a rich [250] merchant in Bethany, and I came down here, secretly, to beg you to accept it. In your father's name I beg you!"
Joel looked perplexed. "I hardly know what to do," he said. "Every one advises me just as you do; but I feel that they are all wrong. Surely the Master meant me as well as father Phineas and the others, when He charged us to go and preach the gospel to every creature." ”

“ The earth had scarcely stopped trembling, when an old white-bearded priest ran across the Court of the Gentiles; his wrinkled hands, raised above his head, shook as with palsy. The scream that he uttered seemed to transfix Joel with horror.
"The veil of the Temple is rent in twain!" he cried,—"The veil of the Temple is rent in twain!"
Then with a convulsive shudder he fell forward on his face. Joel's knees shook. The darkness, the earthquake, and now this mighty force that had laid bare the Holy of Holies, filled him with an undefined dread. ”