From Joel 1-3
An army of locusts billions in size is coming to eat all of Judah and Jerusalem’s agriculture. But the LORD gives them a chance to avert the coming disaster. Joel calls out to the people to repent of their sins. The LORD gives everyone a chance to repent before his day of judgment.
This post is part of my bible in a year series.
Passage and Comments
Joel begins proclaiming the words of the LORD.
1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:
2 Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
3 Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.(Joel 1.1-4)
He speaks to the elders and wants them to pass on the message down four generations.
The judgment would easily last more than one hundred years.
He describes four kinds of locusts;
- cutting locust,
- swarming locust,
- hopping locust, and lastly the
- destroying locust.
Each eats the remainder from the previous. Nothing will be left over. All their agriculture eaten.
5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.
6 For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. 7 It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white.
8 Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth. 9 The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD. (Joel 1.5-9)
One swarm of locusts can contain up to ten billion individual locusts. An army of locusts is coming to devour their land.
They are instructed to wake up to themselves. Joel calls them ‘drunkards’. They should be grieving over what is about to happen.
They wont be able to give grain or drink offerings. They will lack the materials to do so.
10 The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes.
11 Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.
12 The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man. (Joel 1.10-12)
The lands will be destroyed. A systemic economic hit to the nation lasting four generations.
13 Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
14 Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD. (Joel 1.13-14)
Joel pleads with the nation to repent of their sins. To fast and seek the LORD’s mercy.
15 Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.
16 Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?17 The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up.
18 How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer. (Joel 1.15-18)
Joel goes into greater detail describing what will happen to the land, the animals and the people. His description of what will happen functions to get his listeners to repent.
19 To you, O LORD, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.
20 Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness. (Joel 1.19-20)
There will be a ‘fiery’ drought that will devour the pastures and the trees of the land. The animals of the land will suffer and die.
Story of Israel
“Such an infestation meant that a large question mark was placed against the survival of the Judean community. What could they do? Religion played an important role in ancient society, and Judah was no exception. Prophets were accepted figures in Judean religion. So it was Joel’s function to interpret the locust plague in religious terms and guide the community to take suitable religious measures to cope with the problem.” (Allen, L.C., 1994. Joel. In D. A. Carson et al., eds. New Bible commentary: 21st century edition. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, p. 780.)
Story of Jesus
John the baptist proclaimed a coming judgment on the people of Israel.
7 He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 9 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?” (Lk 3.7-10)
Like Joel and many other prophets, he gave them a way out to avoid the coming wrath.
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