The Interpreting Word (1:1):
1:1 It may be that the name Joel is more than just the proper name of the prophet. In the Hebrew, “Joel” combines two words, Yah, which is an abbreviated form of Yahweh, the Hebrew name for the Lord, and ʾēl, which means god. Thus, the name “Joel” signifies “Yahweh is God,” and while many pious parents could have affirmed their faith by giving their son that name, “Joel” may also point to one of the major concerns of the book, namely, apostasy or the worship of false gods. Joel condemns Judah in the strongest terms for its sin, but he never says what that sin is. Yet, in the two climaxes of the book, in 2:27 and 3:17, the statement is, “Then you will know that I am . . . the LORD your God.” The implication is that Judah has not hitherto known. Rather, if the prophet’s name is any indication, Judah has gone after other gods. Apostasy has been its sin, in violation of the first commandment.
The word of the LORD . . . came to Joel. All of the prophets make that claim—that they are speaking words that the Lord God has given them to speak. When we study the writings of the prophets, it is clear that the word of God comes to them from outside of themselves. This is emphasized in Jeremiah 15:16 and Ezekiel 3:1–3, where it is said that the Lord has given the prophet the word to “eat.” The word of the Lord is not the product of the prophet’s own inner musings or of his meditations on the events of his day, but rather a word that comes solely from God, often without any preparation by faith or experience, on the part of the prophet (cf. Jer. 1; Amos 7:14–15).
This is important for the interpretation of Joel. Most commentators have maintained that Joel derived his prophecy by reflecting on the severe locust plague that afflicted Judah. The locust plague has reminded Joel, they maintain, of the coming day of the Lord, when God will come to judge the earth and to set up his kingdom. But that turns the Bible’s understanding of prophecy exactly upside down.
The Bible never maintains that events interpret the word of God. Rather, the word of God interprets events, and it is the prophet’s function to tell just how and why God is involved with any event. The prophet is one who says, on the basis of the transcendent word given him, “Here God is at work, in this event,” or “Here God is not at work.” For example, Jeremiah and Ezekiel both point to the fall of Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587 BC and proclaim that the destruction is not just a military defeat but the punishment of God for Judah’s sin; God has had a hand in Judah’s fall. So, too, Joel points to the locust plague and proclaims that it is not just a natural disaster like those that often came upon the Mediterranean world; rather it is the work of God in judgment on his sinful people. God’s word illumines and gives meaning to human and natural history because it tells where God is at work in that history.
In our day, that means the events and experiences in our time are not to be used to interpret the Bible. Rather, the Bible is to be used to interpret experiences and events. Only by such an approach to the Scriptures are we able to live by God’s word and not by our own.
The Locust Plague (1:2-4):
1:2–4 Tell it to your children, verse 3. Joel proclaims that he has a message that should be handed down to the next generation, and indeed to all following generations for all time to come. At first reading, that message would seem to concern an unprecedented locust plague that has stripped Judah bare of every scrap of wood and vegetation and left her land wasted and desolate, so that her very existence is threatened.
If that were the primary import of Joel’s message, it might be compared to old folks in our time telling of “the snows of yesteryears” or of the hardships that they endured growing up during the Great Depression.
But Joel’s message concerns much more than the preservation of the memory of some hardship. That which Joel wants told is the message of his entire book. Verses 2 and 3 form an introduction to the entire work, and it is the whole of that prophecy that must be handed down, even to our day.
Usually when the OT talks of handing on a story or a tradition to the next generations, the subject is the good news of God’s mighty or saving acts (cf. Exod. 12:26–27; 13:8; Deut. 4:9; 6:20–23; 32:7; Ps. 22:30; 78:4). Here, however, the subject is first of all God’s judgment. And the reason the message must be handed on is that it is a message about God. That is what Israel always found worth preserving—the message of God’s acts within its history. All else was of secondary importance.
What has been revealed to Joel by the word of God is that the locust plague, which has ravaged Judah’s land, is the work of God’s judgment upon them for their sin (cf. Exod. 10:4–6, 12–15; Ps. 78:46; 105:34–35; Amos 4:9). God’s word to Joel has interpreted the event and revealed it to be a work of condemnation (cf. Amos 7:1) and a call to repentance (cf. 1 Kgs. 8:37–38).
As we shall repeatedly see, Joel’s prophecy has as its context the covenant of Israel with God. In that covenant, Israel promised to be God’s people, and God promised to be Israel’s God. But attached to that covenant, as preserved in Deuteronomy, was a list of covenant curses that would fall upon Israel if it abandoned its God (Deut. 28:15–68). One of those curses concerned a locust plague (Deut. 28:38–42), and Joel proclaims that the locust curse has now fallen on Judah because of its apostasy. Such a message is only intimated in these opening verses. Joel will develop it throughout what follows.
Such prophecy immediately raises difficult questions for us, of course, because of our view of the natural world. Most of us modern, twentieth-century Christians believe that we live in a closed universe, that is, that the universe is a closed system in which everything proceeds according to natural law. There is no place where God intervenes. Rather, if a natural disaster occurs, we believe it to be the result of natural causes, independent from the hand of God. Thus, we have almost totally secularized the sphere of nature, so that for us God’s working is absent from it.
The Bible, however, does not share such views. Throughout the Scriptures, God is the Lord of nature, who has created the natural world, who sustains all of its workings and processes, and who is able to use it for divine purposes (cf. Neh. 9:6; Ps. 104; Jer. 31:35; Amos 4:7–10 among multitudinous references). God is quite able, therefore, to turn the processes of the natural world against us as a means of judgment upon us (cf. e.g., Amos 8:9; Luke 23:44–45; Hab. 3:6; Matt. 27:51–52), and Joel is saying that God has done so by bringing the locust plague upon Judah in fulfillment of the word in Deuteronomy.
This does not mean, however, that every natural disaster that comes upon us in our time is intended as a judgment by God. Some natural disasters are the consequence of orders God has set up within the natural world. For example, if you build your house upon a flood plain, you are liable to get flooded out. This is not a judgment but a natural consequence of the order of the world. Further, Jesus has made it very clear in Luke 13:1–5 that when some other person suffers a catastrophe, we are not to point the finger at them and say that they are being judged by God for their sin. As our Lord makes clear, all of us are sinners, and all of us deserve God’s judgment.
But the Bible’s view of the natural world and of God’s working in it should lead us always to ask the question when we suffer a natural catastrophe, “Is the Lord God trying to tell me something? Do I myself have need of repentance?” And Joel is saying that with the locust plague God is indeed delivering a message. The locust plague is God’s judgment on an apostate people, and they have need of repentance.
Our difficulty, of course, is increased by the fact that we no longer have prophets like Joel to point to specific events and tell us, “This is the work of God in judgment.” We have left to us only the word of God that has come down to us through the Scriptures. But that word reminds us that we must continually examine our lives, especially when we suffer catastrophe, and ask what it is that God wants us to do and be.
Additional Notes
1:2 Elders: The word can be read either as the NIV has it, or as “old men,” and given the context, the latter reading is probably best. Joel is appealing to the elderly to search their memory of past events.
1:4 There has been much discussion among biblical scholars as to what kinds of locusts Joel is describing in this verse, and the NIV notes that the meaning of the terms is uncertain. The prophet uses four words for locust out of the nine words that were available to him in the Hb.—locust swarm (or “cutting locusts,” gāzām); great locusts (or “swarming locusts,” ʾarbeh); young locusts (or “hopping locusts,” yāleq); and other locusts (or “destroying locusts,” ḥāsîl). Some scholars maintain that Joel is describing the four stages in the locust life cycle: pupa, adult, wingless larva, and winged larva. Certainly ʾarbeh is the usual term for the insect, and refers to the fully developed, winged migrant of some six centimeters in length. More probable, however, is the view that Joel is simply piling up terms for locusts to emphasize the overwhelming nature of the catastrophe. Judah has been subjected to one swarming, chewing, cutting enemy after another.
It should also be mentioned that earlier exegetes sometimes interpreted the locusts to be symbols of attacking foreign nations, but the content of the whole book makes it clear that Joel is referring to an actual locust plague that has taken place in the recent past.
Three Gifts Withdrawn (1:5-12): Joel has to convince his apostate people that the catastrophe they have suffered is from the hand of God. He therefore summons three groups in Judah to lament for three gifts of God’s grace and favor that have been withdrawn. Using extremely strong verbs, he calls upon them to weep and wail (v. 5), to mourn or keen (v. 8), and to be dismayed (despair, v. 11) and grieve over the loss of these gifts. Contrary to the usual interpretation of these verses, this is not yet a call to a communal lamentation, but rather the prophet’s attempt to get his people to understand that their relation with their God has been broken by their sin.
1:5–7 Surprising to us, the first group that Joel addresses are the alcoholics. In their perpetual drunkenness, they are those least likely to realize what is going on around them, and yet they are also the ones who will first notice their lack of wine.
It is important to pay attention to the possessive pronouns in verses 6 and 7. My land, my vines, my fig trees, God proclaims, have been laid waste and ruined. God’s possessions have been devastated by the locust horde, which is compared in verse 6 to an invading army that is numberless and irresistible, and to savage beasts with fangs and teeth like saws. The question implied is, How could God allow such a thing to happen?
Throughout the OT, the land is considered to belong to God (cf. Lev. 25, especially v. 23; Ps. 24:1). Even in Genesis 1:28, where it is said that human beings are to have dominion over (“subdue”) the earth, that dominion remains always secondary to God’s, because the whole earth belongs to God (cf. Deut. 10:14; 1 Chron. 29:10–13; Ps. 50:10–11; 60:7–8; 89:11; 95:4–7; Isa. 66:1). Out of grace, however, God conveys the land to Israel as a precious gift (cf. Jer. 27:5). But Israel is merely a steward of the land, and it must care for the land according to God’s wishes. It therefore is given numerous laws about how to treat the land and its creatures (e.g., Exod. 20:8–10; Deut. 22:6–7; 24:19–22, etc.). Most importantly, Israel is given the land only as long as it is faithful to its God (Deut. 30:15–20; Ezek. 33:23–29). If Israel turns to other gods, it pollutes the land, for in the OT, idolatry is the ultimate pollution (cf. Num. 35:33; Jer.16:18; Ezek. 36:18). And when Israel engages in that pollution, it loses its land and is taken into exile (cf. Jer. 7:5–7; 22:26–27; 35:15)—in Leviticus’ powerful figure, the land “vomits” Israel out (Lev. 20:22; cf. 18:22–28).
Here in Joel, Israel is not expelled from the land, but it does lose the land’s gifts of grapes and figs. The locusts have even stripped the bark off of those vines and trees, which often grew in the same field together, so that the branches are left barren and white. And the drunkards in the populace will be the most acutely aware of the deprivation, for they can no longer have “new wine”—that first juice from the wine-press which satisfies their desperate craving for drink even before all of the grapes have been processed.
1:8–10 The second gift that God has withdrawn from the people of Israel is the means of communion in worship with himself; God has taken away the grain and wine necessary for the daily offerings in the temple, verses 9–10. We know that in the temple worship, grain moistened with oil and a libation of wine accompanied the morning and evening burnt offerings of lambs (cf. Exod. 29:38–41; Num. 28:3–8). God had prescribed these as the means by which Israel could enter into communion with him. So important were these daily sacrifices to Israel’s life that they were not discontinued even when the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem in the first century (Josephus, War 6.1–8).
Unlike many of the earlier prophets, Joel does not criticize Israel’s sacrificial worship (cf. Isa. 1:11, 13; Jer. 7:21–22; Hos. 6:6; 8:11). Indeed, it must be remembered that such earlier prophetic criticism was a condemnation not of sacrifices as such but of Israel’s faithlessness and disobedience that accompanied the sacrifices. Joel therefore is attacking Israel’s worship on much the same grounds. However, the insincere sacrifices are not merely criticized. They are removed, by God, through the means of the locust plague. Judah’s communion with its covenant Lord is thereby made impossible. No wonder that the priests are in mourning!
The call to lamentation of verse 8 is directed not only to the priests, however. The verb is feminine and is probably addressed to Jerusalem, here personified as a betrothed virgin whose marriage has not yet been consummated (cf. 2 Kgs. 19:21; Lam. 2:13). Betrothal was the first stage in marriage in biblical Israel and had the same binding commitment attached to it, although the sexual union of husband and wife did not take place until after the marriage ceremony (cf. Gen. 29:18–21; Matt. 1:18). Jerusalem is therefore called to mourn here, as a betrothed virgin would mourn over the death of her promised husband, with her loins girded with the rough, burlaplike material of sackcloth. Jerusalem can no longer have fellowship with its God. Therefore it is to weep.
1:11–12 The third gift that God has withdrawn from faithless Judah is the gift of joy, verses 11–12—joy at the harvest and joy in the worship service. The harvest was always a time for rejoicing in Israel (cf. Ps. 4:7; Isa. 9:3), but Israel’s worship was no less a joyful affair. Indeed, Deuteronomy says that whenever the Israelites brought their sacrifices to Jerusalem, they were to “rejoice before the LORD” (Deut. 12:12, 18; 14:26; 26:11; 28:47). But now all joy has withered away, verse 12, because the gifts and presence of God have been withdrawn from them. That thought forms the climax of the strophe, verses 11–12.
We hear in this strophe of verses 11–12, however, that a second catastrophe besides that of the locust plague has come upon Judah, and the phrase dried up in verse 10 prepares us for it. Judah is also experiencing a severe drought, so devastating in its effects that all of the crops that had begun to recover from the locusts have withered, and there is nothing for the farmers to eat or sell; there is not even seed available for replanting. God, the LORD of nature, has withheld the rain, and Judah bakes under calamitous judgment.
Just as the rain that brings fertility and abundant harvests is a sign of God’s covenant favor (Deut. 28:12; Lev. 26:3–5, 9–10), the withholding of the rain is a working out of God’s covenant curse (Lev. 26:19–20; Deut. 28:23–24; cf. 1 Kgs. 17–18; Jer. 14:1–6). Originally, biblical Palestine was a rich and fertile land, so abundant in produce that it could be said to flow with milk and honey and furnish its inhabitants with every necessity (Deut. 8:6–9). The pomegranate, prized for its large, red, juice-yielding fruits, grew in the Jordan Valley. Wheat and barley were abundant and the most important cereals. Even apples were grown and prized for their refreshing and restorative properties in illness, although they were inferior to the apples we know today, and some have suggested that we read “apricot” instead of apple in verse 12. But all of these goods have withered under God’s sentence on Israel’s sin, and the result is that “the ground mourns,” which is the proper reading of verse 10b.
We do not often realize that nature too is affected by our sin, but from beginning to end, the Bible affirms that human sin ruins the natural world. In the beginning, the ground is cursed because of human disobedience (Gen. 3:17–18), and in the NT the whole creation groans together in travail because of human corruption (Rom. 8:22). In the intervening pages, the prophets repeatedly tell us that nature’s ruin is the result of our sin (cf. Jer. 12:4; 3:3, 24; 9:10–11, 12–13; 23: 10; Hos. 4:2–3; Isa. 24:4–5; 33:7–9). Perhaps we can realize from that just why we have an ecological crisis. But nature is affected not only outwardly by our ecological indifference and rapacious actions toward it. The Bible’s view is more radical than that: the very being of nature is corrupted—every seed, every gene, every process. As Paul phrases it in Romans 8:21, all are subject to the “bondage of decay” and to the final death that is the wages of sin.
Additional Notes
This passage (1:5–12) may be divided into three strophes or stanzas, on the basis of the imperative calls for lamentation: vv. 5–7, 8–10, and 11–12. The English translation has obscured two features in the Hb. First, in vv. 4 through 10, there predominates the figure of “cutting.” The “cutting locust” of v. 4 has “cut off” the sweet wine in v. 5, so that the temple offerings are “cut off” in v. 9, as is the oil in v. 10 (NIV reads fails). By the language he uses, the prophet vividly portrays the cutting action of the locusts’ teeth.
1:10 A second feature present in the Hb. but obscured in the English is that the catastrophe that Judah has suffered is emphasized in v. 10 by a series of three staccato lines: “For destroyed the grain, dried up the wine, cut off the oil.” The lines each contain only two words in the Hb., as if the prophet’s words themselves were cut off along with everything else.