For the next few weeks, we will consider the prophet Joel. He wrote a short book, three chapters in English, four in Hebrew. He is quoted by Peter in Acts 2, which we’ll consider eventually. He is distinctive in making reference to a plague of locusts and using that to springboard into a prophesy of the “day of the Lord,” a phrase found in Joel five times: 1:15; 2:1, 11; 3:4; 4:14.
A Call to Wail (1:2-14)
A catastrophe has struck Joel’s people which has served as the impetus behind his message: a locust plague (1:4). Locust plagues were not unusual in Palestine but this one apparently was worse than typical. The four terms for the locust might indicate four stages in its lifecycle, they might be for rhetorical effect in the fashion of typical Hebrew poetry, or perhaps different species of locusts. Regardless of the terms for the locusts, the message surely is one of complete and utter destruction (cf. the locust plague on Egypt, Exo 10:5). On its rhetorical effect, Garrett adds, “The impact of the verse is that the wrath of Yahweh is inescapable; those who think they have avoided one stage of the calamity are caught by another.”
Nothing like this had happened in their days or the days of their fathers (1:2; cf. Deut 4:32-34) but Joel calls on Israel to share his message with future generations (1:3). “His purpose is to drive them to perceive some meaning in this nadir of unique disaster and to relate it and themselves to the providential purpose of God” (Allen, 49).
Among the Deuteronomic curses was: “The cricket (צְּלָצַל, a term not used by Joel, p.h.) shall possess all your trees and the produce of your ground” (28:42). In that same context, Moses warns: “The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young. Moreover, it shall eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who also leaves you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the increase of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish” (28:49-51). It appears that Joel is warning Israel that Moses’ warning has come to fulfillment.
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Joel quickly moves into using the plague as a metaphor for an invading army, “mighty and without number” (1:6). This verse alerts us to the poetic and metaphorical nature of Joel’s message. Locusts do not have teeth and invading armies do not normally fight with their teeth. But the imagery suggests ferocity, danger, and destruction. Just as the locust plague has “stolen” the wine from the mouth of the drunkards (1:5), so the invading army has stripped trees bare, leaving branches white (1:7). Since Israel is compared to a vineyard in other prophetic texts (Isa 5:1-7; Jer 2:21; Ezek 15:1-8), including Jesus’ parable in Matt 21:33-46, Garrett suggests the metaphors look to a destruction of Jerusalem.
Joel calls on his compatriots to “wail like a virgin” who has been or will be separated from the “bridegroom of her youth” (1:8). Losing a bridegroom to death “is the deepest and bitterest lamentation” (KD, 184). Why should they lament? Because the locust plague, or the invading army, has impeded grain offerings and drink offerings coming into the house of the Lord (1:9; cf. Exod 29:38-46; Num 28:1-8). Stopping these offerings put Israel into a “spiritual crisis” (Watts, 19). Verse 10 suggests how comprehensive this devastation is for Israel: it affects the field, the land (cf. Isa. 24:4-5), the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil.
Next week, we’ll pick up with Joel 1:11.
Paul Holland
