Our Friday Daily Droplets are studying through the prophecy of Joel. Last week, we ended with the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (2:28-29). At the same time, apparently, that God pours out His Spirit so that men and women may prophesy the dreams and visions they receive, God will also show “wonders in the sky;” on earth, He will show “blood, fire and columns of smoke.” “Wonders” is used only here by Joel; it is first used in the account of the Egyptian plagues (4:21; 7:3, 9; 11:9-10; Deut. 4:34; 6:22; 7:19; 26:8; 29:2; 34:11). The word can be understood as “sign, symbol, portent, wonder, miracle, judgements or works.”
Specifically, God will turn the sun into darkness and the moon into blood, yet another image of the undoing of creation. The verb “to be turned” (used only here) was used to refer to God’s change of Balaam’s curse into a blessing (Deut. 23:6), God’s change of the Red Sea river bed into dry land (Psa. 66:6), the change of water into blood in Egypt (78:44; 105:29). “Blood” is found in these two verses as well as 3:19, 21. In these two latter verses, at the end of his prophecy, Joel says God will avenge the “blood” of His people, shed by the Egyptians and Edomites. Outside of this verse, “fire” is found in 1:19-20 (referring to the impact of the locust plague) and 2:3, 5 (the impact of the northern army). This is the only occurrence of “columns of smoke” in Joel. Joel uses “sun” and “moon” in the prior mention of the “day of the Lord” in 2:10 and in the latter mention in 3:15. “Darkness” is found also in 2:2.
Garrett calls these “images of violence and doom.” Chisholm describes the imagery as “stereotypical and hyperbolic language of judgement.” Once again, we have a potential allusion to the exodus as God appeared to Israel in “columns” of fire by night and of smoke by day (Exo. 13:21-22; 14:19-24; 19:16; 20:18). Additionally, “blood” brings to mind the plague of water turned to blood in Exo. 7:14-24. While there would be a blessing in this event (Joel 2:28-29, 32), there would also be judgment (2:30-31). “Darkness” was a plague brought on Egypt (Exo. 10:21).
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Bewer (124) believes these signs picture war with its “bloody massacres and the burning of cities.” Keil and Delitzsch (212) understand this idea to suggest a universal judgment on all nations. The phrases refer to people “bleeding to death, and for cities going up in flames,” as well as for war (Wolff, 68). Naude writes (or indicates) that it is difficult in eschatological contexts to decide if objects, like fire, are figurative or literal. Kedar-Kopfstein ties “blood” in eschatological contexts to the OT doctrine that Jehovah God will avenge the blood of His people, slain by their enemies.
What we have to ask ourselves is how this passages is fulfilled in Acts 2 when Peter quotes it on the day of Pentecost…
Paul Holland
