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Text and Exposition
I. SUPERSCRIPTION (1:1)
1The word of the LORD that came to Joel son of Pethuel.
COMMENTARY
1 As with Hosea, Micah, and Zephaniah, Joel begins his prophecy by identifying himself and his lineage. More importantly, he clearly declares the divine source of his prophecy and the resultant need for readers to heed his utterance. Since the message is God’s, it is implicitly to be followed.
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II. INSTRUCTIONS CONCERNING THE PRESENT CRISIS (1:2–20)
A. The Occasion: The Locust Plague (1:2–4)
2Hear this, you elders;
listen, all who live in the land.
Has anything like this ever happened in your days
or in the days of your forefathers?
3Tell it to your children,
and let your children tell it to their children,
and their children to the next generation.
4What the locust swarm has left
the great locusts have eaten;
what the great locusts have left
the young locusts have eaten;
what the young locusts have left
other locusts have eaten.
COMMENTARY
2–4 Because Joel’s prophecy is God’s urgent message, he instructs his people—from the eldest citizen downward—to give careful attention to what he has to say. None can recall such an intense and devastating calamity as the locust plague that has fallen on them. For this reason Joel’s message and instructions based on the locust plague are to be handed down successively to the generations that follow.
Several theories have tried to account for the four different Hebrew words for locusts that appear in v.4. Probably the point is that the various Hebrew words indicate various types of locusts as well as the intensity of the plague. There had been a successive series of locusts, perhaps over several years (cf. 2:25), that made a thorough devastation of the land—a destruction indicated rhetorically by four distinct names. That there were four successive invasions may bear some relationship to the concept of thorough judgment. (Notice the four kinds of punishment mentioned in Jer 15:3 and the four types of judgment in Eze 14:21.) Amos also mentioned the utter destruction left behind by a locust plague (Am 4:9), but he noted that there had been no turning to God by the people of the northern kingdom. Joel recognizes the seriousness of the situation. The locusts are God’s army in judgment on Judah.
NOTES
4 The Akkadian hymn to the goddess Nanaya contains details about a locust plague during the reign of Sargon II (721–705 BC). Of particular interest is Hurowitz’s observation (599) that “nearly every detail in this passage has either general or quite specific parallels in Joel’s description of the locusts afflicting Judah.” Hurowitz, 602, also points out that “the rare motifs shared by the Nanaya hymn and Joel (destroying, desiccating) are not found in other biblical or Akkadian accounts. The correlation is thus unique.”
Although Hurowitz is rightly hesitant in assigning any direct correlation between the two texts, their dating and parallel material are at least worthy of more than passing notice. Hurowitz also calls attention to several letters dealing with locust infestation in the Sargon archives.
For reports of devastating locust attacks in many parts of the world, see the useful excursus in S. R. Driver, The Books of Joel and Amos (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1915), 84–92, and J. D. Whiting, “Jerusalem’s Locust Plague,” National Geographic Magazine 28 (1915): 511–50.
B. The Call for Personal Penitence (1:5–12)
5Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
Wail, all you drinkers of wine;
wail because of the new wine,
for it has been snatched from your lips.
6A nation has invaded my land,
powerful and without number;
it has the teeth of a lion,
the fangs of a lioness.
7It has laid waste my vines
and ruined my fig trees.
It has stripped off their bark
and thrown it away,
leaving their branches white.
8Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth
grieving for the husband of her youth.
9Grain offerings and drink offerings
are cut off from the house of the LORD.
The priests are in mourning,
those who minister before the LORD.
10The fields are ruined,
the ground is dried up;
the grain is destroyed,
the new wine is dried up,
the oil fails.
11Despair, you farmers,
wail, you vine growers;
grieve for the wheat and the barley,
because the harvest of the field is destroyed.
12The vine is dried up
and the fig tree is withered;
the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—
all the trees of the field—are dried up.
Surely the joy of mankind
is withered away.
COMMENTARY
5–7 With v.5 begins the first major section of Joel’s prophecy. It is marked structurally by the characteristic use of an instructional genre (see “Literary Form” in the introduction). Thematically it reflects Joel’s deep concern that the people of Judah understand the underlying reasons for the locust plague and its relation to the future purposes of God for his people. In the light of the present crisis, Joel calls the people to penitence. This unprecedented plague is nothing else but a display of God’s judgment and a harbinger and dire warning of still further judgment; therefore, they should pray earnestly.
Joel tells the populace to awaken from their sleep of drunkenness (cf. Pr 23:35b). In so doing he calls attention not only to the debased nature of society but also to the people’s insensitivity to their own condition, a moral decadence that if unchecked will bring national disaster. Times of ease too often result in dissipation. The first half of the eighth century BC was one of great economic prosperity for both Israel and Judah (see “Background” in the introduction), but also one of spiritual, moral, and social corruption. As in the northern kingdom, so in Judah mere outward formalism veiled an ever-deepening apostasy, which was to become openly nourished by Ahaz’s state-sponsored religious reforms (2Ki 16:10–18).
The lavish splendor of the northern kingdom has been confirmed by archaeological excavations, particularly at Samaria and Megiddo. Many of the Samaria Ostraca deal with receipts of wine, oil, and barley. The presence of many pagan names on these receipts may indicate a loss of vital religion. The prophets in the northern kingdom decried the free flow of wine. Hosea complained that wine and fornication had led t...
