Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

The word of the L ord that came to Joel son of Pethuel:

Lament over the Ruin of the Country

Hear this, O elders,

give ear, all inhabitants of the land!

Has such a thing happened in your days,

or in the days of your ancestors?

Tell your children of it,

and let your children tell their children,

and their children another generation.

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.

Wake up, you drunkards, and weep;

and wail, all you wine-drinkers,

over the sweet wine,

for it is cut off from your mouth.

For a nation has invaded my land,

powerful and innumerable;

its teeth are lions’ teeth,

and it has the fangs of a lioness.

It has laid waste my vines,

and splintered my fig trees;

it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;

their branches have turned white.

Lament like a virgin dressed in sackcloth

for the husband of her youth.

The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off

from the house of the L ord.

The priests mourn,

the ministers of the L ord.

The fields are devastated,

the ground mourns;

for the grain is destroyed,

the wine dries up,

the oil fails.

Be dismayed, you farmers,

wail, you vinedressers,

over the wheat and the barley;

for the crops of the field are ruined.

The vine withers,

the fig tree droops.

Pomegranate, palm, and apple—

all the trees of the field are dried up;

surely, joy withers away

among the people.

A Call to Repentance and Prayer

Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests;

wail, you ministers of the altar.

Come, pass the night in sackcloth,

you ministers of my God!

Grain offering and drink offering

are withheld from the house of your God.

Sanctify a fast,

call a solemn assembly.

Gather the elders

and all the inhabitants of the land

to the house of the L ord your God,

and cry out to the L ord.

Alas for the day!

For the day of the L ord is near,

and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

Is not the food cut off

before our eyes,

joy and gladness

from the house of our God?

The seed shrivels under the clods,

the storehouses are desolate;

the granaries are ruined

because the grain has failed.

How the animals groan!

The herds of cattle wander about

because there is no pasture for them;

even the flocks of sheep are dazed.

To you, O L ord, I cry.

For fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness,

and flames have burned

all the trees of the field.

Even the wild animals cry to you

because the watercourses are dried up,

and fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Of what some think, that punishment, not yet inflicted, is denounced here on the people, I again repeat, I do not approve; but, on the contrary, the Prophet, according to my view, records another judgment of God, in order to show that God had not only in one way warned the Jews of their sins, that he might restore them to a right mind; but that he had tried all means to bring them to the right way, though they proved to have been irreclaimable. After having then spoke of the sterility of the fields and of other calamities, he now adds that the Jews had been visited with war. ³³ But most commentators consider these two verses as containing a more particular description of the devastations produced by the locusts mentioned before. That they are called “a nation” is according to prophetic style, and what has been done by heathen poets: the wasting of the vine and the barking of the fig-tree seem more suitable to this view. It is true that נוי, nation, and not וזם people, as in Proverbs 30:25, is here used; but, as Dr. Henderson observes, it seems to have been selected on purpose “to prepare the minds of the Jews for the allegorical use made of these insects in chapter 2.” — Ed. Surely famine ought to have touched them, especially when they saw that evils, succeeding evils, had happened for several years contrary to the usual course of things, so that they could not be imputed to chance. But when God brought war upon them, when they were already worn out with famine, must they not have been more than insane in mind, to have continued astonied at God’s judgments and not to repent? Then the meaning of the Prophet is, that God had tried, by every means possible, to find out whether the Jews were healable, and had given them every opportunity to repent, but that they were wholly perverse and untamable.

Then he says, Verily a nation came up. The particle כי ki is not to be taken as a causative, but only as explanatory, Verily, or surely, he says, a nation came up; though an inference also is not amiss, if it be drawn from the beginning of the verse: ‘Hear, ye old men, and tell your children;’ what shall we tell? even this, that a nation, etc. But in this form also כי ki would be exegetical, and the sense would be the same. This much as to the meaning of the passage.

A nation, then, came up over my land. God here justly claims the land of Canaan as his own heritage, and does so designedly, that the Jews might more clearly know that he was angry with them; for their condition would not have been worse than that of other nations, had not God resolved to punish them for their sins. There is here then an implied comparison between Judea and other countries, as though the Prophet said, “How comes it, that your land is wasted by wars and many other calamities, while other countries are at rest? This land is no doubt sacred to God, for he has chosen it for himself, that he might rule in it; he has here his own habitation: it then must be that there is some cause for God’s wrath, as your land is so miserably wasted, when other lands enjoy tranquillity.” We now perceive what the Prophet means. A nation, he says, came up upon my land, and what then? God could surely have prevented this; he could have defended his own land, of which he was the keeper, and which was under his protection: how then had it happened that enemies with impunity inundated this land, having marched into it and utterly laid it waste, except that it had been forsaken by the Lord himself?

A nation, he says, came up upon my land, strong and without number; and further, who had the teeth of a lion, the jaw-bones of a young lion. The nations had no strength which God could not in an instant have broken down, nor had he need of mighty auxiliaries, for he could by a nod only have reduced to nothing whatever men might have attempted: when, therefore, the Assyrians so impetuously assailed the Jews they were necessarily exposed to the wantonness of their enemies, for they were unworthy of being protected, as hitherto, by the hand of God.

³ But most commentators consider these two verses as containing a more particular description of the devastations produced by the locusts mentioned before. That they are called “a nation” is according to prophetic style, and what has been done by heathen poets: the wasting of the vine and the barking of the fig-tree seem more suitable to this view. It is true that נוי, nation, and not וזם people, as in Proverbs 30:25, is here used; but, as Dr. Henderson observes, it seems to have been selected on purpose “to prepare the minds of the Jews for the allegorical use made of these insects in chapter 2.” — Ed.