Joel

(to whom Jehovah is God).

• Eldest son of Samuel the prophet, (1 Samuel 8:2; 1 Chronicles 6:33; 15:17) and father of Heman the singer. (B.C. 1094.)
• In (1 Chronicles 6:36) Authorized Version, Joel seems to be merely a corruption of Shaul in ver. 24.
• A Simeonite chief. (1 Chronicles 4:35)
• A descendant of Reuben. Junius and Tremellius make him the son of Hanoeh, while others trace his descent through Carmi. (1 Chronicles 5:4) (B.C. before 1092.)
• Chief of the Gadites, who dwelt in the land of Bashan. (1 Chronicles 5:12) (B.C. 782.)
• The son of Izrahiah, of the tribe of Issachar. (1 Chronicles 7:3)
• The brother of Nathan of Zobah, (1 Chronicles 11:38) and one of David’s guard.
• The chief of the Gershomites in the reign of David. (1 Chronicles 15:7,11)
• A Gershonite Levite in the reign of David, son of Jehiel, a descendant of Laadan, and probably the same as the preceding. (1 Chronicles 23:8; 26:22) (B.C. 1014.)
• The son of Pedaiah, and a chief of the half-tribe of Manasseh west of Jordan, in the reign of David. (1 Chronicles 27:20) (B.C. 1014.)
• A Kohathite Levite in the reign of Hezekiah. (2 Chronicles 29:12) (B.C. 726.)
• One of the sons of Nebo, who returned with Ezra, and had married a foreign wife. (Ezra 10:43) (B.C. 459.)
• The son of Zichri, a Benjamite. (Nehemiah 11:9)
• The second of the twelve minor prophets, the son of Pethuel, probably prophesied in Judah in the reign of Uzziah, about B.C. 800. The book of Joel contains a grand outline of the whole terrible scene, which was to be depicted more and more in detail by subsequent prophets. The proximate event to which the prophecy related was a public calamity, then impending on Judah, of a two-plague of locusts—and continuing for several years. The prophet exhorts the people to turn to God with penitence, fasting and prayer; and then, he says, the plague shall cease, and the rain descendent in its season, and the land yield her accustomed fruit. Nay, the time will be a most joyful one; for God, by the outpouring of his Spirit, will extend the blessings of true religion to heathen lands. The prophecy is referred to in Acts 2.