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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Joel 2:18 - 2:18
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Joe 2:18 and Joe 2:19 contain the historical statement, that in consequence of the penitential prayer of the priests, the Lord displayed His mercy to His people, and gave them a promise, the first part of which follows in Joe 2:19-27. Joe 2:18, Joe 2:19. “Then Jehovah was jealous for His land, and had compassion upon His people. And Jehovah answered, and said.” The grammar requires that we should take the imperfects with Vav consec. in these clauses, as statements of what actually occurred. The passages in which imperfects with Vav cons. are either really or apparently used in a prophetic announcement of the future, are of a different kind; e.g., in Joe 2:23, where we find one in a subordinate clause preceded by perfects. As the verb וַיַּעַן describes the promise which follows, as an answer given by Jehovah to His people, we must assume that the priests had really offered the penitential and supplicatory prayer to which the prophet had summoned them in Joe 2:17. The circumstance that this is not expressly mentioned, neither warrants us in rendering the verbs in Joe 2:17 in the present, and taking them as statements of what the priest really did (Hitzig), nor in changing the historical tenses in Joe 2:18, Joe 2:19 into futures. We have rather simply to supply the execution of the prophet's command between Joe 2:17 and Joe 2:18. קִנֵּא with לְ, to be jealous for a person, i.e., to show the jealousy of love towards him, as in Exo 39:25; Zec 1:14 (see at Exo 20:5). חָמַל as in Exo 2:6; 1Sa 23:21. In the answer from Jehovah which follows, the three features in the promise are not given according to their chronological order; but in order to add force to the description, we have first of all, in Joe 2:19, a promise of the relief of the distress at which both man and beast had sighed, and then, in Joe 2:20, a promise of the destruction of the devastator; and it is not till Joe 2:21-23 that the third feature is mentioned in the further development of the promise, viz., the teacher for righteousness. Then finally, in Joe 2:23-27, the fertilizing fall of rain, and the plentiful supply of the fruits of the ground that had been destroyed by the locusts, are more elaborately described, as the first blessing bestowed upon the people.