Joel does not remind us of the great pre-Exilic prophets. He has no word of rebuke for his people. There is no rousing of their consciences by a sharp reminder of their sins, social, moral or religious. Yet he is not indifferent to this, he does not speak of sin because he assumes a quickened conscience which the hard blows of disaster had stung into life. He speaks to people who, he believes, know that they have sinned and who realize that Jehovah has sent the plague as a discipline. He assumes the need of repentance for all and summons them to it. He believes in the efficacy of united prayer and fasting, of the Temple services and ritual, in the value of outward means and symbols. We should call him to-day a churchman. But we must not overestimate his emphasis on the external side of religion. The heart of the matter is also for him the attitude of the spirit. Fasting and sackcloth he does not reject, but they are not enough. Repentance is a matter of the heart, and it must be sincere and thoroughgoing, if it is to avail at all.
1. The main thought of the prophecy is the idea of the Day of the Lord, a point of time in the history of the world at which the Lord Himself shall interpose, revealing Himself as all that He is, and bringing to an end openly all the work which in more hidden ways He has been performing from the beginning. The Day of the Lord is a day of terror and of blessing, the day of vengeance and the year of His redeemed; its issue is the salvation of His people, and the destruction of all that disturb their peace. It is a sifting of His people and the judging of all their enemies round about.
Most of the other thoughts of the prophecy arise out of this great conception; for example, the idea of an escaped Remnant, which shall constitute the saved at last. This idea is common to most of the prophets; Isaiah in his first writing (Isa_6:1-13) expresses it in the figure of a tree cut down, of which the stock remains with power to send forth new shoots. But each prophet, when predicting the destruction of the nation, predicts it with the reservation that the Lord will not wholly destroy His people-a Remnant shall return unto the Lord. Naturally in connexion with this the prophet gives prominence to the effective Divine call in salvation, saying, “And the residue are they whom the Lord shall call” (Joe_2:32); and he gives equal prominence to the faith of men on the other side, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
“The day of Jehovah” is a phrase that plays a great part in the teaching of the prophets from the time when Amos rescued it from popular degradation. In Joel it seems to be rather a theological conception, a part of a creed than an actual vision. All through he works from the belief that “the day of Jehovah” is near; in the first stage a chastisement on Israel calling for penitence and prayer; in the second a day of doom for the foreign foe. In the other prophets the working out of this idea occurs in connexion with some real historical event which threatens the life or influences greatly the fortunes of Israel; here it is a general outlook into the future proceeding from the writer's religious beliefs. Its spiritual meaning is to some extent preserved in that it is preceded by a great act of humiliation, which makes prominent the acknowledgment that only by forgiveness and purification can even Israelites be prepared for the dreadful appearance of Jehovah's great Day. It is just as possible now as in the olden times for men to talk glibly of “the day of the Lord,” and glory in its nearness without realizing its awful significance. It is also possible for us to cling to a system of thought and form of words out of which all definite meaning and living power has gone. We must re-think the old sacred phrases and refresh our minds by finding out what they once meant and what they still symbolize.
Oh, brethren, let us learn this great lesson. We know not when the final day of decision is to be. But there is some day of decision in every age,-some great battle of truth and falsehood, of righteousness and injustice, of love and self-will,-in which we must one and all take part. There is a power of destruction at work in every society, in every heart. Do not fancy that you are less in danger from it than your forefathers were. It is nearest to you when you are least aware of its approaches, when you are least on your watch against it. A day may be very near at hand when the question will be forced upon every one, and when every one must give the answer to it, “Art thou on the side of self-willed power or of righteousness? Dost thou worship the Devil or the Father of lights?” As that great and terrible day approaches,-terrible to every man who knows what the treachery of his own heart is, and yet most blessed, because in that day God will cast out the dividing destructive principle on which He has pronounced His sentence, which Christ died to overcome,-we must seek a fulfilment of the old promise which has never failed yet. Before any critical event, any world epoch, there has been vouchsafed to the humble and meek greater insight into the past, greater foresight of that which is to come. There has been a power of vision, a capacity of looking into the meaning of things, a discovery of the springs which lie beneath the surface, which are only granted when they are desired not for the glory of the seeker, but for the necessities of the Church and of mankind. It is not that there are more young or old men dreaming dreams in the sense which we sometimes give to that phrase; men flying from the facts of the world, dwelling in a region of fancy. The dreams which Joel and St. Peter speak of, indicate a closer contact with realities, a more inward communion with Him who is true, an intolerance of shadows, a longing for substance. Such dreams come not through the multitude of business nor through the listlessness which follows it. They come to earnest spirits struggling for life, wearied with the noise of the world, with the strife of nations and opinions, distrusting themselves, believing in God.1 [Note: F. D. Maurice, The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, 196.]
2. Again Joel predicts more explicitly than others the pouring out of the Spirit, saying that the Spirit shall be poured out on all flesh, and all shall prophesy and know the Lord. This is not a prediction of the event of Pentecost, but of the new order of things, of which Pentecost was the first great example. And when he says “all flesh,” though the expression is usual for mankind as a whole, his subsequent analysis of the phrase, “your sons and daughters,” “your old men and young men,” “the servants and handmaids,” suggests that he merely meant to include all classes and ranks in Israel. The imagery of the prophet is common in other prophets, and has been imitated in the New Testament; thus, his delineation of the Day of the Lord reappears in our Lord's last discourse (Mat_24:29), and in the terrors that follow the opening of the sixth seal (Rev_6:12). The figures of the harvest and the winepress are adopted in Rev_14:14; that of the locusts in Rev_9:1-21; and the image of the fountain going forth from the house of the Lord (Zec_13:1-9, Eze_47:1-23) is reproduced in the river of the water of life (Rev_22:4).
The Spirit of God has not ceased to brood over this chaotic world; interpretations of Scripture vary, but the Power that lies behind them remains. We speak of Pentecostal days in the past tense through defective imagination and limited knowledge of present conditions. Three thousand converts were gathered together in a very small area at Pentecost. The area over which the Spirit works to-day is incomparably wider, and the triumphs of Christ, though less concentrated, are infinitely greater. To read such books as those lately published (C. F. Andrews, The Renaissance in India; N. Maclean, Africa in Transformation; George Eddy, The New Era in Asia), written by clear-eyed and sober witnesses, may convince us, if we are open to conviction, that greater works than those of Pentecost are silently but certainly done among us.
We have, perhaps, an exaggerated idea of the men inspired at Pentecost. Unconsciously we have thought that they belonged to some different order of beings to those of the present day. Such ideas are artificial, but habits of thought are easy to acquire and we adopt them without challenge. It has so long been the custom to speak of Pentecost as past that when its wonders are taking place under our very eyes we question it because it has not come in the way we were led to expect. We have magnified the first messengers of the Gospel beyond all human likeness, and it needs a revolution of our ideas to take in the fact that these are the days of Pentecost, that the men by whom the world is being evangelized, with whose faces and voices we are familiar, are the very descendants and followers of the apostolic preachers.1 [Note: Mrs. E. Trotter, Lord Radstock (1914), 244.]
3. The counterpart of the blessing outpoured on Israel is the judgment upon the nations. Joel predicts a great judicial act whereby Israel is to be finally delivered from its foes. There is no hint, even such as closed Zec_14:1-21, that the nations will one day be gathered into Jehovah's kingdom, and share the privileges and blessings of His covenant. Nevertheless, Joel differs from the later Apocalyptic writers in the fact that there are no “exaggerated national pretensions” in his book. The Israel of the future, upon which the Divine blessings are destined to descend, is the present Israel spiritually transformed (Joe_2:28) and calling upon Jehovah in faithfulness (Joe_2:32).
That last chapter has in it some things that jar upon our Christian instincts. There is a certain vengeful delight in the thought of the destruction of Philistia, Phœnicia, and those other nations that have so harried Israel in the olden time. What of that? Why, that just means that the Old Testament has not in it the perfect sweetness, the fulness of Divine love, revealed in Jesus Christ. And have we Christians got it? I grant you this: a mechanical, an artificial, dead doctrine of Bible inspiration makes that into a difficulty; but a real, living recognition of the inspiring Spirit of God in those old prophets, in those actual messages of theirs, involves no difficulty whatever. But to the men who raise difficulties of that sort, who bring such reproaches against Old Testament prophets, I will make answer thus: Never mind the mixture of personal anger in it. Mark what Joel believed and comprehended! Mark the grandeur of that belief! To him this world was not a great congress of physical forces, of vegetable life, of animal life, where the nations were left to welter in their hostilities and ambitions, where every man had nothing higher to do than to grasp as much as he could of earth for his own selfish advantage. To Joel this world is a great drama; the history of humanity is a tragedy; this world is ruled and controlled by a holy, righteous God; this world exists for the production of ethical, religious, eternal character; this world is being sculptured into a kingdom of holiness, righteousness, truth, goodness, and love. I do not care how many defects and ignorances there are, I do not care how much of weak personal feeling mingles in Joel's declaration of that faith; but I tell you what it is: All that is grand, and great, and heroic, and good in our world has grown out of faith in man's soul, often dark and obscure and ignorant-faith that this world belongs to God, is ruled by God, and shall at last be judged by God. Oh! a faith like that in a real God, a God that cares whether we serve Him, or whether we do not; a God that will take the trouble to reckon with us, and with our age, and with all the ages, and with this world of ours at last-that is a faith that lifts a man above himself, up above the world, and that stirs him to chivalrous and glorious achievements; a faith that builds up the great realm of ethical glory and grandeur, of religious aspiration, and hope, and love; the finest outcome of our world's struggle, and trial, and battle.1 [Note: W. G. Elmslie, Expository Lectures and Sermons, 93.]
4. The prophets, in their visions of the future, throw out great and ennobling ideals, but ideals which, in many cases, are not destined to be realized literally in fact. That is the case with Joel. The contrast between Israel and the nations is typical of the great contrast between good and evil, between truth and falsehood, which is ever being exemplified in the history of the world, which has already resulted often in the partial triumph of right over wrong, and which, we may be sure, will in the end result in its complete triumph; but this triumph, we may be not less sure, can never be gained in the form in which Joel's imagination pictured it. The thought of Israel being saved, and the nations being exterminated, may be a form in which the victory of good over evil naturally presented itself to a prophet living in Joel's age, when truth and right were, or at least seemed to be, confined largely to Israel: it is not the form in which it has been realized hitherto; nor is it the form in which it can ever be realized in the future. A restoration of Israel to its own land, coupled with the destruction of all other nations, is not only opposed to the teaching of other prophets, who saw more deeply into the purposes of God; it is opposed to the plainest teaching of Christ and His Apostles, according to which the gospel is to be preached in the whole world, disciples are to be made of all nations, and there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, between bond and free.
About four centuries after this, the Roman armies gathered round Jerusalem; in spite of the resistance of noble patriots and fierce fanatics they succeeded in levelling its walls, capturing its citadel, and desecrating its Temple. Since then broken-hearted Judaism has suffered the scorn of a thoughtless, cruel world. And yet in a real sense the movement of history has justified the prophet's teaching. The judgment against the nations has worked itself out. The light trivial tribes have vanished, leaving hardly a trace behind. The great empires founded by force, and driven by selfish greed, have crumbled to pieces. The Oriental empires that were the most splendid specimens of earthly magnificence have left the smallest legacy to humanity. To-day we all acknowledge the truth that Hebrew prophets saw so clearly, and sometimes proclaimed so fiercely, namely this, that there is a judgment-day for nations; that sensuality, cruelty, and greed not only injure the victims and outrage the law of Heaven, but cause the life of the proud nation to become rotten at the core.
On the other side there has also been fulfilment. The Christian religion proved itself the true successor of ancient prophecy by the way in which it seized the eternal part and lifted it to fuller beauty and larger power. Jerusalem does in a very real sense abide for ever and send forth a living message. It may be that in many forms Babylon is with us still, but the judgment of the wise and thoughtful is not bewildered or perverted by the glamour of worldly success. We can see that Judaism, even when it was defeated and disheartened, preserved many truths and laws needful for the highest life of the world. And we can cherish the clear, strong conviction that the message of mercy, the evangel of love which finds its fullest expression in the suffering Christ, gives nobler meaning to prophetic hope and vindicates in even a larger way the eternal righteousness.
Israel's visible Jerusalem is in ruins; and how, then, shall men “call Jerusalem the throne of the Eternal, and all the nations shall be gathered unto it”? But the true Israel was Israel the bringer-in and defender of the idea of conduct, Israel the lifter-up to the nations of the banner of righteousness. The true Jerusalem was the city of this ideal Israel. And this ideal Israel could not and cannot perish, so long as its idea, righteousness and its necessity, does not perish, but prevails. Now, that it does prevail, the whole course of the world proves, and the fall of the actual Israel is of itself witness. Thus, therefore, the ideal Israel for ever lives and prospers; and its city is the city whereunto all nations and languages, after endless trials of everything else except conduct, after incessantly attempting to do without righteousness and failing, are slowly but surely gathered.
To this Israel are the promises, and to this Israel they are fulfilled. “The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.” It is so; since all history is an accumulation of experiences that what men and nations fall by is want of conduct. To call it by this plain name is often not amiss, for the thing is never more great than when it is looked at in its simplicity and reality. Yet the true name to touch the soul is the name Israel gave: righteousness. And to Israel, as the representative of this imperishable and saving idea of righteousness, all the promises come true, and the language of none of them is pitched too high. The Eternal, Israel says truly, is on my side. “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and thou handful Israel! I will help thee, saith the Eternal. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, thy walls are continually before me. The Eternal hath chosen Zion; O pray for the peace of Jerusalem! they shall prosper that love thee. Men shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Eternal, and all the nations shall be gathered unto it. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death in victory.”1 [Note: Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, 205.]
