1. Nothing is known of Joel outside his book. He was the son of Pethuel, or Bethuel, who is otherwise unknown. His name contains a confession of faith, “Jehovah is God!” and may reflect the piety of his parents. But there is not the challenge in the historical situation that there is in the similar name Elijah, “My God is Jehovah!” For there is no trace that the people of his day were idolaters, and our prophet was not the first bearer of this rather frequent name.
2. Joel's prophecy is concerned wholly with Judah; and that his home was in this country may be inferred with confidence from the terms in which he speaks repeatedly of “Zion,” “the children of Zion,” “Judah and Jerusalem,” “the children of Judah,” “the children of Jerusalem,” and from the familiarity which he displays with the Temple and the ministrations of the priests.
A tradition says that he belonged to the tribe of Reuben, but his book argues against it. According to the whole impression it makes, Joel was a Judæan, for his interest is exclusively in Judah. Whether his home was in Jerusalem or in the immediate vicinity, we do not know. It has been surmised that he was a Jerusalem priest, but this cannot be proved from his profound interest in the Temple, priests and ritual, for he does not include himself among the priests.
3. The date of The Book of Joel is disputed, as many of its allusions are consistent with more than one period. The omission of all mention of Assyria and Babylon points to its having been produced either before the rise of the former (i.e., early in the 8th century), or after the downfall of the latter (i.e., in the 5th century); and each of these alternatives will account for certain features in the book.
But whilst the omission amongst Judah's enemies of the Ammonites (who were especially troublesome in the 5th century, see Neh_4:7) is in favour of the earlier date (though Amos in the 8th century denounced them, Amo_1:13-14), yet the absence of any mention of Syria, the allusions to Egypt and Greece (Neh_3:19; Neh_3:6), and, finally, the description of Israel as scattered among the nations (Neh_3:2), give a preponderant probability to the post-Exilic date. The prophet makes no allusion to Northern Israel; the people of God is Israel which dwells in Jerusalem. If the kingdom of the North had existed in Joel's day we should have expected allusions to it, as in all the prophets who are known to be early. Further, the prophet makes no reference to the conflict between the true, spiritual worship of Jehovah and false worship; he mentions neither Baal, nor high places, nor idols, the work of men's hands, although this conflict is just what fills the pages of all the earlier prophets from Amos to Jeremiah. It would appear that in his day the opposition to the worship of Jehovah alone had been overcome in Judah. The prophet signalizes no great sins, such as idolatry, on the people's part; they are sinful and need repentance; above all, there is need of the outpouring of the Spirit of God, but the grosser sins attacked by earlier prophets do not seem to have been prevalent. It is doubtful if such a state of things existed at any time prior to the restoration from exile. On the whole we may fix the book between 444 b.c., the establishment of the Law under Ezra and Nehemiah, and 360 b.c., when the Persian government began to persecute the Jews.
4. The prophecy of Joel is of a different order from those we have found in the earlier books; the writer is rather a poet than a prophet; he addresses a small community, and the Temple is the centre of his world and the supreme object of his sympathy. Joel was evidently, according to his capacity, a man of noble spirit who had studied the earlier writings and who gladly places his literary gifts at the service of the Church. In his writings we seem to reach a point where the prophet is beginning to give way to the theologian and the scribe. His carefully prepared sermon has a real significance, as a revelation of his faith, and as a document of that Jewish Church which was now reaching its final stage of development. The small Jewish community, sheltered within the large frame-work of the Persian Empire, was free to devote itself exclusively to religious and ecclesiastical interests; its circumstances might be miserable, and its noblest life drawn largely from the past, but in these dull, prosaic days it was preserving a great treasure for the world and preparing for another heroic struggle. Before the Exile the prophet is a critic of the Church, afterwards he becomes a comforter of a struggling community; in Joel he appears as a churchman who devotes his patriotic fervour and prophetic fire to keep alive the flame of sacrifice upon the altar. In this position also real inspiration is possible, and a man of true prophetic spirit may catch the command, “Strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die.” And yet it is worth while noting where the particular prophet places his emphasis, and the kind of dress that he considers appropriate for the clothing of his thoughts concerning God and the world. We have here, then, the poetic picture of a great calamity, the prophet's persuasive call to national penitence, the promise of acceptance and blessing which expands into a programme of final judgment.
Joel was no great thinker and no great prophet. But he was a poet, and a poet of no mean order. His style is clear, fluent and beautiful. The lyrical quality of some of his lines places them among the best of their kind in the Old Testament, while his graphic, terse descriptions are exceedingly effective. He varies the rhythmic movement of his sentences with his changing thought and mood. This gives to his addresses a beautiful harmony of form and content. We do not wonder that the people listened to him as the sweet, plaintive cadences of his beautiful lines or the swift, galloping staccato utterances of his unforgettable descriptions or of his stirring appeals fell on their ears. Nor do we wonder that they obeyed his command, voicing as it did their own feelings. He knew himself to be one of them, their spokesman, but also the spokesman of God.1 [Note: J. A. Bewer.]
