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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Joel 2:23 - 2:23
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Be glad then, ye children of Zion: in the former verse the prophet, by a usual figure, and with known elegancy, called on land and beasts, though they understood him not; now he addresseth himself to them that can understand their work as well as their advantages, and the children of Zion, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea, who were called to fast and weep.
Rejoice in the Lord; show yourselves sensible of your mercies, thankful to that free bounty which gave your mercies; rejoice, but not only in your barns, garners, and bellies full, but in the eternal God, who hath been found of you.
Your God; as such you were advised to seek him, as such own him, rejoice in him, and ascribe glory to him, who keepeth covenant to a thousand generations, and hath remembered his covenant for you in this your low estate.
He hath given you the former rain moderately; the Hebrew will bear it, a teacher of, or unto, or according to, righteousness. Either some eminent prophet, or prophets, as Isaiah, or Joel himself, but as forerunners and types of the great Prophet Christ; so the words will be a promise of the Messiah, and lead these children of Zion to the Messiah, as the fountain of all the blessings they receive of God in temporals as well as spirituals: it is usual in Scripture thus to pass from temporal to spiritual, and from spiritual to temporal promises and blessings; so Isa_7:4, &c, with Isa_7:14-16: but since our best interpreters retain, as ours, this version, rain moderately, or in due measure. We adhere to it also: God had sent sweet, gentle, yet sufficient showers to make the earth fruitful, and these showers have made pastures and trees to spring, flourish, and be fruitful.
And he will cause to come down for you the rain; as he hath already given some, so he will give more, as the earth and trees shall need.
The former rain; the autumn rain, which is needful to mellow the earth, and fit it to receive the corn and fruits, and to plant and sow them, about September.
The latter rain; needful to bring forward and ripen the fruits planted or sown, accounted the latter rain because these husbandmen and vine-dressers reckoned from seed time unto spring and harvest.
In the first month; that is, our March; both these rains, as promised Deu_11:14 Lev_26:4, shall be given from heaven.