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A Description of the Calamity
v. 1. The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel, the superscription assuring us that we are not getting Joel's own ideas, but the inspired words of Jehovah.
v. 2. Hear this, ye old men, whose memory reached back through generations of men, and give ear, in yielding a most willing and careful attention, all ye inhabitants of the land. It is a spirited challenge to all the people of Judah to mark the lesson of the great calamity which has befallen them. Hath this been in your days or even in the days of your fathers? A visitation of this kind, and grievous to this extent, had never yet been seen in Palestine.
v. 3. Tell ye your children of it and let your children tell their children and their children another generation, passing it on from father to son, all of them accepting this tradition with awe, fear, and trembling, as being an unparalleled manifestation of God's anger against men on account of their sins.
v. 4. That which the palmer-worm, literally, "the gnawer-off,". hath left hath the locust eaten, the swarming or multiplying locust of the Orient; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm, the devouring grasshopper, eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten, that is, the consuming locust. All four names describe the devastation wrought by the great Oriental locust, which apparently came into the land in successive swarms at that time, gnawing off first the tender shoots of the orchards and vineyards, then the vegetables and field fruits, and finally the foliage of the trees and every spear of green that was in sight. The desolation wrought by the plague of the locusts is described in the most graphic manner, one feature after another being depicted in a way to arouse the people to a realization of the seriousness of the situation.
v. 5. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, since the supply of grapes and therefore of the liquor made from them was not available; for it is cut off from your mouth. This appeal is introduced to describe, with poetical power, the complete devastation of the country.
v. 6. For a nation is come up upon My land, a great and mighty army of fierce warriors, strong and without number, in swarms of countless myriads, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great lion, the jaw-teeth of a lioness protecting or avenging her young, grinding to pieces everything that came in their path.
v. 7. He hath laid My vine waste, by consuming its foliage, and barked My fig-tree, gnawing off the bark and laying bare stem and branches, so that they were ruined; he hath made it clean bare and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white, by the complete removal of the bark. This being the condition in which the land was left after the visit of the locusts, the prophet now urges his countrymen to mourn.
v. 8. Lament like a virgin, girded with sackcloth, the dress of mourning, for the husband of her youth, whom, after their betrothal, death took away. The grief of a bereaved virgin and bride is represented also in other passages as deep and overwhelming. Cf Isa_54:6.
v. 9. The meat-offering and the drink-offering, the sacrifices in the worship of Jehovah, is cut off from the house of the Lord, because it was impossible to procure the necessary materials, since everything was destroyed; the priests, the Lord's ministers, mourn, on account of the decay resulting from the devastation, which was followed also by a dearth of the animals used for sacrificial purposes.
v. 10. The field is wasted, made desolate; the land mourneth, both the uncultivated and the cultivated sections of the land suffering in the same measure; for the corn is wasted, the grain completely consumed; the new wine is dried up, the grapes being spoiled for want of foliage on the vines; the oil languisheth, because the olive-trees produced no fruit.
v. 11. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen, bearing the shame of disappointed hopes after working hard for a crop; howl, O ye vine-dressers, these two representing the agricultural classes of the land, for the wheat and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished, this being the cause of the farmers' lament.
v. 12. The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languisheth, so that gardener and horticulturist likewise had reasons for mourning; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, the date-palm, which ordinarily escaped the onslaughts of the locust, and the apple-tree, or the quince, even all the trees of the field, are withered; because joy is withered away from the sons of men, so that there could be no rejoicing over a bountiful harvest, as usual. Cf Psa_4:7; Isa_9:3. The description of the swarming grasshoppers and the desolation following in their wake is one of the most powerful in all literature, and the picture is rightly regarded as one which ought to call all men to repentance.