Joel
Vers. 8-12. The whole nation is to mourn over this devastation. Ver. 8. " Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. Ver. 9. The meat-offering and the drink-offering are destroyed from the house of Jehovah, The
locusts, says: " Neither herbs, nor shrubs, nor trees remain unhurt. Whatever is either grassy or covered with leaves, is injured,#as if it had been burnt with fire. Even the bark of trees is nibbled with their teeth, so that the injury is not confined to one year alone."
. and not of the material i ' vi. 2, 1 this anxi fi<»n of the field and Ian f. 10): and tlii I further explained I reference to the dei d and destruction of the fruits of the and. viz. the corn. Le. the corn growing in the field, so that the next harvest would be lost, and the new wine and oil, i.e. the vines and olive-trees, so that they could bear no grapes for new wine, and no olives for oil. The verbs in ver. lid are not i but imperatives, as in the fifth verse.,-'*,-r; hai the same meaning. as in Jer. ii. 26, vi. 15,., to stand ashamed, to turn pale with shame at the disappointment of their hope, and is probably written defectively, without I, to distinguish it from **?ta, the hiphil of w-\ to be parched or dried up (vers. 1<> anil 12). The hope of the husbandmen was disappointed through the destruction <>f the wheat and barley, the most important field crops. The vine-growers had to mourn over the destruction of the vine and the choice fruit- j (ver. 12), such as the fig and pomegranate, and even the date-palm (gam4dmar)f which has neither a fresh green rind nor tender juicy Leaves, and therefore is not easily injured by the locusts so as to cause it to dry up: and tappUdch, the apple-tree, ami all the trees of the field. u$. all tl of the trees, wither. ''All trees, whether fruit-bearing or not, are consumed by the devastating locusts" (J ne). In the concluding clause of ver. 12, the last and principal ground assigned for the lamentation is, that joy i> taken away and withered f] the children of men (hobhlsh min, i >.). ^ introduces a reason here as elsewhere, though not for the els immediately preceding, but for the M5*3*l ami ^7*«] in ver. 1 1, the leading thought in both verses; and we may therefore express it by an emphatic
V era. 13-20. The ntrliction is not removed by mourning and lamentation, but only through repentance and supplication to the Lord, who can turn away all evil. The prophet therefore proceeds to call upon the priests to offer to the Lord penitential supplication day and night in the temple, and to call the elders and all the people to observe a day of fasting, penitence, and prayer; and then offers supplication himself to the Lord to have compassion upon them (ver. 19). From the motive assigned for this appeal, wre may also see that a terrible drought had been associated with the devastation by the locusts, from which both man and beast had endured the most bitter suffering, and that Joel regarded this terrible calamity as a sign of the coming of the day of the Lord. Ver. 13. "Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests; hotel, ye servants of the altar; come, pass the night in sackcloth, ye servants of my God: for the meat-offering and drink-offering are withdrawn from the house of your God, Ver. 14. Sanctify a fast, call out an assembly, assemble the
:\ \ Lord in 1st. ii. 12 21.) An I accordingly this liar judgment — through which J h >vah on the le for th« ther h i the Almighty, the prophet points in ver. 16 to the fact that the food is taken away before their and therewith all and exulting from the house of God. u The food of the sinners perishes before their eyes, since the crops they loo for are snatched away from their hands, and the locust anticipat a the reaper" (Jerome). 7Sk9 food as the means of sustenance; according to ver. 10, corn, new wine, and oil. The jov is thereby taken from the house of Jehovah, inasmuch as, when the crops are destroyed, neither first-fruits nor thankofferings can be brought to the sanctuary to be eaten there at joyful meals (Deut. xii. 6, 7, xvi. 10, 11). And the calamity became all the more lamentable, from the fact that, in consequence of a terrible drought, the seed perished in the earth, and consequently the prospect of a crop the following year entirely disappeared. The prophet refers to this in ver. 17, which has from the drying up of the water-brooks (in ver. r. 20a, compare.Ter. xiv. 5, 6. In ver. 10b the ricalry rounded off by the repetition of CW nfel« from ver. 19.
■■■, in which lie repeats with still greater emphasis the command already hinted at in eh. i. 14, 15, that there should ting of the congregation for humiliation and pra and assigns the reason in a comprehensive picture of the approach of Jehovah's great and terrible ju Igment-day (vers. 1-11), coupled with the cheering assurance that the Lord will still take compassion upon His people, according to Hi., great grace, if they will return to Iliin with all their heart (\ 12—14); and then closes with another summons to the whole congregation to assemble for this purpose in the house of the Lord, and with instructions how the priests are to pray to the Lord (vers. 15-17).
Vers. 1-11. By blowing the far-sounding horn, the priests are to make known to the people the coming of the judgment, and to gather them together in the temple to pray. Ver. 1. u Blow ye the trumpet upon Zion, and cause it to sound uj)on my holy mountain! All the inhabitants of the land shall tremble; for the day of Jehovah cometh, for it is near.11 That this summons is addressed to the priests, is evident from ver. 15, compared with ver. 14. On tiqu shophdr and hdrl'u, see at Hos. v. 8. " Upon Zion," i.e. from the top of the temple mountain. Zion is called the holy mountain, as in Ps. ii. 6, because the Lord was there enthroned in His sanctuary, on the summit of Moriah, which He claimed as His own. Rdgaz, to tremble, i.e. to start up from their careless state (Hitzig). On the expression, " for the day of Jehovah cometh," see ch. i. 15. By the position of Sin at the head of the sentence, and that in the perfect K3 instead of the imperfect, as in ch. i. 15, the coming of the day of Jehovah is represented as indisputably certain. The addition of hi qdrobh (for it is near) cannot be accounted for, however, from the fact that in the spiritual intuition of the prophet this day had already come, whereas in reality it was only drawing near (Hengstenberg); for such a separation as this between one element of prophesying and another is incon- neither yOm | nrbich precedes it, nor 'am (people), which follows; for neither of these yields a suitable thought at all. The subject is left indefinite: 4* like morning dawn is it spread r the mountai: The prophet's meaning is evident enough from what follows. He clearly refers to the bright glimmer or splendour which is seen in the sky as a swarm of locusts ap- i i cloudy darkness. The darkening of the earth is mention in connect* n with the Egyptian plague of locusts in Ex. x. L5, and is confirmed by manywitw I aim. on Ex. Lc»).
The fire and the flame which go Loth before and behind the great and strong people, vi/.. the locu fcood rrinc to the brilliant light kindled aa it were by the morning dawn, which pro* m the fiery armies of the the burning heat of the drought by which i r-< rything is consumed (ch. i. 19); hut this burning heat is heightened h< into devouring flames of fire, which accompany the appearing rod as Be comes to judgment at the head of His arm;. the analogy of the fiery phenomena connected with the previous manifestation- of G< ■■ th in Egypt, whei rrible hail fell upon the land before the pis accompanied by upon which the Lord came down amidst thunder and lightning, and spoke to the people out of the fire (Ex. xix. 16-18: Dent, iv. 11, 12). The land, which had previously resembled the garden of paradise (Gen. ii. 8), was changed in consequence into a desolate wilderness. n9^2 does not mean escape or deliverance, either here or in Ob. 17, but simply that which has run away or escaped. Here it signifies that part of the land which has escaped the devastation; for it is quite contrary to the usage of the language to refer \?, as most commentators do, to the swarm of locusts, from which there is no escape, no deliverance (cf. 2 Sam. xv. 14, Judg. xxi. 17, Ezra ix. 13, in
1 The following is the account given by the Portuguese monk Francis Alvarez, in his Journey through Abyssinia (Oedmann, Vermischte Sammlungen, vi. p. 75): " The day before the arrival of the locusts we could infer that they were coming, from a yellow reflection in the sky, proceeding from their yellow wings. As soon as this light appeared, no one had the slightest doubt that an enormous swarm of locusts was approaching." He also says, that during his stay in the town of Barua he himself saw this phenomenon, and that so vividly, that even the earth had a yellow colour from the reflection. The next day a swarm of locusts came.
:ier redness," i.e. glow with fear, which has an actual buf not a grammatical support in Isa. xiii. 8, is evidently worthless. We therefore understand "*"•!•, as Ab. Esr., Abul Wal., and cheeks, and take i'~" u in inten rm of P?!J, in the and anguish cause the blood to fly from the face and extremities to the inward parts of the body. For tl: the i
In vers. 7-10 the comparison of the army of locusts I well-equipped army is carried out still further; and, in the first place, by a description of the irresistible force <>f it> advance. Yer. 7. u Tliey run /. like wo they elimb Hit wall; ecru ( on its md thru d paths, Y '"''■> tlie in Ids path; and they fall headlong tlirough not cut the Yer. 9. They run about in the < they run upon the wall) they climb into the houses, they come through the window* like a thief" This description applies for the most part word for word to the advance of the locusts, as Jerome (tn he.) and Theodoret (on ver. 8a) attest from their own observation.1 They run like heroes — namely, to the assault: JT1 referring to an attack, as in Job xv. 26 and Ps. xviii. o0, " as their nimhleness has already been noticed in ver. 4" (Ilitzig). Their climbing the walls also points to an assault. Their irresistible march to the object of their attack is the next point described. No one comes in another's way; they do not twist
1 Jerome says: k' We saw (a I heard) this lately in the province (Palestine). For when the swarms of locusts come and fill the whole atmosphere between the earth and sky, they fly in such order, according to the appointment of the commanding God, that they preserve an exact shape, just like the squares drawn upon a tesselated pavement, not diverging on either side by, so to speak, so much as a finger's breadth. ' And,' as he (the prophet) interprets the metaphor, ' throuyh the windows they will fall, and not be destroyed.' For there is no road impassable to locusts; they penetrate into fields, and crops, and trees, and cities, and houses, and even the recesses of the bed-chambers." And Theodoret observes on ver. 8a: " For you may see the grasshopper like a hostile army ascending the walls, and advancing along the roads, and not suffering any difficulty to disperse them, but steadily moving forward, as if according to some concerted plan." And again, on ver. 9: " And this we have frequently seen done, not merely by hostile armies, but also by locusts, which not only when flying, but by creeping along the walls, pass through the windows into the houses themselves."
fie notion that these words refer to attempt* to drive away Ike locust* by force of anna, in support of which Hitrig appeals to / xlii. n. xi. 29, and Haanlquiit. I hominum ad cnliiqrndas ecu (locustas) ntacto; and Pliny raerrly sayr- v in imperio coyuntur. And although Hasselquist say- *ia and Bevope they sometimes take the field against the locusts with all the equipments of war," this statement is decidedly false so far as Europe ■ncerned. In Bessarabia (according to the accounts of eye-witnesses) are merely in the habit of scaring away the swarms of locusts that come in clouds, by making a great noise with drums, kettles, hay-forks, and other noisy instruments, for the purpose of preventing them I on the ground, and so driving them further. Haas's account of a pasha of Tripoli having sent 4000 soldiers gainst the insects only a few years ago, is far too indefinite to prove that they ^ere driven away by the force of arms.
■thing infinitely greater than the darkening of the lights of heaven by storm-elonds, is evident partly from the predictions the judgment of the wrath of the Lord that is coming upon the whole earth, and upon the imperial power (Isa. xiii. 10; k. xxxii. 7), at which the whole fabric of the universe trembles and nature clothes itself in mourning, and partly from the adoption of this particular feature by Christ in I lis description of the last judgment (Matt. xxiv. 20; Mark xiii. 24, 25). Compare, on the other hand, the poetical description of a storm in Ps. xviii. 8 sqq., where this feature is wanting. (For further remarks, see at ch. iii. 4.) At the head of the army which is to execute His will, the Lord causes His voice of thunder to sound (rtdthan qol, to thunder; cf. Ps. xviii. 14, etc.). The reason for this is given in three sentences that are introduced by ti. Jehovah does this because His army is very great;
are to give up the delight of their hearts, and take part in the penitential and mournful worship. No 00 rank, is to stay away, 1 'no one, not even the socklil free from sin: but all, without exception, are exposed to the judgment. u A
1 •• II after the manner of a terrified conscience, which is lifted up again with difficulty after a season of affliction, and begins to aspire after hope and the mercy of God. Moreover, the expression ' who knoweth1 is a Hel new phrase, which does not indicate doubt, but rather affirmation, coupled with desire, as if we were to say, ' And yet surely God will turn again." n — LtJTHER, Enarrat. in Joe km, Opp., Jena 1703, p. iii.
The promise, which the Lord convoys to His people through. phot in answer to the prayer of the priests, refers to the present and the future. In the first part, relating to the present and the times immediately following fell. ii. 10-27), they are promised the destruction of the army of locusts, the gift of a teacher for righteousness, and the pouring out of a plentiful fall of rain for abundant harvests. To this there are appended, by means of the formula, u And it shall come to pass
-nine that the priests had really offered the penitential and supplicatory prayer to which the prophet had summoned them in ver. 17. The circumstance that this is not expressly mentioned, neither warrants us in rendering the verbs in ver. 17 in the present, and taking them as statements of what the priest really did (Hitzig), nor in have rather imply to supply ti. ution of the prophet's command I 17 and L8. N:^ with.-, to be jealous for a person, Le, to show the jealousy of love towards him, as in Ex. \wi\. 25, Z ch. i. 1 1 (see at Ex. xx. 5). — ~ as in Ex. ii. 6, 1 Sam. wiii. 2 1. In the answer from Jehovah which follows the three features In the promise are not giv n according to their chronological order; but In order to add force to the description, we have first of all, in ver. L9, ft promise of the relief of the distress at which both man arc! beast had sighed, and then, in ver. 20, a promise of the destruction of the dcvastator; and it is not till vers. 21 235 that the third feature is mentioned in the further development of the promise, viz. the teacher for righteousness. Then finally, in vers. 23c 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.
The promise runs as follows. Ver. l[)b. u Beliola\ I 8( ud the corn, and the new wine, and the oil, tJi // become t tht rciclth; and will no more make you a reproach among the nations. Ver. 20. Ami J will remove the nortliem on from, you ^ and drive Jtim into the land of drought, and desert; its ran into the front sea, and its rear into (III' hinder sea: and its sti)d- will ascend, and its corruption ascend, for d has done great things." The Lord promises, first of all, a compensation for the injury done by the devastation, and then the destruction of the devastation itself, so that it may do no further damage. Ver. 10 stands related to ch. i. 11. Shdlach, to send: the corn is said to be sent instead of given (Hos. ii. 10), because God sends the rain which causes the corn to grow. Israel shall no longer be a reproach among the nations, " as a poor people, whose God is unable to assist it, or has evidently forsaken it" (Ilos.). Marck and Schmieder have already observed that this promise is related to the prayer, that He would not give up His inheritance to the reproach of the scoffings of the heathen (ver. 17: see the comm. on this verse). *?^2Pn, the northern one, as an epithet applied to the swarm of locusts, furnishes no decisive argument in favour of the allegorical interpretation of the plague of locusts. For even if locusts generally come to Palestine from the south, i accoontabilitj (Hen:., Bai rnick), the conclu drawn from tins- that ti. impel irra- the M taic I.i to which Qod wilJ punish every act of violence d in (Q n. IX. 5), whilst the ox which killed a man was Command XXL
This promise is carried out still further in what folio and Joel summons the earth (ver. 21), the be if the 6
(ver. 22), and the sons of ZioD (ver. 2o) to joy and exultation at this mighty act of the Lord, by which they ha\ delivered from the threatening destruction. Ver. 21. "Fear 7iot, 0 earth! exult and rejoice: for Jehovah doeth great thii Ver. 22. Fear ye not, 0 beasts of the field! for the pastures of
1 Even Pliny says (h. n. xi. 29), Gregatim sublato vento in maria aut stagna decidunt; and Jerome has the following remarks on this verse: M Even in our own times we have seen the land of Judaea covered by swarms of locusts, which, as soon as the wind rose, were precipitated into the first and latest seas, i.e. the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. And when the shores of both seas were filled with heaps of dead locusts, which the waters had thrown up, their corruption and stench became so noxious, that even the atmosphere was corrupted, and both man and beasts suffered from the consequent pestilence."
rial there has been a diversity nion M to the meaning of these words. Most of the Rabbins and earlier commentators have followed the Chaldee and Vulgate, and taken h in the sense of " teacher;'' but others, in no small number, have taken it in the sense of "early rain," (•./. Ab. Ezra, Kimchi, Tanch., Calvin, and most of the Calvinistic and modern commentators. But although mOreh is unquestionably used in the last clause of this verse in the sense of early rain; in evenother instance this is called yOreli (Deut. xi. 14; Jer. v. 24); for Ps. lxxxiv. 7 cannot be brought into the account since the meaning is disputed. Consequently the conjecture is a very natural one, that in the last clause of the verse Joel selected the form moreh, instead of yoreh, to signify early rain, simply on account of the previous occurrence of hammureh in the sense of " teacher," and for the sake of the unison. This rendering of hammOrth is not only favoured by the article placed it, since neither mOfth =}/0reh (early rain), nor the corresponding and tolerably frequent malq6$h (latter rain), <ver has the article, and no reason can be difl I why mOnk should denned by the article here if it signified early rain; but it continued by the following WOrd n?J?fJ wWch
1 from destruction (vers, 1."'. 17. By the "teacher for righteousness," we are to understand neither the prophet J only (v. Ilofmann), nor th< M ssiah directly (Abarbanel), nor the ideal teacher or collective body of messengers from God 'vIIengstenberg), although there is some truth at the foundation of all these suppositions. The direct or exclusive reference to the Messiah is at variance with the context, since all the explanatory clauses in vers. 21-23 treat of blessings or gifts of
!, which were bestowed at any rate partially at that particular time. Moreover, in \ er. 23, the Bending of the rain-fall is represented by Trt*l (imperf. c. Vox t, if not as the consequence of the Bending of the teacher for righteousness, at any rate ■a a contemporaneous event. These circumstances apparently favour the application of the expression to the prophet Joel.
Nevertheless, it is by DO means probable that Joel describes himself directly as the teacher for righteousness, or speaks of his being sent to the people as the object of exultation. No doubt he had induced the people to turn to the Lord, and to offer penitential supplication for His mercj through his call to ntance, and therein' effected the consequent return of rain and fruitful seasons; but his address and.summons would not have had this result, if the people had not been already instructed by Moses, by the priests, and by other prophets before himself, concerning the ways of the Lord. All of these wi teachers for righteousness, and are included under liammdreh. Still we must not stop at them. As the blessings of grace, at the reception of which the people were to rejoice, did not merely consist, as we have just observed, in the blessings which came to it at that time, or in Joel's days, but also embraced those which were continually bestowed upon it by the Lord; we must not exclude the reference to the Messiah, to whom Moses had already pointed as the prophet whom the Lord would raise up unto them, and to whom they were to hearken (Deut. xviii. 18, 19), but must rather regard the sending of the Messiah as the final fulfilment of this promise. This view answers to the context, if we simply notice that Joel mentions here both the spiritual and material blessings which the Lord is conveying to His people, and then in what follows expounds the material blessings still further in vers. 23c-27, and the spiritual blessings in vers. 28-32 and ch. iii. They are both of them consequences of the gift of the teacher for righteousness. Hence the expansion of the earthly saving gifts is attached by *nn with Vav cons. Joel mentions first of all gesJiem, a. rain-fall, or plentiful rain for the fertilizing of the soil, and then defines it more exactly as early rain, which fell in the autumn at the sowing time and promoted the germination and growth of the seed, and latter rain, which occurred in the spring shortly before the time of harvest and brought the crops to maturity
M thereby that Jehovah is preaenl among Hi^ people, and the only true God, who does not Hi people to 1 > put to shame. The repetition -' N~\ by which the promi grace \a guaranteed to the people for all ages, rhetorical roundii of the lection i. ii. 20).
Tliese three distinct features in the higher bl< I >re the congregation of the Lord are practically connected very closely together: inasmuch as, with the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh, the judgment breaks upon the ungodly world: and with the judgment not only does the of the true worshippers of ( rod ensue, but the Banctification and glorification of the kingdom of God begin. Consequently we do not find these three features kept rigidly separate in the prophetic announcement: but just as in ch. ii. 28-32 (ch. iii.
according to the ordinary division of the chapters) the signs of the dawning of the judgment are appended to the outpouring of the Spirit of God, so in ch. iii. (Ileb. etc. ch. iv.) the description of the judgment is framed as it were in the prediction of the restoration of Judah (ver. 1), and of the salvation and transfiguration of Zion (vers. 16, 17); and in vers. 18-21 the eternal glorification of the kingdom of God is interwoven, by way of contrast, into the lasting devastation of the power of the world.
Vers. 28-32 (Heb. ch. iii.). Outpouring of the Spirit of God, and Announcement of Judgment.1 — Ver. 28. " And it will come to pass afterwards, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men see visions. Ver. 29. And also upon the men-servants and maid-servants I will put out my Spirit in those days.'' As 'achdre-khen points back to
Spirit as a I and I of the gift. ~::
tbandance, like:i rain-fall and the L:! • — vras to be ful- to the as most of t: ha\ d the remark be gathered from iploys. -£y doea not me.. D <lruj^, but ao k\ m He has fcince the manifeata-
\ ins and others (com pa j. p, the Following cl oar daughters, your old men, your youi n, and men-servants and maid- fioation of 9, it by no means follows with certain! a this, thai the word all d do away with the limitation to one particular nation, but merely that in this the limit and
1: vim— it cannol be proved that the specification in is intended to exhaust the idea of M all fli M i the prophecy of Joel had primarily to Judah, Joel may primarily have brought iul lly singled out of the genera] idea of koU in ■ r. 28 and 29, only those points that were of importance to his contem] iz. that all the members of the covenant nation would parti in this outpouring of the Spirit, without regard t rank; and in so doing, ho may have looked away from the the entire human i including all nati hich is involved in the expression "all flesh." We shall see from vi that this last thought v.
not a strange rophet. In the specification of the communication of the Spirit, the different forms which it lines arc rhetorically distributed I »WS: to the SOUS and daughters, prophesying is attributed; to the old, dreams; to the young sights or visions. But it by no means follows from this, that each of I culiar to the age mentioned.
For the a ri, that the Spirit of God only manifests itself in the weakened mind of the old man by dreams and visions of the night: that the vigorous and lively fancy of the youth or man has sights by day, or true visions; and lastly, that in the soul of the child the Spirit merely works as furor sacer (Tychs., Credner, Hitzig, and others), cannot be historically sustained. According to Num. xii. 6, visions and dreams re the two forms of the prophetic revelation of God; and NJ3 is the most general manifestation of the prophetic gift, which must not be restricted to the ecstatic state associated with prophesying. The meaning of this rhetorical individualizing, is simply that their sons, daughters, old persons, and youths, would receive the Spirit of God with all its gifts. The outpouring of the Spirit upon slaves (men-servants and maidens) is connected by vegam, as being something very extraordinary, and under existing cir- ih upon S ke aso i smell liavc I think, led in fronl of caravana or armies on the march t«» show the roll up from burning 1 in time of war 1 \.31,
In the I "I the moon i lull, and extinction of the heaven ai tly mentioned, either aa harl Igment, or a the breaking of the day oi ju i ch. ii. 2, l(l.
illy n turning phenom ina edip tl mi and moon, as extraordinary (not ecliptic)
obscurations of the sun and n frequently occui mpani - in human history.1 \ irthly and celestial phenomen runners and t iching or bui gment j not on!
subjective faith i mod, from the impression which is made u the human mind by rare and Le phenom* exciting a feeling of anxioi that are about to hapi i in their real connection with the onward prog; " humanity towards its divinely appoin gOaL which may be explained from the calling of man to Lethe is made to Humboldt (JKoma*, iii. 413-17), whi than n extraordinary cases of obscuration of the sun from the biati tradition of | which wen ooc not by the moon, but by totally different circumstances, such as diminished intensity in the photore. unusually large spots in the sun, extra; Mixtures in our own atmosphere, such as trade-wind dust, inky rain, sand rain. <t<\: and many of which took place in most eventful years, such as 45 B.C., A.D. 20 (the year of the Redeemer's death), 358, 360, etc.
2 Calvin has taken too one-sided and subjective a view of the matter, when he gives the following explanation of ver. 31: " What is said here of the sun and moon — namely, that the sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood — Is metaphorical, and signifies that the Lord will fill the whole universe with signs of His wrath, which will paralyse men with fear, as if all nature were changed into a thing of horror. For just as the sun and moon are witnesses of the paternal favour of God towards us, while they give light in their turns to the earth, so, on the lord of the earth] igb it I bolism, iu ular i. J Bigni
Upon Mount Zion will 1 bnl thai dell' that in I the population of 1 i to
: fill them with ■I if he had i
Dftti >urs tlitir: irmection with tbc asalem" (Hitzig), but only to those who call upon the da of the Lordj Lt» to the true worshippers of ( rod, upon whom the Spirit of (led is poured out. The wordi * idm "vjn:: are not synonymous with '" cs: or if! '" •? (ch. i\\ 8; ha. i. 20, id..r., f, Imt point to i prophetic word already known, viz. to I 17, where the saying of the Lord, that in the midst of the judgment there would be rescued ones upon Mount Zion, u and among those that remain will be those whom Jehovah pdtlt (one who has escaped from destruction), so that here tfridlm and p'titdh are actually alike, the s'ndhn being just the escaped ones upon Mount Zion. Through this clause there is appended to what precedes the fresh definition, that among the saved will lie found those whom the Lord calls. These may either he the believing portion of Judah, or believers from among the heathen. If we adopted the first view, the sentence would simply contain a more precise definition of the thought, that none are saved but those who call upon the name of the Lord, and therefore would preclude the possibility of including all the inhabitants of Judah among those wdio call upon the Lord. If we took the second view, the sentence would add this new feature to the thought contained in the first hemistich, that not only citizens of Jerusalem and Judah would be saved in the time of judgment, but all who called upon the Lord out of every nation. The latter view deserves the preference, because the expression '" DEO K"np did not need a more precise definition. The salvation of believers from the heathen world is implied in the first half of the verse, since it is simply connected with calling upon the name of the Lord. The Apostle Paul has quoted it in this sense in Rom. x. 13, as a proof of the participation of the heathen in the Messianic salvation.
If we proceed now to seek for the fulfilment of this prophecy, the Apostle Peter quoted the whole of these verses (28-32), with the exception of ver. 325, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, on the first Whitsuntide feast of the apostolical church, as having been fulfilled by that Whitsuntide miracle (Acts ii. 17-21); and in his subsequent reference to this fulfilment in ch. ii. 39, "For the promise is unto you and to j "ur children, and to all tint are afar <>ff, d u many as the 1 ill caU," he even adds
• • I it th F the God predicted in only point which there I been a fulfilment P.• arly all tl ind in rn time, radio communications of the Spirit of I in the OKI Testament times cannot be regarded as the I a in the fulfilment of our prophecy, since they were nut t the Spirit of God. This first took place when Christ Jeans the Son of God had completed the work of redemption, i.f. on the first feast of Pentecost after the resurrection and ascension of Christ* Previous to this the words of om ro^da0tj. The reference in this prophecy to the founding of the new covenant, or Christian church, is also I »nt From the word-. "And it shall come to pass afterwards," for which Peter substituted, "And it shall come to pass in the last days/1 interpreting p inn, the oseof which was occasioned by the retrospective reference to fafrni in eh. ii. 23, with perfect correctness so far as the fad was concerned, by the formula answering to D'Ofi mrnG, vis. tV Tats tV^aTa/? JipipaiG) which always denotes the Messianic future, or times of the completion of the kingdom of God. And just as achurc khtn precludes any reference to an in Joel's own time, SO does eV raU ta-^drai^ fffUpcu^ preclude any fulfilment whatever in the times before Christ. But however certain it may be that the fulfilment first took place at the first Christian feast of Pentecost, we must not stop at this one pentecostal miracle. The address of the Apostle Peter by no means requires this limitation, but rather contains distinct indications that Peter himself sawnothing more therein than the commencement of the fulfilment, " but a commencement, indeed, which embraced the ultimate fulfilment, as the germ enfolds the tree." We see this in ver. 38, where he exhorts his hearers to repent and be baptized, and adds the promise, " and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost;" and again in ver. 39, where he observes, " The promise belongs to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off (to?? et? fjuatcpdv), as many as the Lord our God will call." For if not only the children of the apostle's contemporaries, but also those that were afar off — i.e. not foreign Jews, but the far-off heathen — were to participate in the gift of the Holy Spirit, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which commenced at Pentecost must continue as long as the Lord shall receive into His kingdom those who are still standing afar off, i.e. until the fulness of the Gentiles shall have entered the
• • hark to the u afterward " in ii. 28: M in these d:; /. the dayi of the outpouring of the
-"*:*.'• is not used here in tl: of " to bring back the hut, as in 11 -. vi. 11, in the more comprehensive
-e of restitutio in integrum, which does indeed include the gathering together of those who were dispersed, and the return the captives, as one element, though it is not exhausted by this one element, but also embraces their elevation into a new and higher state of glory, transcending their earlier state of grace. In W3pl the prediction of judgment is appended to the previous definition of the time in the form of an apodosis. The article in Cs%^~pZ (all the nations) does not refer to " all those nations which were spoken of in ch. i. and ii. under the figure of the locusts" (Hengstenberg), but is used because the prophet had in his mind all those nations upon which hostility towards Israel, the people of God, is charged immediately afterwards as a crime: so that the article is used in much the same manner as in Jer. xlix. 36, because the notion, though in itself an indefinite one, is more fully defined in what follows (cf. Ewald,
• n: still BO the plu: J be the hind of « " the upon all * the i Spirit of God upon aU fl till vers. 4-8 that Joel pfOO inflicted upon the kingdom of Jndah. The words presupj icta that have already occurred, both the dispersion of 1 1 m wholi nation ul in exile among the heathen, and the ml capture of the whole land l»y heathen nations, and which they took place nnder tin* Ohald and Romans alone* In rers, _. Joel i peaking not nation among the heat] lich was only completely i I on the oonqw fttine and destruction <'i Jerusalem by the Romans, and which contini. lay; though we cannot with Hengstenberg, that this furnishes an a that this judgment i truth well known in i: i-l, even though be had not e.\j. it in his threatening <<f punish- war are distributed by lot among the conquerors, and di of by them to slave-dealers at i Liculous prices,— a boy for a harlot, a girl for a drink of wine. Even in Joel's time, many Israelites may no doubt have been scattered about in distant heathen lands (cf. ver. 5); but the heathen nations had I cast lots upon the nation as a whole, to dispose of the inhabitants as slaves, and divide the land among themselves. This was not done till the time of the liomans.1 But, as many of the
1 After the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem, Titus disposed of the prisoners, whose number reached 97,000 in the course of the war, in the following manner: Those under seventeen years of age were publicly sold; of the remainder, some were executed immediately, some sent away to work in the Egyptian mines, some kept for the public shows to fight with wild beasts in all the chief cities of Rome; and only the tallest and most handsome for the triumphal procession in Rome (compare Josephus, de bell. Jud. vi. 9, 2, 3). And the Jews who were taken prisoners in the Jewish war in the time of Hadrian, are said to have been sold in the slavemarket at Hebron at so low a price, that four Jews were disposed of for a measure of barley. Even in the contests of the Ptolemaeans and Seleucidae for the possession of Palestine, thousands of Jews were sold as prisoners of s very cradle to the end the chur those enemies who shall yet remain at the con. hriat, and
. bring hack your doing upon your own head" (cf. Pg. vii. 17). To explain what is h< I, an account is given in vers. 5, 6 of what they have done to the Lord and His people, — namely, taken away their gold and silver, and brought their costly treasures into their palaces or temples. These words are not to be restricted to the plundering of the temple and its treasury, but embrace the plundering of palaces and of the houses of the rich, which always followed the conquest of towns (cf. 1 Kings xiv. 26; 2 Kings xiv. 14). My?? also are not temples only, but palaces as well (cf. Isa. xiii. 22; Amos viii. 3; Prov. xxx. 28). Joel had no doubt the plunder-
Jehovah or the Israelii rttered emong the heathen Oali the heeihen nations though d ol t aght, that at a sign from the Lord the heathen nations ar: war against brael I waken up or aroi: up) the heroes from their peaceful rest to battle. With *fr the asses over from the second person to the third, which Hitzig accounts for on the ground that the words state what the heralds are to say to the nations or heroes; but the continuance of the imperative kdttU in ver. 10 does not suit tin's. This transition is a verv frequent one (cf. Isa. xli. 1, xxxiv. 1), and may be very simply explained from the lively nature of the description, nty is here applied to the advance of hostile armies against a land or city. The nations are to summon up all their resources and all their strength for this war, because it will be a decisive one. They are to forge the tqols of peaceful agriculture into weapons of war (compare Isa. ii. 4 and Mic. iv. % where the Messianic times of peace are depicted as the turning of weapons of war ressed > t ill further in I in ver. 1
Mark xiii. 10). It is to the last _:nent, in which all the juc! 5 find their end, that the command of Jehovah to of the field* the ' in the w in -press. The impossible to in: I that [saiah the the alliteration with. that this is also the meanii rd in JoeL Bnt
time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is
rip The ri] of the corn is a figurative representation of ripeness for judgment Just as in the harvest — namely, at tlie threshing and winnowing con i with the harvest — the grains of corn are separated from the husk, the wheat being gathered into the barns, the husk blown away by the wind, and the straw burned; so will the good be separated from the wicked by the judgment, the former being gathered into the kingdom of God for the enjoyment of eternal life, — the latter, on the other hand, being given up to eternal death. The harvest field is the earth (77 77), Rev. xiv. 16), i.e. the inhabitants of the earth, the human race. The ripening began at the time of the appearance of Christ upon the earth (John iv. 35; Matt. ix. 38). With the preaching of the gospel among all in Um ■ isses over all I it will 1 Q in tii«- last jn tarn of Christ in iren and earth tremble in Bat it is the latter will learn that lie is their G I, and dwells upon
Zion in His sanctuary, t\e. thai He t;. re con His kingdom, that lie poiifi '■' all fees, all the ungodly in the Lamb's book of life. For Zion or Jerusalem is of course not the Jerusalem of the earthly Pah-tine, but the sanctified and glorified city of the living God, in which the Lord will be eternally united with His redeemed, sanctified, and glorified church. We are forbidden to think of the earthly Jerusalem or the earthly Mount Zion, not only by the circumstance that the gathering of all the heathen nations takes place in the valley of Jehoshaphat, i.e. in a portion of the valley of the Kidron, which is a pure impossibility, but also by the description which follows of the glorification of Judah.
Vers. 18-21. After the judgment upon all nations, the land of the Lord will overflow with streams of divine blessing; but the seat of the world-power will become a barren wraste. Ver. 18. " And it comes to pass in that day, the mountains will trickle down with nexc wine, and the hills flow with milk, and all the rod proca •' tnd the li\ iter
•m the eti rtin and which n dry ap again, bul spiritual of life (John i\. 1°, which in tl ile in coming
1 1.ii the earth i the thn G ad f thi Lao I which there grows the I i fruit twelve tii the description of this ri in B and that
In I Ivii. 1-', overthrows the millanariaa new, that the glorification of Judah ai J. / cha- of th Holy Land, which t the the cur tion will fall npon Egypt and ant of the tin which they have committed upon the Judah. *— — ~\ with the genitive of the obje I in Ob. 1(), Hab. ii. 8, 17, etc. This nn i ly defined, as
•iur in thf fact that they had shed innocent blood of the sons of Judah, i.e. of th le of God, in their land (aiith/iy the land of the Egyptians and Edomites, not of the Judseans): that is to say, in the Egypt in the olden time, more especially by the command to slay all the Hebrew boys (Ex. i. 10), and in the Edom of more recent times, probably when throwing off the dominion of Judah (see at Amos i. 11 and Ob. 10). These nations and lands had both thereby become types of the power of the world in its hostility to God, in which capacity they are mentioned here, and Edom again in Isa. zxxiv. and lxiii.; cf. Jer. xlix. 7 sqq. and Ezek. xxxv. — Ver. 20. On the other hand, Judah and Jerusalem shall dwell for ever, — a poetical expression for u be inhabited," both land and city being personified, as in Isa. xiii. 20, etc. Thus will Jehovah, by means of the final judgment upon the heathen, wipe away the bloodguiltiness that they have contracted in their treatment of His people, and manifest Himself as King of Zion. With these
.In i.ih, two boon to the" south <»t Bethlehem^ the rains of which hi • '-iit who i\ I t:i< ir i in the st oi T ifa
. bat simp though;i h king in
Arabic. But Amos himself affirms, in ch. vii. 14, that he hepherd. He there replies to the; thel, who wanted to prevent him from prophesying in the kingdom of Israel: " I am not ■ prophet, nor yet a prophet's pupil, but a herdman {bdqid) am I, and botes sAtgmim, a gatherer of sycamores" (see at ch. vii. 14), — i.e. one who fed upon this fruit, which resembles figs, and is described by Pliny {Hist. n. 13, 14) as pradulcis, but which, according to Strabo, xvii. 823 (artfMos Kara tt]v yeuaiv), was very lightly esteemed as food, and also, according to Dioscor., was arifios kcl\ KaKoarofia^o^, and which is only used in Egypt as the food of the common people (Xorden, Beise, p. 118). Consequently we have to regard Amos as a shepherd living in indigent circumstances, not as a prosperous man possessing both a flock of sheep and a sycamore plantation, which many commentators, following the Chaldee ractical declaration • part
-, far as the explain and inijK.rUn it was ■
, had subjugated ti ines, and had even made the buturv. II and hi ful army; 10 ti. DM ran
I arisen as a conqu I id that been tak:'. A rests upon an in drawn from the same passage, that Hamath was conquered < lath <l< ill; although in cli. i. b he tl
I elites will In the i of things, tl. fall or aria and \ f secure in the i doin trusted in tl h of their militai.. vi.
upon those \n ho | opon Zion and without the n. - II vi. 1;, and utters the threat that the Lord will m to -
Lrini: darkness over the Ian 1 in broad daylight (eh. viii.
It was at such a time as this that the plain shepherd Tekoah -nt to Bethel, into the kingdom of the ten tii
Danonnoe to the c sinners the approach of the divine gmentj and the destruction of the kingdom. And whilst it was in itself a strange event for a prophet to be sent out of Judah into the kingdom of the ten tribes, — so strange, in fact, that in all probability it had never occurred since the kingdom had been founded, or at any rate, that no second instance of the kind is recorded, from the time when the man of God was sent out of Judah to Bethel in the reign of Jeroboam I. (1 Kings xiii.), down to the time of Amos himself, — it must have attracted
.•ally D which \ of thi eeithqu I Lher all
Lion the prophet | in the following the mient tboot to fall i.. I which bursts apoa all these kingdom.: Israel, \ lied in such ■ bat it can on I as of the book by which. UowecL ] an extend in which the
-secure sinners the false Q iforded by their own als to their inin 1 the judgments with which God has already visited them, ai.d summons them to Stand before God as their judge. In ch. v. and vi., aft mournful elegy concerning the fall of the home of Israel (ch. v. 1-3), he points out to the penitent the way to life, coupled with the repeated summons to seek the Lord, and that which is good (ch. v. 4, G, 14); and then, in the form of a woe, for which a double reason is assigned (ch. v. 18, vi. 1), he takes away all hope of deliverance from the impenitent and hardened. Throughout the whole of this address Amos prophesies chiefly to the ten tribes, whom he repeatedly addresses, predicting ruin and exile. At the same time, he not only addresses
• tho assumption ti tho seoond pari oontains Mthe km kernel of hie work," namely, i addresses whi I Bethel;"
written comp. and pku 1 d of the book at the time when jompiledj although certain thoughts that had been oraDy • may lie at the foundation even tl
For the exegetical writings upon Amos, see my Lchrbueh der Einleitw\<h pp. 184-5.
pie of the ten tribes, tl. nch as tlu' temple end the throne <>!' David could avert the merited punishment If this be the
. i. Ver. 1 contains tip- heedii bich has aln
I Jehovah is the thunder, the earthly substratum in which the Lord manii Hi comin sive notion that the judgment 1 would only fall upon the heathen world. This delusion h with the declaration, that at the threatening of the wrath of God th the shepherds, i.e. the pasture-ground of the land of Israel (cf. Jo I i. 10), and the head of the forest-crowned Carmel, will fade and wither. Carmel is the oft-recurring promontory at the mouth of the Kishon on the Mediterranean (see the comm. on Josh. xix. 26 and 1 Kings xviii. 19), and not the place called Carmel on the mountains of Judah (Josh. xv. 55), to which the term U;Ni (head) is inapplicable (vi<l. ch. ix. 3 and Mic. vii. 14). Shepherds' pastures and Carmel individualized the land of Israel in a manner that was very natural to Amos the shepherd. With this introduction, Amos announces the theme of his prophecies. And if, instead of proceeding at once to describe still further the judgment that threatens the kingdom of Israel, he first of all enumerates the surrounding nations, including Judah, as objects of the manifestation of the wrath of God, this enumeration cannot have any other object than the one described in our survey of the contents of the book. The enumeration opens with the kingdoms of Aram, Philistia.