Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

indeed happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? Ver. 8. Ye shall tell your sons of tt, and your sons their sons, and their sons the next generation. Ver. 4. The leavings of the gnawer the multiplier ate, and the leavings of the multipher the licker ate, and the leavings of the licker the devourer ate.” Not only for the purpose of calling the attention of the hearers to his address, but still more to set forth the event of which he is about to speak as something unheard of—a thing that has never happened before, and therefore is a judgment inflicted by God —the prophet commences with the question addressed to the old men, whose memory went the furthest back, and to all the inhabitants of Judah, whether they had ever experienced anything of the kind, or heard of such a thing from their fathers; and with the command to relate it to their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.* “The inhabitants of the land” are the inhabitants of Judah, as it was only with this kingdom that Joel was occupied (cf. ver. 14 and ch. 11.1). mst is the occurrence related in ver. 4, which is represented by the question “ Has this been in your days?” as a fact just experienced. Yether haggdzdém, the leavings of the gnawer, i.e. whatever the gnawer leaves unconsumed of either vegetables or plants. The four names given to the locusts, viz. gdzdm, ’arbeh, yeleq, and chdsil, are not the names applied in natural history to four distinct species, or four different generations of locusts; nor does Joel describe the swarms of two successive years, so that “gdzdm is the migratory locust, which visits Palestine chiefly in the autumn, ’arbeh the young brood, yeleg the young locust in the last stage of its transformation, or before changing its skin for the fourth time, and chdsil the perfect locust after this last change, so that as the brood sprang from the gézdém, chdsil would be equivalent to gdzdm” (Credner). This explanation is

* “ As he is inquiring concerning the past according to the command of Moses in Deut. xxxii. 7, he asks the old men, who have been taught by lone experience, and are accustomed, whenever they see anything unusual, to notice that this is not according to the ordinary course of nature, which they have observed for so many years. And since this existing calamity, caused by the insects named, has lasted longer and pressed more heavily than usual, he admonishes them to carry their memory back to the former days, and see whether anything of the kind ever happened naturally before; and if no example can be found, the prophet’s advice is, that they should recognise this as the hand of God from heaven.” —Tarnov.

not only at variance with ch. ii. 25, where gdzdm stands last, after chdszl, but is founded generally merely upon a false interpretation of Nah. i. 15, 16 (see the passage) and Jer. li. 27, where the adjective sdmér (horridus, horrible), appended to yeleq, from sdmar, to shudder, by no means refers to the rough, horny, wing-sheath of the young locusts, and cannot be sustained from the usage of the language. It is impossible to point out any difference in usage between gdzdm and chdsil, or between these two words and ’arbeh. The word gdzdém, from gazam, to cut off (in Arabic, Ethiopic, and the Rabb.), occurs only in this passage, in ch. ii. 25, and in Amos iv. 9, where it is applied to a swarm of flying locusts, which leave the vine, figtree, and olive, perfectly bare, as it is well known that all locusts do, when, as in Amos, the vegetables and field fruits have been already destroyed. ’Arbeh, from rdébhéih, to be many, is the common name of the locust, and indeed in all probability of the migratory locust, because this always appears in innumerable swarms. Chdsil, from chdsal, to eat off, designates the locust (hd@’arbeh), according to Deut. xxviii. 38, by its habit of eating off the field crops and tree fruits, and is therefore used in 1 Kings viii. 37, 2 Chron. vi. 28, Ps. Ixxviii. 46, as synonymous with hé@’arbeh, and in Isa. xxxiii. 4 in its stead. Yeleq, from ydlag = ldgaq, to lick, to lick off, occurs in Ps. ev. 34 as equivalent to ’arbeh, and in Nahum as synonymous with it; and indeed it there refers expressly to the Egyptian plague of locusts, so that young locusts without wings cannot possibly be thought of. LHaygdzém the gnawer, hayyeleg the licker, hechdsil the devourer, are therefore simply poetical epithets applied to the ’arbeh, which never occur in simple plain prose, but are confined to the loftier (rhetorical and poetical) style. Moreover, the assumption that Joel is speaking of swarms of locusts of two successive years, is neither required by ch. 11. 25 (see the comm. on this verse), nor reconcilable with the contents of the verse itself. If the ’arbeh eats what the gadzdm has left, and the yeleq what is left by the ’arbeh, we cannot possibly think of the field and garden fruits of two successive years, because the fruits of the second year are not the leavings of the previous year, but have grown afresh in the year itself." The

1 Bochart (Hieroz. iii. p. 290, ed. Ros.) has already expressed the same Opinion. ‘‘ If,” he says, ‘* the different species had been assigned to so thought is rather this: one swarm of locusts after another has invaded the land, and completely devoured its fruit. The use of several different words, and the division of the locusts into four successive swarms, of which each devours what has been left by its precursor, belong to the rhetorical drapery and individualizing of the thought. The only thing that has any real significance is the number four, as the four kinds of punishment in Jer. xv. 8, and the four destructive judgments in Ezek. xiv. 21, clearly show. The number four, “the stamp of cecumenicity” (IXliefoth), indicates here the spread of the judgment over the whole of Judah in all directions.

Vers. 5-7. In order that Judah may discern in this unparalleled calamity a judgment of God, and the warning voice of God calling to repentance, the prophet first of all summons the wine-bibbers to sober themselves, and observe the visitation of God. Ver. 5. “ Awake, ye drunken ones, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine! at the new wine; for tt is cut off from your mouth. Ver. 6. For a people has come up over my land, a strong one, and innumerable: tts teeth are lion’s teeth, and it has the bite of a lioness. Ver. 7. It has made my vine a wilderness, and my fig-tree into sticks. Peeling, it has peeled it of, and cast tt away: its shoots have grown white.” PT, to awake out of the reeling of intoxication, as in Prov. xxiii. 35. They are to howl for the new wine, the fresh sweet juice of the grape, because with the destruction of the vines it is taken away and destroyed from their mouth. Vers. 6 and 7 announce through whom. In the expression gdi ‘dléh (a people has come up) the locusts are represented as a warlike people, many different years, the ’arbeh would not be said to have eaten the leavings of the gdzam, or the yeleq the leavings of the ’arbeh, or the chasil the leavings of the yeleq; for the productions of this year are not the leavings of last, nor can what will spring up in future be looked upon as the leavings of this. Therefore, whether this plague of locusts was confined to one year, or was repeated for several years, which seems to be the true inference from Joel ii. 25, I do not think that the different species of locusts are to be assigned to different years respectively, but that they all entered Judea in the same year; so that when one swarm departed from a field, another followed, to eat up the leavings of the previous swarm, if there were any; and that this was repeated as many times as was necessary to consume the whole, so that nothing at all should be left to feed either man or beast.”

because they devastate the land like a hostile army. ot furnishes no support to the allegorical view. In Prov. xxx. 25, 26, not only are the ants described as a people (dm), but the locusts also; although it is said of them that they have no king. And “ém is synonymous with go, which has indeed very frequently the idea of that which is hostile, and even here is used in this sense; though it by no means signifies a heathen nation, but occurs in Zeph. ii. 9 by the side of “dm, as an epithet applied to the people of Jehovah (.¢. Israel: see also Gen. xii. 2). The weapons of this army consist in its teeth, its “bite,” which grinds in pieces as effectually as the teeth of the lion or the bite of the lioness (niyo; see at Job xxix.17). The suffix attached to "S78 does not refer to Jehovah, but to the prophet, who speaks in the name of the people, so that it is the land of the people of God. And this also applies to the suffixes in ‘353 and NINA in ver. 7. In the description of the devastation caused by the army of locusts, the vine and fig-tree are mentioned as the noblest productions of the land, which the Lord has given to His people for their inheritance (see at Hos. ii. 14). ABYp?, els KAacOoyr, literally, for crushing. The suffix in chisdphah refers, no doubt, simply to the vine as the principal object, the fig-tree being mentioned casually in connection with it. Chdsaph, to strip, might be understood as referring simply to the leaves of the vine (cf. Ps. xxix. 9); but what follows shows that the gnawing or eating away of the bark is also included. Hishlikh, to throw away not merely what is uneatable, “that which is not green and contains no sap” (Hitzig), but the vine itself, which the locusts have broken when eating off its leaves and bark. The branches of the vine have become white through the eating off of the bark (sdrigim, Gen. xi 10).t

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

1H. Ludolf, in his Histor. £thiop. i. c. 13, § 16, speaking of the locusis, 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.”

priests, the. servants of Jehovah mourn. Ver. 10. The field is laid waste, the ground mourns: for the corn is laid waste: the new wine is spoiled, the oil decays. Ver. 11. Turn pale, ye husbandmen; howl, ye vinedressers, over wheat and barley: for the harvest of the field is perished. Ver. 12. The vine is spoiled, and the fig-tree faded; the pomegranate, also the palm and the apple tree: all the trees of the field are withered away; yea, joy has exptred from the children of men.” Inver. 8 Judah is addressed as the congregation of Jehovah. DN is the imperative of the verb nbw, equivalent to the Syriac Wh to lament. The verb only occurs here. The lamentation of the virgin for the mys bya, i.e. the beloved of her youth, her bridegroom, whom she has lost by death (Isa. liv. 6), is the deepest and bitterest lamentation. With reference to pw-n3, see Delitzsch on Isa. iii. 24, The occasion of this deep lamentation, according to ver. 9, is the destruction of the meat-offering and drink-offering from the house of the Lord, over which the servants of Jehovah mourn. The meat and drink offerings must of necessity cease, because the corn, the new wine, and the oil are destroyed through the devastation of the field and soil. Hokhrath minchah does not affirm that the offering of the daily morning and evening sacrifice (Ex. xxix. 38-42)—for it is to this that 9031 722 chiefly, if not exclusively, refers —has already ceased; but simply that any further offering is rendered impossible by the failure of meal, wine, and oil. Now Israel could not suffer any greater calamity than the suspension of the daily sacrifice; for this was a practical suspension of the covenant’ relation—a sign that God had rejected His people. Therefore, even in the last siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, the sacrificial worship was not suspended till it had been brought to the last extremity; and even then it was for the want of sacrificers, and not of the material of sacrifice (Josephus, de bell. Jud. vi. 2,1). The reason for this anxiety was the devastation of the field and land (ver. 10); and this is still further explained by a reference to the devastation and destruction of the fruits of the ground, viz. the corn, z.c. the corn growing in the field, so that the next harvest would be lost, and the new wine and oil, we. the vines and olive-trees, so that they could bear no grapes for new wine, and no olives for oil. The verbs in ver. 11a are not perfects, but imperatives, as in the fifth verse. 2h has the same meaning as bdsh, as in Jer. ii. 26, vi. 15, etc., 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 20, the hiphil of W2, to be parched or dried up (vers. 10 and 12). The hope of the husbandmen was disappointed through the destruction of the wheat and barley, the most important field crops. The vine-growers had to mourn over the destruction of the vine and the choice fruittrees (ver. 12), such as the fig and pomegranate, and even the date-palm (gam-témér), 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 tappadch, the apple-tree, and all the trees of the field, ¢.e. all the rest of the trees, wither. “ All trees, whether fruit-bearing or not, are consumed by the devastating locusts” (Jerome). In the concluding clause of ver. 12, the last and principal ground assigned for the lamentation is, that joy is taken away and withered from the children of men (hddhish min, constr. pregn.). "3 introduces a reason here as elsewhere, though not for the clause immediately preceding, but for the 27 and srdin in ver. 11, the leading thought in both verses; and we may therefore express it by an emphatic yea.

Vers. 18-20. The affliction 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, we may also sce 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; howl, 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 elders, all ye inhabitants of the land, at the house of Jehovah your God, and ery to Jehovah.” From what follows we must supply bassaggim (with sackcloth) to chigra (gird yourselves). Gird yourselves with mourning apparel, ’i.e. put it on (see ver. 8). In this they are to pass the night, to offer supplication day and night, or incessantly, standing between the altar and the porch (ch. ii. 17). “Servants of my God,” ae. of the God whose prophet I am, and from whom I can promise you a hearing. The reason assigned for this appeal is the same as for the lamentation in ver. 9. But it is not the priests only who are to pray incessantly to the Lord; the elders and all the people are to do the same. Oi¥ Wap, to sanctify a fast, ie. to appoint a holy fast, a divine service of prayer connected with fasting. To this end the priests are to call an ‘dtsdrdh, ve.a meeting of the congregation for religious worship. ‘Atsdrah, or “dtsereth, mavijyupis, is synonymous with WIP Spd in Lev. xxlil. 86 (see the exposition of that passage). In what follows, ‘n *awrOD is attached dovvdéTws to O21; and the latter is not a vocative, but an accusative of the object. On the other hand, nim Ma is an accus. loci, and dependent upon %5D8. PY, to cry, used of loud and importunate prayer. It is only by this that destruction can still be averted.

Ver. 15. “Alas for the day! for the day of Jehovah ts near, and it comes like violence from the Almighty.” This verse does not contain words which the priests are to speak, so that we should have to supply niond, like the Syriac and others, but words of the prophet himself, with which he justifies the appeal in vers. 13 and 14. Di"? is the time of the judgement, which has fallen upon the land and people through the devastation by the locusts. This “day” is the beginning of the approaching day of Jehovah, which will come like a devastation from the Almighty. Yom Y‘hovah is the great day of judgment upon all ungodly powers, when God, as the almighty ruler of the world, brings down and destroys everything that has exalted itself against Him; thus making the history of the world, through His rule over all creatures in heaven and earth, into a continuous judgment, which will conclude at the end of this course of the world with a great and universal act of judgment, through which everything that has been brought to eternity by the stream of time unjudged and unadjusted, will be judged and adjusted once for all, to bring to an end the whole development of the world in accordance with its divine appointment, and perfect the kingdom of God by the annihilation of all its foes. (Compare the magnificent description of this day of the Lord in Isa. ii. 12-21.) And accordingly this particular judgment—through which Jehovah on the one hand chastises His people for their sins, and on the other hand destroys the enemies of His kingdom—forms one element of the day of Jehovah; and each of these separate judgments is a coming of that day, and a sign of His drawing near. This day Joel saw in the judgment that came upon Judah in his time, k’shod misshaddai, lit. like a devastation from the Almighty,—a play upon the words (since shdd and shaddat both come from shédad), which Riickert renders, though somewhat too freely, by wie ein Graussen vom grossen Gott. 2 is the so-called 3 veritatis, expressing a comparison between the individual and its genus or its idea. On the relation between this verse and Isa. xlil. 6, see the Introduction.

Ver. 16. “ Js not the food destroyed before our eyes, joy and exulting from the house of our God? Ver. 17. The grains have mouldered under their clods, the storehouses are desolate, the barns have fallen down; because the corn is destroyed. Ver. 18. How the catile groan! the herds of oxen are bewildered, for no pasture was left for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.” As a proof that the day of the Lord is coming like a devastation from the Almighty, the prophet points in ver. 16 to the fact that the food is taken away before their eyes, and therewith all joy and exulting from the house of God. “The food of the sinners perishes before their eyes, since the crops they looked for are snatched away from their hands, and the locust anticipates the reaper” (Jerome). 23k, food as the means of sustenance; according to ver. 10, corn, new wine, and oil. The joy is thereby taken from the house of Jchovah, 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 been rendered in extremely different ways by the LXX.., Chald., and Vulg., on account of the da. Xey. Way, NB, and nipud (compare Pococke, ad h. 1.). Way signifies to moulder away, or, as the injury was caused by dryness and heat, to dry up; it is used here of grains of corn which lose their germinating power, from the Arabic _ «xc, to become dry or withered, and the Chaldee way, to get mouldy. P*rudoth, in Syriac, grains of corn sowed broadcast, probably from pdrad, to scatter about. Megraphoth, according to Ab. Esr., clods of earth

5 Oni s9) A (compare —; oy gleba terre), from gdraph, to wash away

(Jude. v. 21) a detached piece of earth. If the seed-corn loses its germinating power beneath the clod, no corn-harvest can be looked for. The storehouses (dtsdéroth; cf. 2 Chron. xxxil. 27) moulder away, and the barns (mamm‘girdéh with dag. dirim. = m‘gurdh in Hag. ii. 19) fall, tumble to pieces, because being useless they are not kept in proper condition. The drought also deprives the cattle of their pasture, so that the herds of oxen and flocks of sheep groan and suffer with the rest from the calamity. ‘2, niphal, to be bewildered with fear. ’Ashém, to expiate, to suffer the consequences of men’s sin.

The fact, that even irrational creatures suffer along with men, impels the prophet to pray for help to the Lord, who helps both man and beast (Ps. xxxvi. 7). Ver.19. “ To Thee, O Jehovah, do Tery: for fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has consumed all the trees of the jield. Ver. 20. Even the beasts of the field ery unto Thee; for the waier-brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.” Fire and flame are the terms used by the prophet to denote the burning heat of the drought, which consumes the meadows, and even scorches up the trees. This is very obvious from the drying up of the water-brooks (in ver. 20). For ver. 20a, compare Jer. xiv. 5,6. In ver. 20) the address is rhetorically rounded off by the repetition of Ws) ‘n nba from ver. 19.

This section does not contain a fresh or second address of the prophet, but simply forms the second part of his sermon of repentance, in which he repeats with still greater emphasis the command already hinted at in ch. i. 14, 15, that there should be a meeting of the congregation for humiliation and prayer, and assigns the reason in a comprehensive picture of the approach of Jehovah’s great and terrible judgment-day (vers. 1-11), coupled with the cheering assurance that the Lord will still take compassion upon His people, according to His great grace, if they will return to Him with all their heart (vers. 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. “ Blow ye the trumpet upon Zion, and cause tt to sound upon my holy mountain! All the inhabitants of the land shall tremble; for the day of Jehovah cometh, for it is near.” That this summons is addressed to the priests, is evident from ver. 15, compared with ver. 14. On tig'a shophdr and hari‘a, see at Hos. v. 8. “ Upon Zion,” z.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, 2. 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 xia at the head of the sentence, and that in the perfect 82 instead of the imperfect, as in ch. i. 15, the coming of the day of Jehovah is represented as indisputably certain. The addition of ki gdrobh (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 inconceivable. The explanation is simply, that the day of the Lord runs throughout the history of the kingdom of God, so that it occurs in each particular judgment; not, however, as fully manifested, but simply as being near or approaching, so far as its complete fulfilment is concerned. Joel now proclaims the coming of that day in its full completion, on the basis of the judoment already experienced, as the approach of a terrible army of locusts that darkens the land, at the head of which Jehovah is riding in all the majesty of the Judge of the world. The description is divided into three strophes thus: he first of all depicts the sight of this army of God, as seen afar off, and its terrible appearance in general (vers. 2b and 3); then the appearance and advance of this mighty army (vers. 4-6); and lastly, its irresistible power (vers. 7-11); and closes the first strophe with a figurative description of the devastation caused by this terrible army, whilst in the second and third he gives pzominence to the terror which they cause among all nations, and over all the earth. Ver. 2. “A day of darkness and obscurity, a day of clouds and cloudy night: like morning dawn spread over the mountains, a people great and strong: there has not been the like from all eternity, nor will there be after tt even io the years of generation and generation. Ver. 3. Before it burneth fire, and behind it fameth flame: the land before it as the garden of Eden, and behind it like a desolate wilderness; and even that which escaped did not remain to it.’ With four words, expressing the idea of darkness and obscurity, the day of Jehovah is described as a day of the manifestation of judgment. The words ony) }Y WN are applied in Deut. iv. 11 to the cloudy darkness in which Mount Sinai was enveloped, when Jehovah came down upon it in the fire; and in Ex. x. 22, the darkness which fell upon Egypt as the ninth plague is called nPaN, on ava does not belong to what precedes, nor does it mean blackness or twilight (as Ewald and some Rabbins suppose), but “the morning dawn.” The subject to pdrus (spread) is neither yom (day), which precedes it, nor ‘am (people), which follows; for neither of these yields a suitable thought at all. The subject is left indefinite: “like morning dawn is it spread over the mountains.” 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 approaches, from the reflection of the sun’s rays from their wings.' With Bisyi 37 OY (a people great and strong) we must consider the verb 82 (cometh) in ver. 1 as still retaining its force. Yom (day) and ‘adm (people) have the same predicate, because the army of locusts carries away the day, and makes it into a day of cloudy darkness. The darkening of the earth is mentioned in connection with the Egyptian plague of locusts in Ex. x. 15, and is confirmed by many witnesses (see the comm. on Ex. le.). The fire and the flame which go both before and behind the great and strong people, viz. the locusts, cannot be understood as referring to the brilliant light kindled as it were by the morning dawn, which proceeds from the fiery armies of the vengeance of God, i.e. the locusts (Umbreit), nor merely to the burning heat of the drought by which everything is consumed (ch. i. 19); but this burning heat is heightened here into devouring flames of fire, which accompany the appearing of God as He comes to judgment at the head of His army, after the analogy of the fiery phenomena connected with the previous manifestations of God, both in Egypt, where a terrible hail fell upon the land before the plague of locusts, accompanied by thunder and balls of fire (Ex. ix. 23, 24), and also at Sinai, upon which the Lord came down amidst thunder and lightning, and spoke to the people out of the fire (Ex. xix. 16-18; Deut. iv. 11, 12). The land, which had previously resembled the garden of paradise (Gen. ii. 8), was changed in consequence into a desolate wilderness. ne 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 i, 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.

all of which b refers to the subject, to which the thing that escaped was assigned). Consequently 5 can only refer to fI87, The perfect 7M’? stands related to 7M, according to which the swarm of locusts had already completed the Seuastations In vers. 4-6 we have a description of this mighty army of God, and of the alarm caused by its appearance among all nations. Ver. 4. “ Like the appearance of horses is its appearance; and like riding-horses, so do they run. Ver. 5. Like vumbling of chartots on the tops of the mountains do they leap, like the crackling of flame which devours stubble, like a strong people equipped for conflict. Ver. 6. Before tt nations tremble; all jaces withdraw their redness.” The comparison drawn between the appearance of the locusts and that of horses refers chiefly to the head, which, when closely examined, bears a strong resemblance to the head of a horse, as Theodoret has already observed; a fact which gave rise to their being called Heupferde (hay-horses) in German. In ver. 46 the rapidity of their motion is compared to the running of riding-horses (pdrdshim); and in ver. 5 the noise caused by their springing motion to the rattling of chariots, the small two-wheeled war-chariots of the ancients, when driven rapidly over the rough mountain roads. The noise caused by their devouring the plants and shrubs is also compared to the burning of a flame over a stubble-field that has been set on fire, and their approach to the advance of a war force equipped for conflict. (Compare the adoption and further expansion of these similes in Rev. ix. 7,9.) At the sight of this terrible army of God the nations pence so that their faces grow pale. ‘“Ammim means neither people (see at 1 Kings xxii. 28) nor the tribes of Israel, but nations generally. Joel is no doubt depicting something more here than the devastation caused by the locusts in his own day. There are differences of opinion as to the rendering of the second hemistich, which Nahum repeats in ch. ii. 11. The combination of MS with WB, a pot (Chald., Syr., Jer., Luth., and others), is untenable, since 15 comes from 18, to break in pieces, whereas 783 (= NB) is from the root NB, piel, to adorn, beautify, or glorify; so that the rendering, é they gather redness,” 2.¢. glow with fear, which has an actual but not a grammatical support in Isa. xiii. 8, is evidently worthless. We therefore understand 188, as Ab. Esr., Abul Wal., and others have done, in the sense of elegantia, nitor, pulchritudo, and as referring to the splendour or healthy ruddiness of the cheeks, and take /2? as an intensive form of /'2?, in the sense of drawing into one’s self, or withdrawing, inasmuch as fear and anguish cause the blood to fly from the face and extremities to the inward parts of the body. For the fact of the face turning pale with terror, see Jer. xxx. 6.

In vers. 7-10 the comparison of the army of locusts to a well-equipped army is carried out still further; and, in the first place, by a description of the irresistible force of its advance. Ver. 7. “ They run like heroes, like warriors they climb the wall; every one goes on its way, and they do not change their paths. Ver. 8. And they do not press one another, they go every one in his path; and they fall headlong through weapons, and do not cut themselves in pieces. Ver. 9. They run about in the city, they run upon the wall, they climb into the houses, they come through the windows like a thief.” This description applies for the most part word for word to the advance of the locusts, as Jerome (in loc.) and Theodoret (on ver. 8a) attest from their own observation. They run like heroes—namely, to the assault: referring to an attack, as in Job xv. 26 and Ps. xviii. 30, “as their nimbleness has already been noticed in ver. 4” (Hitzig). 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: ‘* We saw (al. 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, ‘through 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, asif 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.”

(vay) their path, i.e. do not diverge either to the right hand or to the left, so as to hinder one another. Even the force of arms cannot stop their advance. nb j is not a missile, telum, missile (Ges. and others), but a weapon extended or held in front (Hitzig);; and the word is not only applied to a sword (2 Chron. xxiii. 10; Neh. iv. 11), but, to weapons of defence (2 Chron. xxxii. 5). Y¥2, not “to wound themselves” (=Y¥5), but “to cut in pieces,” ea here intransitively, to cut themselves in pieces. This does no doubt transcend the nature even of the locust; but it may be explained on the ground that they are represented as an invincible army of God.’ On the other hand, the words of ver. 9 apply, so far as the first half is concerned, both to the locusts and to an army (ef. Isa. xxxiii. 4; Nah. ii. 5); whereas the second half applies only to the former, of which Theodoret relates in the passage quoted just now, that he has frequently seen this occur (compare also Ex. 06).

The whole universe trembles at this judgment of God. Ver. 10. “ Before it the earth quakes, the heavens tremble: sun and moon have turned black, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. Ver. 11. And Sehovah thunders before His army, for fis camp is very great, for the executor of His word is strong; for the day of Jehovah is great and very terrible, and who can endure it?” The remark of Jerome on ver. 10, viz. that “ it is not that the strength of the locusts is so great that they can move the heavens and shake the earth, but that to those who suffer

‘The notion that these words refer to attempts to drive away the locusts by force of arms, in support of which Hitzig appeals to Liv. hist. xlii. 10, Plinii hist. n. xi. 29, and Hasselquist, Reise nach Pal. p. 225, is altogether inappropriate. All that Livy does is to speak of ingenti a ae hominum ad colligendas eas (locustas) coacto; and Pliny merely says, Necare et in Syria militari imperio coguntur. And although Hasselquist says, ‘Both in Asia and Europe they sometimes take the field against the locusts with all the equipments of war,” this statement is decidedly false so far as Europe is concerned. In Bessarabia (according to the accounts of eye-witnesses) they 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 from settling on the ground, and so driving them further. Hass’s account of a. pasha of Tripoli having sent 4000 soldiers agdinst the insects only a few years ago, is far too indefinite to prove that they were driven away by the force of arms.

from such calamities, from the amount of their own terror, the heavens appear to shake and the earth to reel,” is correct enough so far as the first part is concerned, but it by no means exhausts the force of the words. For, as Hitzig properly observes, the earth could only quake because of the locusts when they had settled, and the heavens could only tremble and be darkened when they were flying, so that the words would in any case be very much exaggerated. But it by no means follows from this, that yap is not to be taken as referring to the locusts, like 1251 in ver. 6, but to the coming of Jehovah in a storm, and that it is to be understood in this sense: “ the earth quakes, the air roars at the voice of Jehovah, i.e. at the thunder, and stormclouds darken the day.” For although ndthan golo (shall utter His voice) in ver. 11 is to be understood as referring to the thunder, Joel is not merely describing a storm, which came when the trouble had reached its height and put an end to the plague of locusts (Credner, Hitzig, and others). WB? cannot be taken in any other sense than that in which it occurs in ver. 3; that is to say, it can only refer to “ the great people and strong,” viz. the army of locusts, like 5. Heaven and earth tremble at the army of locusts, because Jehovah comes with them to judge the world (cf. Isa. xiii. 13; Nahum i. 5,6; Jer. x. 10). The sun and moon become black, i.e. dark, and the stars withdraw their brightness (‘dsaph, withdraw, as in 1 Sam. xiv. 19), te. they let their light shine no more. That these words affirm something infinitely greater than the darkening of the lights of heaven by storm-clouds, is evident partly from the predictions of the judement of the wrath of the Lord that is coming upon the whole earth, and upon the imperial power (Isa. xiii. 10; Ezek. 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 His description of the last judgment (Matt. xxiv. 29; 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. ili. 4.) At the head of the army which is to execute His will, the Lord causes His voice of thunder to sound (ndthan qol, to thunder; cf. Ps. xviii. 14, etc.). The reason for this is given in three sentences that are introduced by Az, Jehovah does this because His army is very great;

because this powerful army executes His word, 7c. His command; and because the day of judgment is so great and terrible, that no one can endure it, z.¢. no one can stand before the fury of the wrath of the Judge (cf. Jer. x. 10; Mal. iii. 1).

Vers. 12-14. But there is still time to avert the completion of the judgment by sincere repentance and mourning; for God is merciful, and ready to forgive the penitent. Ver. 12. “ Yet even now, is the saying of Jehovah, turn ye to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. Ver. 13. And rend your heart and not your garments, and turn back to Jehovah your God; for He is gracious and merciful, longsuffering, and great in kindness, and suffers Himself to repent of the evil. Ver.14. Who knoweth He turns and repents, and leaves behind Him blessing, meat-offering and drink-offering for Jehovah your God?” Asthe plague of locusts was intended to bring the people to reflect upon their conduct towards the Lord, so was the announcement of the great day of judgment and all its terrors made with no other object than to produce repentance and conversion, and thereby promote the good of the people of God. Joel therefore appends to the threatening of judgment a summons to sincere conversion to the Lord; and this he does by first of all addressing the summons to the people as a saying of Jehovah (ver. 12), and then explaining this word of God in the most emphatic manner (vers. 13, 14). The Lord God requires conversion to Himself with all the heart (cf. 1 Sam. vii. 3, and Deut. vi. 5; and for 7¥ 2, Hos. xiv. 2), associated with deep-rooted penitence on account of sin, which is to be outwardly manifested in fasting and mourning. But lest the people should content themselves with the outward signs of mourning, he proceeds in ver. 13 with the warning admonition, “Rend your heart, and not your garments.” Rending the heart signifies contrition of heart (cf. Ps. li. 19; Ezek. xxxvi. 26). He then assigns the motive for this demand, by pointing to the mercy and grace of God, in the words of Ex. xxxiv. 6, with which the Lord made known to Moses His inmost nature, except that in the place of NS, which we find in this passage, he adds, on the ground of the fale recorded in Ezek. xxxii. 14 and 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 739 oy on). On the strength of these facts he hopes, even in the present instance, for forgiveness on the part of God, and the removal of the judgment. “ Who knoweth?” equivalent to “perhaps;” not because “ too confident a hope would have had in it something offensive to Jehovah” (Hitzig), but “lest perchance they might either despair on account of the magnitude of their crimes, or the greatness of the divine clemency might make them careless” (Jerome). aw, to turn, sc. from coming to judgment. 7) as in ver. 13. mnN Vv, to leave behind Him, sc. when He returns to His throne in heaven (Hos. v. 15). B%rakhdh, a blessing, viz. harvest-produce for a meat-offering and drink-offering, which had been destroyed by the locusts (ch. i. 9, 13).

Vers. 15-17. To make this admonition still more emphatic, the prophet concludes by repeating the appeal for the appointment of a meeting in the temple for prayer, and even gives the litany in which the priests are to offer their supplication. Ver. 15. “ Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, proclaim a meeting. Wer. 16. Gather the people together, sanctify an assembly, bring together the old men, gather together the children and sucklings at the breasts. Let the bridegroom go out of his chamber, and the bride out of her room. Ver. 17. Between the porch and the altar are the priests, the servants of Jehovah, to weep and say, Spare, O Ichovah, Thy people, and give not up Thine inheritance to shame, so that the heathen scoff at them. Wherefore should men say among the nations, Where is their God?” Ver.15 is a literal repetition from ver. 1 and ch. i. 14a; ver. 16 a more detailed expansion of ch. i. 140, in which, first of all, the people generally (DY) are mentioned, and then the object of the summons explained in the words amp wrap, “Call a holy meeting of the congregation.” But in order that none may think themselves exempt, the people are more precisely defined as old men, children, and sucklings. Even the bride and bridegroom are to give up the delight of their hearts, and take part in the penitential and mournful worship. No age, no rank, is to stay away, because no one, not even the suckling, is free from sin; but all, without exception, are exposed to the judgment. “A

1 “ He speaks 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 knoweth’ is a Hebrew 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.’ ”—LutTHER, Fuarrat. in Joelem, Opp., Jena 1703, p. ili.

stronger proof of the deep and universal guilt of the whole nation could not be found, than that on the great day of penitence and prayer, even new-born infants were to be carried in their arms” (Umbreit). The penitential supplication of the whole nation is to be brought before the Lord by the priests as the mediators of the nation. 153! in ver. 17 is jussive, like 83. in ver. 16, though Hitzig disputes this, but on insufficient grounds. The allusion to the priests in the former could only be unsuitable, if they were merely commanded to go to the temple like the rest of the people. But it is not to this that ver. 17 refers, but to the performance of their official duty, when the people had assembled for the penitential festival. They were to stand between the porch of the temple and the altar of burnt-offering, t.e. immediately in front of the door of the holy place, and there with tears entreat the Lord, who was enthroned in the sanctuary, not to give up the people of His possession (nachdlah as in 1 Kings viii. 51; cf. Deut. iv. 20, xxxii. 9) to the reproach of being scoffed at by the heathen. mya pandviind is rendered by Luther and others, “that heathen rule over them,” after the ancient versions; and Ps. evi. 41, Deut. xv. 6, and Lam. v. 8, might be appealed to in support of this rendering. But although grammatically allowable, it is not required by the parallelism, as Hengstenberg maintains. For even if the reproach of Israel could consist in the fact that they, the inheritance of the Lord, were subjected to the government of heathen, this thought is very remote from the idea of the passage before us, where there is no reference at all in the threatening of punishment to subjection to the heathen, but simply to the devastation of the land. bug with 2 also signifies to utter a proverb (= to scoff) at any one, for which Ezekiel indeed makes use of 21 Sui (Ezek. xvii. 2, xviii. 2, and in xii. 23 and xviii. 3 construed with 3); but it is evident that mdshal was sometimes used alone in this sense, from the occurrence of mosh‘lim in Num. xxi. 27 as a term applied to the inventors of proverbs, and also of m*shol as a proverb or byword in Job xvii. 6, whether we take the word as an infinitive or a substantive. This meaning, as Marck observes, is rendered probable both by the connection with 1574, and also by the parallel clause which follows, viz. “ Wherefore should men among the heathen say,” etc., more especially if we reflect that Joel had in his mind not

Deut. xv. 6, which has nothing in common with the passage before us except the verb mdshal, but rather Deut. xxviii. 37, where Moses not only threatens the people with transportation to another land for their apostasy from the Lord, and that they shall become “ an astonishment, a proverb (mdshdl), and a byword” among all nations, but (vers. 38, 40-42) also threatens them with the devastation of their seed-crops, their vineyards, and their olive-grounds by locusts. Compare also 1 Kings ix. 7, 8, where not only the casting out of Israel among the heathen, but even the destruction of the temple, is mentioned as the object of ridicule on the part of the heathen; also the combination of main) and ovine in Jer. xxiv. 9. But ver. 19 is decisive in favour of this view of ‘3 o2 Svind. The Lord there promises that He will send His people corn, new wine, and oil, to their complete satisfaction, and no longer make them a reproach among the nations; so that, according to this, it was not subjugation or transportation by heathen foes that gave occasion to the scoffing of the nations at Israel, but the destruction of the harvest by the locusts. The saying among the nations, “Where is their God?” is unquestionably a sneer at the covenant relation of Jehovah to Israel; and to this Jehovah could offer no inducement, since the reproach would fall back upon Himself. Compare for the fact itself, Ex. xxxii. 12, Mic. vii. 10, and Ps. exv. 2. Thus the prayer closes with the strongest reason why God should avert the judgment, and one that could not die away without effect.

If. THE PROMISE OF GOD TO AVERT THE JUDGMENT, AND BESTOW AN ABUNDANT BLESSING.—Cuap. i. 18-n1. 21.

The promise, which the Lord conveys to His people through the prophet 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 (ch. ii. 19-27), 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, “ And it shall come to pass promise of a higher blessing through the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh, the judgment upon the nations that are hostile to Israel, and the eternal deliverance and benediction of the church of God (ch. ii. 28-iii. 21). The blessing which the Lord promises for the time just coming, and for the remote future, is not a twofold one, so that the outpouring of the fertilizing rain and the outpouring of the Spirit of God answer to one another on the one hand, and the destruction of the army of locusts and that of the army of men on the other, but a threefold one, as v. Hofmann has shown, viz.: What the raising up of the teacher for righteousness, the destruction of the army of locusts, and the return of a fruitful season are to the time present, that will the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh, the judgment upon the army of the heathen world, and the eternal salvation and glorification of the people of God, be in the last times.

DESTRUCTION OF THE ARMY OF LOCUSTS, AND RENEWAL OF THE SPIRITUAL AND EARTHLY BLESSINGS.—CHAP. II. 18-27.

Vers. 18 and 19a contain the historical statement, that in consequence of the penitential prayer of the priests, the Lord displayed His mercy to His people, and gave them a promise, the first part of which follows in vers. 19-27. Vers. 18, 19a. “ Then Jehovah was jealous for His land, and had compassion upon Lis people. And Jehovah answered, and said.” The grammar requires that we should take the imperfects with Vav consec. in these clauses, as statements of what actually occurred. The passages in which imperfects with Vav cons. are either really or apparently used in a prophetic announcement of the future, are of a different kind; eg. in ver. 23, where we find one in a subordinate clause preceded by perfects. As the verb iv" describes the promise which follows, as an answer given by Jehovah to His people, we must assume 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 changing the historical tenses in vers. 18, 19 into futures. We have rather simply to supply the execution of the prophet’s command between vers. 17 and 18. 83? with °, to be jealous for a person, 2.¢. to show the jealousy of love towards him, as in Ex. xxxix. 25, Zech. i. 14 (see at Ex. xx. 5). opn as in Ex. ii. 6, 1 Sam. xxiii. 21. In the answer from Jehovah which follows, the three features in the promise are not given according to their chronological order; but in order to add force to the description, we have first of all, in ver. 19, a promise of the relief of the distress at which both man and beast had sighed, and then, in ver. 20, a promise of the destruction of the devastator; and it is not till vers. 21-230 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 runsas follows. Ver. 190. “ Behold, I send you the corn, and the new wine, and the oil, that ye may become satisfied therewith; and will no more make you a reproach among the nations. Wer. 20. And I will remove the northern one far away from you, and drive him into the land of drought and desert; its van into the front sea, and its rear into the hinder sea: and its stink will ascend, and its corruption ascend, for it 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. 19 stands related to ch.i.11. Shdlach, to send: the corn is said to be sent instead of given (Hos. ii. 10), betause 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” (Ros.). 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). ‘1287, 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, out of the Arabian desert, the remark made by Jerome, to the effect that “ the swarms of locusts are more generally brought by the south wind than by the north,” shows that the rule is not without its exceptions. “ Locusts come and go with all winds” - (Oedmann, ii. p. 97). In Arabia, Niebuhr (Beschreib. p. 169) saw swarms of locusts come from south, west, north, and east. Their home is not confined to the desert of Arabia, but they are found in all the sandy deserts, which form the southern boundaries of the lands that were, and to some extent still are, the seat of cultivation, viz. in the Sahara, the Libyan desert, Arabia, and Trak (Credner, p. 285); and Niebuhr (J.c.) saw a large tract of land, on the road from Mosul to Nisibis, completely covered with young locusts. They are also met with in the Syrian desert, from which swarms could easily be driven to Palestine by a north-east wind, without having to fly across the mountains of Lebanon. Such a swarm as this might be called the ts‘phoni, i.e. the northern one, or northerner, even if the north was not its true home. For it cannot be philologically proved that ts°phont can only denote one whose home is in the north. Such explanations as the Typhonian, the barbarian, and others, which we meet with in Hitzig, Ewald, and Meier, and which are obtained by alterations of the text or far-fetched etymologies, must be rejected as arbitrary. That which came from the north shall also be driven away by the north wind, viz. the great mass into the dry and desert land, z.e. the desert of Arabia, the van into the front (or eastern) sea, ze. the Dead Sea (Ezek. xlvii. 18; Zech. xiv. 8), the rear into the hinder (or western) sea, tc. the Mediterranean (cf. Deut. xi. 24). This is, of course, not to be understood as signifying that the dispersion was to take place in all these three directions at one and the same moment, in which case three different winds would blow at the same time; but it is a rhetorical picture of rapid and total destruction, which is founded upon the idea that the wind rises in the north-west, then turns to the north, and finally to the north-east, so that the van of the swarm is driven into the eastern sea, the great mass into the southern desert, and the rear into the western sea. The explanation given by Hitzig and others—namely, that pdanim signifies the eastern border, and soph the western border of the swarm, which covered the entire breadth of the land, and was driven from north to south—cannot be sustained. Joel mentions both the van and the rear after the main body, simply because they both meet with the same fate, both falling into the sea and perishing there; whereupon the dead bodies are thrown up by the waves upon the shore, where their putrefaction fills the air with stench. The perishing of locusts in seas and lakes is attested by many authorities.’ For Ws my, compare Isa. xxxiy. 3 and Amos iv. 10. 72M¥ is am. dey.; but the meaning corruption is sustained partly by the parallelism, and partly by the Syriac verb, which means to be dirty. The army of locusts had deserved this destruction, because it had done great things. nivyd 70, to do great things, is affirmed of men or other creatures, with the subordinate idea of haughtiness; so that it not only means he has done a mighty thing, accomplished a mighty devastation, but is used in the same sense as the German grossthun, viz. to brag or be proud of one’s strength. It does not follow from this, however, that the locusts are simply figurative, and represent hostile nations. For however true it may be that sin and punishment presuppose accountability (Hengst., Hiivernick), the conclusion drawn from this—namely, that they cannot be imputed to irrational creatures—is incorrect. ‘The very opposite is taught by the Mosaic law, according to which God will punish every act of violence done by beasts upon man (Gen. ix. 5), whilst the ox which killed a man was commanded to be stoned (Ex. xxi. 28-32).

This promise is carried out still further in what follows; and Joel summons the earth (ver. 21), the beasts of the field (ver. 22), and the sons of Zion (ver. 23) to joy and exultation at this mighty act of the Lord, by which they have been delivered from the threatening destruction. Ver. 21. “ Fear not, O earth! exult and rejoice: for Jehovah doeth great things! Ver. 22. Fear ye not, O 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: ‘¢ Even in our own times we have seen the land of Judea 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.”

the desert become green, for the tree bears its fruit; fig-tree and vine yield their strength. Ver. 23. And ye sons of Zion, exult and rejoice in the Lord your God; for He giveth you the teacher jor righteousness, and causes to come down to you a rain-fall, early rain and latter vain, first of all.” The soil had suffered from the drought connected with the swarms of locusts (ch. i. 9); the beasts of the field had groaned on account of the destruction of all the plants and vegetation of every kind (ch. i. 18); the men had sighed over the unparalleled calamity that had befallen both land and people. ‘The prophet here calls to all of them not to fear, but to exult and rejoice, and gives in every case an appropriate reason for the call. In that of the earth, he introduces the thought that Jehovah had done great things—had destroyed the foe that did great things; in that of the beasts, he points to the fresh verdure of the pastures, and the growth of the fruit upon the trees; in that of men, he lays stress upon a double fact, viz. the gift of a teacher for righteousness, and the pouring out of a plentiful rain. In this description we have to notice the rhetorical individualizing, which forms its peculiar characteristic, and serves to explain not only the distinction between the earth, the beasts of the field, and the sons of Zion, but the distribution of the divine blessings among the different members of the creation that are mentioned here. For, so far as the fact itself is concerned, the threefold blessing from God benefits all three classes of the earthly creation: the rain does good not only to the sons of Zion, or to men, but also to animals and to the soil; and so again do the green of the pastures and the fruits of the trees; and lastly, even the nivy> On omnn not only blesses the earth, but also the beasts and men upon it. It is only through overlooking this rhetorico-poetical distribution, that any one could infer from ver. 22), that because the fruits are mentioned here as the ordinary food of animals, in direct contrast to Gen. 1. 28, 29, where the fruit of the trees is assigned to men for food, the beasts of the field signify the heathen. The perfects in the explanatory clauses of these three verses are all to be taken alike, and not to be rendered in the preterite in ver. 21, and in the present in vers. 22 and 23. The perfect is not only applied to actions, which the speaker looks upon from his own standpoint as actually completed, as having taken place, or as things belonging to the past, but to actions which the will or the lively fancy of the speaker regards as being as good as completed, in other words, assumes as altogether unconditional and certain, and to which in modern languages we should apply the present (Ewald, § 135, a, etc.). The latter is the sense in which it is used here, since the prophet sets forth the divine promise as a fact, which is unquestionably certain and complete, even though its historical realization has only just begun, and extends into the nearer or more remote future. The divine act over which the prophet calls upon them to rejoice, is not to be restricted to the destruction of those swarms of locusts that had at that time invaded Judah, and the revivification of dying nature, but is an act of God that is being constantly repeated whenever the same circumstances occur, or whose influence continues as long as this earth lasts; since it is a tangible pledge, that to all eternity, as is stated in vers. 26, 27, the people of the Lord will not be put to shame. The “sons of Zion” are not merely the inhabitants of Zion itself, but the dwellers in the capital are simply mentioned as the representatives of the kingdom of Judah. As the plague of locusts fell not upon Jerusalem only, but upon the whole land, the call to rejoicing must refer to all the inhabitants of the land (ch. i. 2,14). They are to rejoice in Jehovah, who has proved Himself to be their God by the removal of the judgment and the bestowal of a fresh blessing. This blessing is twofold in its nature. He gives them mp} MypI-NS, ean time immemovial there has been a diver sity of opinion as to the meaning of these words. Most of the Rabbins and earlier commentators have followed the Chaldee and Vulgate, and taken moreh in the sense of “teacher;” but others, in no small number, have taken it in the sense of “early rain,” e.g. 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 every other instance this is called yoreh (Deut. x1. 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 mdreh, instead of yoreh, to signify early rain, simply on account of the previous occurrence of hammoreh in the sense of “teacher,” and for the sake of the unison. This rendering of hammoreh is not only favoured by the article placed before it, since neither moreh = yoreh (early rain), nor the corresponding and tolerably frequent malgosh (latter rain), ever has the article, and no reason can be discovered why méreh should be defined by the article here if it signified early rain; but it is decisively confirmed by the following word np TY?, which is quite inapplicable to early rain, since it cannot mean either “in just measure,” or “at the proper time,” or “in becoming manner,” as ts°ddqah is only used in the ethical sense of -righteousness, and is never met with sensu physico, neither in 2 Sam. xix. 29, Neh. ii. 20, nor in Ps. xxiii. 3 and Ley. xix. 36, where moreover PI¥ occurs. Tor PTS “bay (in the Psalm) are not straight or right ways, but ways ‘of righteousness (spiritual Ww ays) 3 and although prs ‘IND, | PIs ‘238, are no doubt really correct scales’ and weight-stones, this is simply because they correspond to what is ethically right, so that we cannot deduce from this the idea of correct measure in the case of the rain. Ewald and Umbreit, who both of them recognise the impossibility of proving that ts°ddéqah is used in the physical sense of correctness or correct measure, have therefore adopted the rendering “rain for justification,” or “ for righteousness;” Ewald regarding the rain as a sign that they are adopted again into the righteousness of God, whilst Umbreit takes it as a manifestation of eternal righteousness in the flowing stream of fertilizing grace. But apart from the question, whether these thoughts are in accordance with the doctrine of Scripture, they are by no means applicable here, where the people have neither doubted the revelation of the righteousness of God, nor prayed to God for justification, but have rather appealed to the compassion and grace of God in the consciousness of their sin and guilt, and prayed to be spared and rescued from destruction (vers. 18,17). By the “teacher for righteousness,” we are to understand neither the prophet Joel only (v. Hofmann), nor the Messiah directly (Abarbanel), nor the ideal teacher or collective body of messengers from God (Hengstenberg), 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

God, which were bestowed at any rate partially at that particular time. Moreover, in ver. 23, the sending of the rain-fall is represented by 1% (imperf. c. Vi cons.), f not as the consequence - of the sending of the teacher for righteousness, at any rate -as a contemporaneous event. These circumstances apparently favour the application of the expression to the prophet Joel. Nevertheless, it is by no 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 mercy through his call to repentance, and thereby 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 were teachers for righteousness, and are included under hammoreh. 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. il. 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 TH" with Vav cons. Joel mentions first of alle geshem, arain-fall, or plentiful rain for the fertilizing of the soil, and then defines it more exactly as early rain, w hieh 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

(see at Lev. xxvi.3). fiv8873, in the beginning, de. first (=Mb9 in Gen. xxxilil. 2, just as }WN7D is used in Lev. ix. 15 for mvsia in Num. x. 13), not in the first month (Chald., etc.), or in the place of 138723, as before (LX X., Vulg., and others). For fi¥s2 corresponds to 127708 in ver. 28 (Heb. iii. 1), as Ewald, Meier, and Hengstenberg admit. rst of all the pouring out of a plentiful rain (an individualizing expression for all kinds of earthly blessings, chosen here with reference to the opposite of blessing occasioned by the drought); and after that, the pouring out of the spiritual blessing (ch. ii. 28-in. 21). Vers. 24-27. Effects of the rain. Ver. 24. “And the barns become full of corn, and the vats flow over with new wine and oil. Ver. 25. And Irepay to you the years which the locust has eaten, the licker, and the devourer, and the gnawer, my great army which L sent among you. Ver. 26. And ye will eat, eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of Jehovah your God, who hath done wondrously with you; and my people shall not be put to shame to all eternity. Ver. 27. And ye will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I (am) Jehovah your God, and none else, and my people shall not be put to shame to all eternity.’ Ver. 24 is practically the same as ver. 19a, and the counterpart to ch. 1. 10-12. pwn from pw, to run, hiphil only here and ch. iv. 18, to run over, to overflow; pilel, Ps. Ixv. 10, shagég, to cause to overflow. O°)’, the vats of the wine-presses, into which the wine flows when trodden out; here it also applies to the vats of the oil-presses, into which the oil ran as it was pressed out. Through these bountiful harvests God would repay to the people the years, i.e. the produce of the years, which the locusts ate. The plural, shdnim, furnishes no certain proof that Joel referred in ch. i. to swarms of locusts of several successive years; but is used either with indefinite generality, as in Gen, xxi. 7, or with a distinct significance, viz. as a poetical expression denoting the greatness and violence of the devastation. On the different names of the locusts, see at ch. i. 4. It is to be observed here that the copula stands before the last two names, but not before yeleg, so that the last three names belong to one another as co-ordinates (Hitzig), i.e. they are merely different epithets used for ’arbeh, the locusts.—Ver. 26. On the reception of these benefits the people will praise the Lord, who has shown it such wondrous grace, lit. has acted towards it even to the doing of wonders.—Ver. 27. They will learn thereby that Jehovah is present among His people, and the only true God, who does not suffer His people to be put to shame. The repetition of ‘) Ww Nr, by which the promised grace is guaranteed to the people for all ages, serves as a rhetorical rounding off of the section (see at ch. ii, 20).

OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD UPON ALL FLESH; JUDG- MENT UPON THE WORLD OF NATIONS, AND ETERNAL DELIVERANCE AND GLORIFICATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD.—CHAP. II. 28—III. 21 (SEB. BIB. CHAP. III. AND IV.).

These three distinct features in the higher blessing set before 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 rescue of the true worshippers of God ensue, but the sanctification 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. ui. (Heb. 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 SPrrit oF GoD, AND ANNOUNCEMENT OF JUDGMENT.'—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’ acharé-khen points back to 1 Among other special expositions of these verses, sce Hengstenberg’s Christology, vol. i. p. 826 sqq. translation. VOL. I. ie)

bdr? shon in ver. 23, the formula v*hdydh achdré-khén describes the outpouring of the Spirit as a second and later consequence of the gift of the teacher for righteousness. 5’, to pour out, signifies communication in rich abundance, like a rain-fall or water-fall. For the communication of the Spirit of God was not entirely wanting to the covenant nation from the very first. In fact, the Spirit of God was the only inward bond between the Lord and Lis people; but it was confined to the few whom God endowed as prophets with the gift of His Spirit. This limitation was to cease in the future.’ What Moses expressed as a wish—namely, that the people were all prophets, and the Lord would put His Spirit upon them (Num. xi. 29)—was to be fulfilled in the future. Ltadch Y‘hovdh is not the first principle of the physico- creaturely life (ze. not equivalent to ridch Elohim in Gen. i. 2), but that of the spiritual or ethical and religious life of man, which filled the prophets under the Old Testament as a spirit of prophecy; consequently Joel describes its operations under this form. “All flesh” signifies all men. The idea that it embraces the irrational animals, even the locusis (Credner), is rejected with perfect justice by Hitzig as an inconceivable thought, and one unheard-of in the Bible; but he is wrong in adding that the Old Testament does not teach a communication of the Spirit of God to all men, but limits it to the people of Israel. A decided protest is entered against this by Gen. vi. 3, where Jehovah threatens that He will no longer let His Spirit rule b@’dddm, «i.e. in the human race, because it has become bdsdr (flesh). -Bdsdr, as contrasted with radch Y*hovah, always denotes human nature regarded as incapacitated for spiritual and divine life. Even in this verse we must not restrict the expression “all fiesh” to the members of the covenant nation, as most of the commentators have done; for whatever truth there may be in the remark

1“ There is no doubt that the prophet promises something greater here than the fathers had experienced under the law. We know that the grace of the Holy Spirit flourished even among the ancient people; but the prophet promises here not what the faithful had formerly experienced, but something greater. And this may be gathered from the verb ‘to pour’ which he employs. For 75 does not mean merely to give in drops, but to pour out in great abundance. But God did not pour out the Holy Spirit so abundantly or copiously under the law, as He has since the manifestation of Christ.”—CaLvin.

made by Calovius and others (compare Hengstenberg, Christol. 1, p. 828 transl.), that the following clause, “your sons, your daughters, your old men, your young men, and men-servants and maid-servants,” contains a specification of “vanes, it by no means follows with certainty from this, that the word all does not do away with the limitation to one particular nation, but merely that in this one nation even the limits of sex, age, and rank are abolished; since it cannot -be proved that the specification in vers. 2 and 3 is intended to exhaust the idea of “all flesh.” Moreover, as the prophecy of Joel had respect primarily to Judah, Joel may primarily have brought into prominence, and specially singled out of the general idea of kolbasar in vers. 28 and 29, only those points that were of importance to his contemporaries, viz. that all the members of the covenant nation would participate in this outpouring of the Spirit, without regard to sex, age, or rank; and in so doing, he may have looked away from the idea of the entire human race, including all nations, which is involved in the expression “all flesh.” We shall see from ver. 32 that this last thought was not a strange one to the prophet. In the specification of the communication of the Spirit, the different forms which it assumes are rhetorically distributed as follows: to the sons 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 these was peculiar to the age mentioned. Wor the assertion, 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 are the two forms of the prophetic revelation of God; and 83) 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 v‘gam, as being something very extraordinary, and under existing circumstances not to be expected. Not a single case occurs in the whole of the Old Testament of a slave receiving the gift of prophecy. Amos, indeed, was a poor shepherd servant, but not an actual slave. And the communication of this gift to slaves was irreconcilable with the position of slaves under the Old Testament. Consequently even the Jewish expositors could not reconcile themselves to this announcement. The LXX., by rendering it él rods SovAous pov Kat éml tas Sovras pov, have put servants of God in the place of the slaves of men; and the Pharisees refused to the éydos even a knowledge of the law (John vii. 49). The gospel has therefore also broken the fetters of slavery.

Judgment upon all nations goes side by side with the outpouring of the Spirit of God. Ver. 30. “ And I give wonders in the heavens and on earth, blood, fire, and pillars of smoke. Ver. 31. The sun will turn into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the day of Jehovah, the great and terrible (day), comes. Ver. 32. And it comes to pass, every one who shall call upon the name of Jehovah will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem will be fugitives, as Jehovah hath said, and among those that are left will be those whom Jehovah calls.” With the word ‘ANN, ver. 3 is attached to ver. 2 as a simple continuation (Hitzig). The wonders which God will give in the heavens and me earth are the forerunners of judgment. Moph‘thim (see at Ex. iv. 21) are extraordinary and marvellous natural phenomena. The wonders on earth are mentioned first, in ver. 800; then im ver. 31 those in the heavens. Blood and fire recal to mind the plagues which fell upon Egypt as signs of the judgment: the blood, the changing of the water of the Nile into blood (Ex. vii. 17); ibe fire, he balls of fire which fell to the earth along with the hail (Ex. ix. 24). Blood and fire point to bloodshed and war. Timroth ‘dshan signifies cloud-pillars (here and in Song of Sol. iii. 6), whether we regard the form timroth as original, and trace it to timradh and the root tdmar, or prefer the reading N12"n, which we meet with in many codices and editions, and take the word as a derivative of ydémar = mar, as Hengstenberg does (Christol. i. p. 334 transl.). This sign has its type in the descent of Jehovah upon Sinai, at which the whole mountain smoked, and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a smelting-furmace (Ex. xix. 18). We have not to think, therefore, of columns of cloud ascending from basons of fire, carried in front of caravans or armies on the march to show the way (see at Song of Sol. iii. 6), but of pillars of cloud, which roll up from burning towns in time of war (Isa. ix.17). Ver. 81. In the heavens the sun is darkened, and'the moon assumes a dull, blood-red appearance. These signs also have their type in the Egyptian plague of darkness (Ex. x. 21 sqq.). The darkening and extinction of the lights of heaven are frequently mentioned, either as harbingers of approaching judgment, or as signs of the breaking of the day of judgment (it was so in ch. ii. 2, 10, and is so again in ch. ill. 14: see also Isa. xili. 10, xxxiv. 4; Jer. iv. 23; Ezek. xxxti. 1-8; Amos vill. 9; Matt. xxiv. 29; Mark xi. 24; Luke xxi. 25). What we have to think of here, is not so much periodically returning phenomena of nature, or eclipses of the sun and moon, as extraordinary (not ecliptic) obscurations of the sun and moon, such as frequently occur as accompaniments to great catastrophes in human history.’ And these earthly and celestial phenomena are foreranners and signs of the approaching or bursting judgment; not only so far as subjective faith is concerned, from the impression which is made upon the human mind by rare and terrible phenomena of nature, exciting a feeling of anxious expectation as to the things that are about to happen,” but also in their real connection with the enward progress of humanity towards its divinely appointed goal, which may be explained from the calling of man to be the

1 Compare O. Zoeckler, Theologia Natural. i. p. 420, where reference is made to Humboldt (Kosmos, iii. 413-17), who cites no fewer than seventeen extraordinary cases of obscuration of the sun from the historical tradition of past ages, which were occasioned, not by the moon, but by totally different circumstances, such as diminished intensity in the photosphere, unusually large spots in the sun, extrancous admixtures in our own atmosphere, such as trade-wind dust, inky rain, sand rain, ete.; and many of which took place in most eventful years, such as 45 B.c., A.D. 29 (the year of the Redeemer’s death), 358, 360, ete.

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 bloed—is metaphorical, and signifies that the Lord will fill the whole universe with signs of His wrath, which will paralyze 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 m their turns to the earth, so, on the lord of the earth, though it has not yet received from science its due recognition and weight; in accordance with which connection, they show “ that the eternal motion of the heavenly worlds is also appointed by the world-governing righteousness of God; so that the continued secret operation of this peculiar quality manifests itself through a strong cosmico-uranian symbolism, in facts of singular historical significance” (Zoeckler, i.c.). For ver. 316, see at ch. ii. 1,11. But it is only by the world and its children that the terrible day of the Lord is to be feared; tothe children of God it brings redemption (Luke xxi. 28). Whoever calls upon the name of Jehovah, ¢.e. the believing worshippers of the Lord, will be exempted from the judgment. “Calling upon the name of Jehovah” signifies not only the public worship of God, but inward worship also, in which the confession of the mouth is also an expression of the heart. Upon Mount Zion will be p*/étdh, ae. not deliverance, but that which has escaped, or, in a collective sense, those who have escaped the judgment, as the synonym s‘77dim, which follows, clearly shows. Mount Zion and Jerusalem are not mentioned here as the capital of the kingdom of Judah, but, according to their spiritual significance, as the place where the Lord was enthroned in the sanctuary in the midst of His people; that is to say, as the central spot of the kingdom of God. Consequently it is not “to the whole nation of Judah as such that deliverance is promised, on the assumption that in those times of distress the population of the land would have streamed to other hand, the prophet affirms that they will be the heralds of an angry and offended God.... By the darkness of the sun, the turning of the moon into blood, and the black vapour of smoke, the prophet meant to express the thought, that wherever men turned their eyes, everywhere, both above and below, many things would meet the eye that would fill them with terror. So that it is just as if he had said, that there had never been such a state of misery in the world, nor so many fierce signs of the wrath of God.” For example, the assertion that they ‘‘ are metaphorical expressions” cannot possibly be sustained, but is at variance with the scriptural view of the deep inward connection between heayen and earth, and more particularly with the scriptural teaching, that with the last judgment the present heavens and present earth will perish, and the creation of a new heaven and new earth will ensue. Moreover, the circumstance that a belief in the significance of these natural phenomena is met with in all nations, favours their real (not merely imaginary) connection with the destinies of humanity.

Jerusalem” (Hitzig), but only to those who call upon the name of the Lord, ze. to the true worshippers of God, upon whom the Spirit of God is poured out. The words ’ 128 1WN3 are not synonymous with ‘* DN) or 127‘ °3 (ch. iv. 8; Isa. i. 20, xl.°5, etc.), but point to a prophetic word already known, viz. to Ob. 17, where the saying of the Lord, that in the made of the judgment there would be rescued ones upon Mount Zion, occurs word for word. OMYN also depends upon WAN... 2: “and among those that remain will be those whom Jehovah calls.” Sarid is one who is left after a judgment or a battle; hence in Jer. xlii. 17 and Josh. viii. 22 it is connected with palit (one who has escaped from destruction), so that here s*r7dim and p‘létah are actually alike, the s‘r7dim being just the escaped ones upon Mount Zion. Through this clause there: is appended to what precedes the fresh seal ty that among the saved will be found those whom the Lord calls. These may either be the believing portion of Judah, or believers from among the heathen. If we ons the first view, the sentence would siniply 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 who call upon the Lerd. 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 “ v2 NIP 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. 320, 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 your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call,” he even adds the closing words of Joel (ver. 32b).' Consequently the Christian church from time immemorial has recognised in the miracle of Pentecost the outpouring of the Spirit of God predicted in vers. 1, 2:” so that the only point upon which there has been a division of opinion has been, whether the fulfilment is to be confined to the feast of Pentecost (as nearly all the fathers and earlier Lutheran commentators suppose); or is to be sought for in certain events of Joel’s own time, as well as the first feast of Pentecost (Ephr. Syr., Grot., and others); or, lastly, whether the occurrence at the first feast of Pentecost is to be regarded as simply the beginning of the fulfilment which has continued throughout the whole of the Christian era (Calov., Hengstenberg, and many others). Even the Rabbins, with the exception of R. Mose hakkohen in Aben Ezra, who sees only a reference to some event in Joel’s own time, expect the fulfilment to take place in the future on the advent of the Messiah (Yarchi, Kimchi, Abarb.). Of the three views expressed by Christian commentators, the third is the only one that answers to the nature of the prophecy as correctly interpreted. The outpouring of the Spirit of God, or the communication of it in all its fulness to ‘the covenant nation, without any limitation whatever, is a standing mark with the prophets of the Messianic times (compare Isa. xxxil. 15 with xi. 9 and liv. 13) or new covenant (Jer, xxxi. 33, 84; Ezek. xxxvi. 26 sqq.; Zech. xii. 10). And even if the way was opened and prepared for this by the prophetic endowment of particular members of the old

1 Tn quoting this passage Peter follows the LX-X. on the whole, even and dovazs (ver. 29b), in 2r1@eevq for wis (ver. 4), because these differences were of no consequence, so far as his object was concerned. On the other hand, he has interpreted zai tore: mera radre (1 NNN MM) by zal gorae zy rails toxarots gueoess, and added for the same purpose, Ayes 6 Ocds. He has also transposed the two clauses xel of wpecBurspor... and xa of yeavisxot, probably simply for the purpose of letting the youths follow the sons and daughters, and placing the old men in the third row; and lastly, he has added dyw to ey 7G odpayd..., and zero to ix! rig yas, to give greater prominence to the antithesis, 2 See Hengstenberg, Christol. i. pp. 345, 346, translation.

covenant, these sporadic communications of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament times cannot be regarded as the first steps in the fulfilment of our prophecy, since they were not outpourings of the Spirit of God. This first took place when Christ Jesus the Son of God had completed the work of redemption, i.e. on the first feast of Pentecost after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Previous to this the words of John vii. 39 applied: otrrw Hv mvedpwa ayvov, Ott 0 “Inaots ovdérrw édo&dcbm. The reference in this prophecy to the founding of the new covenant, or Christian church, is also evident ribet the words, “ And it shall come to pass ae ards,” for which Peter substituted, “ And it shall come to pass in the last days,” interpreting }2 “nx, the use of which was occasioned by the retrospective reference to W872 in ch. ti. 23, with perfect correctness so far as the fact was concerned, by the formula answering to DON NANA, viz. év tals éoyataus tyépass, which always denotes the Messianic future, or times of the completion of the kingdom of God. And just as acharé khén precludes any reference to an event in Joel’s own time, so does & tats éoxdrass hywépars 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 saw nothing 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 (rots eis paxpav), 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—z.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 kingdom of God. See Hengstenberg, Christology, i. pp. 826 sqq. transl., where further reasons are adduced for taking this to be the allusion in the prophecy.

There is far greater diversity in the opinions entertained as to the fulfilment of vers. 30-32: some thinking of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans (Grotius, Turretius, and the Socinians); others of judgments upon the enemies of the covenant nation shortly after the return from the Babylonian exile (Ephr. Syr. and others); others, again, of the last judgment (Tertull., Theod., Crus.), or the destruction of Jerusalem and the last judgment (Chrys.). Of all these views, those which refer to events occurring before the Christian era are irreconcilable with the context, according to which the day. of the Lord will come after the outpouring of the Spirit of God. Eyen the wonders connected with the death of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, of which some have thought, cannot properly be taken into account, although the marvellous phenomena occurring at the death of Christ— the darkening of the sun, the shaking of the earth, and the rending of the rocks—were harbingers of the approaching judgment, and were recognised by the éydovs as warnings to repent, and so escape from the judgment (Matt. xxvii. 45, 51; Luke xxiii. 44, 48). For the signs in heaven and earth that are mentioned in vers. 80 and 31 were to take place before the coming of the terrible day of the Lord, which would dawn after the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh, and which came, as history teaches, upon the Jewish nation that had rejected its Saviour on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and upon the Gentile world-power in the destruction of the Roman empire, and from that time forward breaks in constant succession upon one Gentile nation after another, until all the ungodly powers of this world shall be overthrown (cf. ch. iii. 2). On account of this internal connection between the day of Jehovah and the outpouring of the Spirit upon the charch of the Lord, Peter also quoted vers. 30-32 of this prophecy, for the purpose of impressing upon the hearts of all the hearers of his address the admonition, “Save yourselves from this perverse generation” (Acts ii. 40), and also of pointing out the way of deliverance from the threatening judgment to all who were willing to be saved.

Chap. iii. (Heb. Bib. ch.iv.) JupamENT UPON THE WorLp or NATIONS, AND GLORIFICATION OF Z1on.—Vers. 1, 2. “For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall turn the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather together all nations, and bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will contend with them there concerning my people and my inheritance Israel, which they have scattered among the nations, and my land have they divided. Ver. 3. And for my people they cast the lot; and gave the boy for a harlot, and the maiden they have sold for wine, and drunk (it).’ The description of the judgmentday predicted in ch. ii. 31 commences with an explanatory °3. The train of thought is the following: When the day of the Lord comes, there eal be deliverance upon Zion only for those who call upon the name of the Lord; for then will all the heathen nations that have displayed hostility to Jehovah’s inheritance be judged in the valley of Jehoshaphat. By hinnéh, the fact to be announced is held up as something new and important. The notice as to the time points back to the “afterward” in ii. 28: “in those days,” viz. the days of the outpouring of the Spirit of God. This time is still further described by the apposition, “at that time, when I shall turn the captivity of Judah,” as the time of the redemption of the people of God out of their prostrate condition, and out of every kind of distress, MS 7W Maw is oe: used here in the sense of “ to bring back the prisoners,” but, as in Hos. vi. 11, in the more comprehensive sense of restitutio in integrum, which does indeed include the gathering together of those who were dispersed, and the return of 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 ‘m¥aP) the prediction of judgment is appended to ie previous definition of the time in the form of an apodosis. ‘The article in O%3 sD (all the nations) does not refer to “ all those nations which were spoken of in ch. 1. and il. 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 acrime: 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,

§ 277, a). The valley of Y*hoshdphat, i.e. Jehovah judges, is not the valley in which the judgment upon several heathen nations took place under Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xx.), and which received the name of Valley of blessing, from the feast of thanksgiving which Jehoshaphat held there (2 Chron. xx. 22-26), as Ab. Ezra, Hofmann, Ewald, and others suppose; for the “ Valley of blessing” was not “ the valley of Kidron, which was selected for that festival in the road back from the desert of Tekoah to Jerusalem” (see Bertheau on 2 Chron. l.c.), and still less “the plain of Jezreel” (Kliefoth), but was situated in the neighbourhood of the ruins of Bereikit, which have been discovered by Wolcott (see Ritter, Hrdkunde, xv. p. 635, and Van de Velde, Mem. p. 292). On the other hand, the valley of Jehoshaphat is unquestionably to be sought for, according to this chapter (as compared with Zech. xiv. 4), in or near Jerusalem; and the name, which does not occur anywhere else in either the Old or New Testament, excepting here and in ver. 12, is formed by Joel, like the name ‘émeg hechdrits in ver. 14, from the judgment which Jehovah would hold upon the nations there. The tradition of the church (see Euseb. and Jerome in the Onom. s.v. xothds, Colas, and itiner. Anton. p. 594; cf. Robinson, Pal. i. pp. 896, 397) has correctly assigned it to the valley of the Kidron, on the eastern side of Jerusalem, or rather to the northern part of that valley (2 Sam. xviii. 18), or valley of Shaveh (Gen. xiv. 17). There would the Lord contend with the nations, hold judgment upon them, because they had attacked His people (nachalathi, the people of Jehovah, as in ch. ii. 17) and His kingdom (‘arts?). The dispersion of Israel among the nations, and the division (pon) of the Lord’s land, cannot, of course, refer to the invasion of Judah by thé Philistines and Arabians in the time of Joram (2 Chron.‘xsi. 16, 17). For although these foes did actually conquer Jerusalem and plunder it, and carried off, among other captives, even the sons of the king himself, this transportation of a number of prisoners cannot be called a dispersion of the people of Israel among the heathen; still less can the plundering of the land and capital be called a division of the land of Jehovah; to say nothing of the fact, that the reference here is to the judgment which would come upon all nations after the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh, and that it is not till vers. 4-8 that Joel proceeds to speak of the calamities which neighbouring nations had inflicted upon the kingdom of Judah. The words presuppose as facts that have already occurred, both the dispersion of the whole nation of Israel in exile among the heathen, and the conquest and capture of the whole land by heathen nations, and that in the extent to which they took place under the Chaldeans and Romans alone. In vers. 2 and 3 Joel is speaking not of events belonging to his own time, or to the most recent. past, but of that dispersion of the whole of the ancient covenant nation among the heathen, which was only completely effected on the conquest of Palestine and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and which continues to this day; though we cannot agree with Hengstenberg, that this furnishes an areument in favour of the allegorical interpretation of the army of locusts in ch. i. and ii.. For since Moses had already foretold that Israel would one day be driven out among the heathen (Lev. xxvi. 33 sqq.; Deut. xxviii. 36 sqq.), Joel might assume that this judgment was a truth well known in Israel, even though he had not expressed it in his threatening of punishment in ch. i. and ii, Ver. 3 depicts the ignominious treatment of Israel in connection with this catastrophe. The prisoners of war are distributed by lot among the conquerors, and disposed of by them to slave-dealers at most ridiculous 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 not yet 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 Romans.’ But, as many of the