Text -- Joel 3:1-8 (NET)

The Lord Plans to Judge the Nations

3:1 For look! In those days and at that time I will return the exiles to Judah and Jerusalem. 3:2 Then I will gather all the nations, and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. I will enter into judgment against them there concerning my people Israel who are my inheritance, whom they scattered among the nations. They partitioned my land, 3:3 and they cast lots for my people. They traded a boy for a prostitute; they sold a little girl for wine so they could drink. 3:4 Why are you doing these things to me, Tyre and Sidon? Are you trying to get even with me, land of Philistia? I will very quickly repay you for what you have done! 3:5 For you took my silver and my gold and brought my precious valuables to your own palaces. 3:6 You sold Judeans and Jerusalemites to the Greeks, removing them far from their own country. 3:7 Look! I am rousing them from that place to which you sold them. I will repay you for what you have done! 3:8 I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah. They will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away. Indeed, the Lord has spoken!

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Wesley: Joe 3:1

When I shall by Cyrus bring Judah out of Babylon.

Wesley: Joe 3:1

As the type of the whole remnant that are saved.

Wesley: Joe 3:1

For beside what refers to the two tribes restored by Cyrus, the bringing back the captivity of the whole Israel of God by Christ is to be considered all along through this chapter.

Wesley: Joe 3:2

In the type it is all those nations that have oppressed Judah, in the anti - type, all nations that have been enemies to Christ and the church.

Wesley: Joe 3:2

I will debate my people's cause, and do them right in the midst of my church, signified by the valley of Jehoshaphat.

Wesley: Joe 3:2

Such is the injustice of the persecutors of the church now, and so God will judge them in due time.

Wesley: Joe 3:3

It was customary with conquerors to divide the captives by lot, and so did these enemies of the Jews.

Wesley: Joe 3:4

Have I done you any wrong, which you avenge upon my people? Or do you begin to violate the laws of neighbourhood and friendship, and think to escape? Do ye think you have to do with a poor opprest people, my people, and I nothing concerned at it? Palestine - On which were towns of trade, and merchants that bought and sold these captives.

Wesley: Joe 3:4

Have I or my people so dealt with you? And if - If you will deal thus, I will speedily avenge myself and my people of you.

Wesley: Joe 3:5

Either as part of the spoil, or as part of your pay.

Wesley: Joe 3:5

Silver and gold vessels dedicated to my service.

Wesley: Joe 3:6

That there might be no hope of their return to their country.

Wesley: Joe 3:7

This was fulfilled when Alexander, and his successors dismissed all the Jews that were slaves in Greece, and gave them leave to return to their own country.

Wesley: Joe 3:8

Give them up into the hands of the Jews.

JFB: Joe 3:1

That is, reverse it. The Jews restrict this to the return from Babylon. Christians refer it to the coming of Christ. But the prophet comprises the whole redemption, beginning from the return out of Babylon, then continued from the first advent of Christ down to the last day (His second advent), when God will restore His Church to perfect felicity [CALVIN].

JFB: Joe 3:2

Parallel to Zec 14:2-4, where the "Mount of Olives" answers to the "Valley of Jehoshaphat" here. The latter is called "the valley of blessing" (Berachah) (2Ch 20:26). It lies between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives and has the Kedron flowing through it. As Jehoshaphat overthrew the confederate foes of Judah, namely, Ammon, Moab, &c. (Psa 83:6-8), in this valley, so God was to overthrow the Tyrians, Zidonians, Philistines, Edom, and Egypt, with a similar utter overthrow (Joe 3:4, Joe 3:19). This has been long ago fulfilled; but the ultimate event shadowed forth herein is still future, when God shall specially interpose to destroy Jerusalem's last foes, of whom Tyre, Zidon, Edom, Egypt, and Philistia are the types. As "Jehoshaphat" means "the judgment of Jehovah," the valley of Jehoshaphat may be used as a general term for the theater of God's final judgments on Israel's foes, with an allusion to the judgment inflicted on them by Jehoshaphat. The definite mention of the Mount of Olives in Zec 14:4, and the fact that this was the scene of the ascension, makes it likely the same shall be the scene of Christ's coming again: compare "this same Jesus . . . shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven" (Act 1:11).

JFB: Joe 3:2

Namely, which have maltreated Judah.

JFB: Joe 3:2

(Isa 66:16; Eze 38:22).

JFB: Joe 3:2

(Deu 32:9; Jer 10:16). Implying that the source of Judah's redemption is God's free love, wherewith He chose Israel as His peculiar heritage, and at the same time assuring them, when desponding because of trials, that He would plead their cause as His own, and as if He were injured in their person.

JFB: Joe 3:3

That is, divided among themselves My people as their captives by lot. Compare as to the distribution of captives by lot (Oba 1:11; Nah 3:10).

JFB: Joe 3:3

Instead of paying a harlot for her prostitution in money, they gave her a Jewish captive boy as a slave.

JFB: Joe 3:3

So valueless did they regard a Jewish girl that they would sell her for a draught of wine.

JFB: Joe 3:4

Ye have no connection with Me (that is, with My people: God identifying Himself with Israel); I (that is, My people) have given you no cause of quarrel, why then do ye trouble Me (that is, My people)? (Compare the same phrase, Jos 22:24; Jdg 11:12; 2Sa 16:10; Mat 8:29).

JFB: Joe 3:4

(Amo 1:6, Amo 1:9).

JFB: Joe 3:4

If ye injure Me (My people), in revenge for fancied wrongs (Eze 25:15-17), I will requite you in your own coin swiftly and speedily.

JFB: Joe 3:5

That is, the gold and silver of My people. The Philistines and Arabians had carried off all the treasures of King Jehoram's house (2Ch 21:16-17). Compare also 1Ki 15:18; 2Ki 12:18; 2Ki 14:14, for the spoiling of the treasures of the temple and the king's palace in Judah by Syria. It was customary among the heathen to hang up in the idol temples some of the spoils of war as presents to their gods.

JFB: Joe 3:6

Literally, "Javanites," that is, the Ionians, a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor who were the first Greeks known to the Jews. The Greeks themselves, however, in their original descent came from Javan (Gen 10:2, Gen 10:4). Probably the germ of Greek civilization in part came through the Jewish slaves imported into Greece from Phœnicia by traffickers. Eze 27:13 mentions Javan and Tyre as trading in the persons of men.

JFB: Joe 3:6

Far from Judea; so that the captive Jews were cut off from all hope of return.

JFB: Joe 3:7

That is, I will rouse them. Neither sea nor distance will prevent My bringing them back. Alexander, and his successors, restored to liberty many Jews in bondage in Greece [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 13.5; Wars of the Jews, 9,2].

JFB: Joe 3:8

The Persian Artaxerxes Mnemon and Darius Ochus, and chiefly the Greek Alexander, reduced the Phœnician and Philistine powers. Thirty thousand Tyrians after the capture of Tyre by the last conqueror, and multitudes of Philistines on the taking of Gaza, were sold as slaves. The Jews are here said to do that which the God of Judah does in vindication of their wrong, namely, sell the Phœnicians who sold them, to a people "far off," as was Greece, whither the Jews had been sold. The Sabeans at the most remote extremity of Arabia Felix are referred to (compare Jer 6:20; Mat 12:42).

Clarke: Joe 3:1

For, behold, in those days - According to the preceding prophecy, these days should refer to Gospel times, or to such as should immediately precede them. But this is a part of the prophecy which is difficult to be understood. All interpreters are at variance upon it; some applying its principal parts to Cambyses; his unfortunate expedition to Egypt; the destruction of fifty thousand of his troops (by the moving pillars of sand) whom he had sent across the desert to plunder the rich temple of Jupiter Ammon; his return to Judea, and dying of a wound which he received from his own sword, in mounting his horse, which happened at Ecbatane, at the foot of Mount Carmel. On which his army, composed of different nations, seeing themselves without a head, fell out, and fought against each other, till the whole were destroyed. And this is supposed to be what Ezekiel means by Gog and Magog, and the destruction of the former. See Ezekiel 38 and 39

Others apply this to the victories gained by the Maccabees, and to the destruction brought upon the enemies of their country; while several consider the whole as a figurative prediction of the success of the Gospel among the nations of the earth. It may refer to those times in which the Jews shall be brought in with the fullness of the Gentiles, and be re-established in their own land. Or there may be portions in this prophecy that refer to all the events; and to others that have not fallen yet within the range of human conjecture, and will be only known when the time of fulfillment shall take place. In this painful uncertainty, rendered still more so by the discordant opinions of many wise and learned men, it appears to be my province, as I have nothing in the form of a new conjecture to offer, to confine myself to an explanation of the phraseology of the chapter; and then leave the reader to apply it as may seem best to his own judgment

Clarke: Joe 3:1

I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem - This may refer to the return from the Babylonish captivity; extending also to the restoration of Israel, or the ten tribes.

Clarke: Joe 3:2

The valley of Jehoshaphat - There is no such valley in the land of Judea; and hence the word must be symbolical. It signifies the judgment of God, or Jehovah judgeth; and may mean some place (as Bp. Newcome imagines) where Nebuchadnezzar should gain a great battle, which would utterly discomfit the ancient enemies of the Jews, and resemble the victory which Jehoshaphat gained over the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, 2Ch 20:22-26

Clarke: Joe 3:2

And parted my land - The above nations had frequently entered into the territories of Israel; and divided among themselves the lands they had thus overrun

While the Jews were in captivity, much of the land of Israel was seized on, and occupied by the Philistines, and other nations that bordered on Judea.

Clarke: Joe 3:3

Have given a boy for a harlot - To such wretched circumstances were the poor Jews reduced in their captivity, that their children were sold by their oppressors; and both males and females used for the basest purposes. And they were often bartered for the necessaries or luxuries of life. Or this may refer to the issue of the Chaldean war in Judea, where the captives were divided among the victors. And being set in companies, they cast lots for them: and those to whom they fell sold them for various purposes; the boys to be slaves and catamites, the girls to be prostitutes; and in return for them they got wine and such things. I think this is the meaning of the text.

Clarke: Joe 3:4

What have ye to do with me - Why have the Syrians and Sidonians joined their other enemies to oppress my people? for they who touch my people touch me

Clarke: Joe 3:4

Will ye render me a recompense? - Do you think by this to avenge yourselves upon the Almighty? to retaliate upon God! Proceed, and speedily will I return your recompense; I will retaliate.

Clarke: Joe 3:5

Ye have taken my silver and my gold - The Chaldeans had spoiled the temple, and carried away the sacred vessels, and put them in the temple of their own god in Babylon.

Clarke: Joe 3:6

Sold unto the Grecians - These were the descendants of Javan, Gen 10:2-5. And with them the Tyrians trafficked, Eze 27:19

Clarke: Joe 3:6

That ye might remove them far from their border - Intending to send them as far off as possible, that it might be impossible for them to get back to reclaim the land of which you had dispossessed them.

Clarke: Joe 3:7

I will raise them - I shall find means to bring them back from the place whither ye have sold them, and they shall retaliate upon you the injuries they have sustained. It is said that Alexander and his successors set at liberty many Jews that had been sold into Greece. And it is likely that many returned from different lands, on the publication of the edict of Cyrus. - Newcome.

Clarke: Joe 3:8

I will sell your sons - When Alexander took Tyre, he reduced into slavery all the lower people, and the women. Arrian, lib. ii., says that thirty thousand of them were sold. Artaxerxes Ochus destroyed Sidon, and subdued the other cities of Phoenicia. In all these wars, says Calmet, the Jews, who obeyed the Persians, did not neglect to purchase Phoenician slaves, whom they sold again to the Sabeans, or Arabs.

Calvin: Joe 3:1

The Prophet confirms in these words what he had before taught respecting the restoration of the Church; for it was a thing difficult to be believed: when the body of the people was so mutilated, when their name was obliterated, when all power was abolished, when the worship of God also, together with the temple, was subverted, when there was no more any form of a kingdom, or even of any civil government, who could have thought that God had any concern for a people in such a wretched condition? It is then no wonder that the Prophet speaks so much at large of the restoration of the Church; he did so, that he might more fully confirm what would have otherwise been incredible.

He therefore says, Behold, in those days, and at that time, in which I shall restore the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I shall then make all Gentiles to come down into the valley of Jehoshaphat. And the Prophet says this, because the Jews were then hated by all people, and were the execration and the dregs of the whole world. As many nations as were under heaven, so many were the enemies of the Jews. A fall then inter despair was easy, when they saw the whole world incensed against them: “Though God may wish to redeem us, there are yet so many obstacles, that we must necessarily perish; not only the Assyrians are enraged against us, but we have found even greater hatred in our own neighbors.” We, indeed, know that the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Syrians, the Sidonians, the Idumeans, the Philistines, and, in short, all in the surrounding countries, were very hostile to the Jews. Seeing then every access to their land was closed up to the Jews, it was difficult to entertain any hope of deliverance, though God encouraged them. For this reason the Prophet now says, that God would be the judge of the whole world, and that it was in his purpose and power to call together all the Gentiles, as though he said, “Let not the number and variety of enemies frighten you: the Assyrians alone, I know, are not your enemies, but also all your neighbors; but when I undertake the defense of your cause, I shall be alone sufficient to protect you; and however much all people may oppose, they shall not prevail. Then believe that I shall be a sufficient defender, and shall deliver you from the hand of all the nations ” We now perceive the Prophet’s design when he declares, that God would come to the valley of Jehoshaphat, and there call together all nations.

But the Prophet says, In those days, and at that time, when the Lord shall restore the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, etc. This time the Jews limit to their return: they therefore think, that when liberty to return was granted them by Cyrus and Darius, what the Prophet declares here was then fulfilled; Christian doctors apply this prediction to the coming of Christ; but both interpret the words of the Prophet otherwise than the drift of the passage requires. The Prophet, no doubt, speaks here of the deliverance we have just noticed, and at the same time includes the kingdom of Christ; and this, as we have seen in other parts, is very commonly done. While then the prophets testify that God would be the redeemer of his people, and promise deliverance from Babylonian exile, they lead the faithful, as it were, by a continuous train or course, to the kingdom of Christ. For what else was the Jewish restoration, but a prelude of that true and real redemptions afterwards effected by Christ? The Prophet then does not speak only of the coming of Christ, or of the return of the Jews, but includes the whole of redemption, which was only begun when the Lord restored his people from the Babylonian exile; it will then go on from the first coming of Christ to the last day; as though he said, “When God will redeem his people, it will not be a short or momentary benefit, but he will continue his favor until he shall visit with punishment all the enemies of his Church.” In a word, the Prophet here shows, that God will not be a half Redeemer, but will continue to work until he completes everything necessary for the happy state of his Church, and makes it in every respect perfect. This is the import of the whole.

Calvin: Joe 3:2

We also see that the Prophet Haggai speaks in the same manner of the second temple, — that the glory of the second temple shall be greater than that of the first, (Hag 2:3) He, however referred, no doubt, to the prophecy of Ezekiel; and Ezekiel speaks of the second temple, which was to be built after the return of the people from exile. Be it so, yet Ezekiel did not confine to four or five ages what he said of the second temple: on the contrary he meant that the favor of God would be continued to the coming of Christ: so also Joel means here, when he says, When God shall restore the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, he will then call together all the nations; as though he said, “God will pour out not a small portion of grace, but will become the complete Redeemer of his people; and when the whole world shall rise against him, he will yet prevail; he will undertake the cause of his Church, and will secure the salvation of his people. Whosoever then will attempt to delay or hinder the restoration of the Church, shall by no means succeed; for the Lord, the defender of his people, will judge all nations.”

Let us now see why the Prophet particularly mentions the valley of Jehoshaphat. Many think that valley to be intended, which was called the Valley of Blessing, where Jehoshaphat obtained a signal and a memorable victory, when yet he was not provided with large forces, and when many nations conspired against him. Though Jehoshaphat fought against a large army with a few people, he yet wonderfully succeeded; and the people there presented thanks to God, and gave a name to the place. Hence, many think that this valley is mentioned, that the Prophet might remind the Jews how wonderfully they were saved; for their enemies had come for the very purpose of destroying the whole of God’s people, and thought that this was wholly in their power. The memory then of this history must have animated the minds of the godly with a good hope; for God then undertook the cause of a small number against a vast multitude; yea, against many and powerful nations. And this view seems to me probable. Some place this valley of Jehoshaphat half way between the Mount of Olives and the city; but how probable their conjecture is I know not.

Unquestionably, with regard to this passage, their opinion, in my judgment, is the most correct, who think that there is here a recalling to mind of God’s favor, which may in all ages encourage the faithful to entertain hope of their salvation. Some, however, prefer to take the word as an appellative; and no doubt יהושפט ieushaphath means the judgment of God; and so they render it, “The valley of the judgment of God.” If this is approved I do not oppose. And, doubtless, though it be a proper name, and the Prophet speak here of that holy King, to encourage the Jews to follow his example, he yet alludes, no doubt, to the judgment of God, or to the contest which he would undertake for the sake of his people: for it immediately follows וכ שפטתי עמם שם uneshaphathti omem shim, “And I will contend with them there:” and this verb is derived from שפט shephath. Hence also, if it be the proper name of a place, and taken from that of the King, the Prophet here meant, that its etymology should be considered; as though he said, “God will call all nations to judgment, and for this end, that he may dwell in the midst of his people, and really testify and prove this.”

Some apply this passage to the last judgment, but in too strained a manner. Hence also has arisen the figment, that the whole world shall be assembled in the valley of Jehoshaphat: but the world, we know, became infected with such delirious things, when the light of sound doctrine was extinguished; and no wonder, that the world should be fascinated with such gross comments, after it had so profaned the worship of God. ¹³

But with respect to the intention of the Prophets he, no doubt, mentions here the valley of Jehoshaphat, that the Jews might entertain the hope that God would be the guardian of their safety; for he says everywhere that he would dwell among them, as we have also seen in the last chapter, “And God will dwell in the midst of you.” So also now he means the same, I will assemble all nations, and make them to come down to the valley of Jehoshaphat; that is, though the land shall for a time be uncultivated and waste, yet the Lord will gather his people, and show that he is the judge of the whole world; he will raise a trophy in the land of Judah, which will be nobler than if the people had ever been safe and entire: for how much soever all nations may strive to destroy the remnant, as we know they did, though few remained; yet God will sit in the valley of Jehoshaphat, he will have there his own tribunal, that he may keep his people, and defend them from all injuries. At the same time, what I have before noticed must be borne in mind; for he names here the valley of Jehoshaphat rather than Jerusalem, because of the memorable deliverance they had there, when God discomfited so many people, when great armies were in an instant destroyed and without the aid of men. Since God then delivered his people at that time in an especial manner through his incredible power, it is no wonder that he records here the name of the valley of Jehoshaphat.

I will contend, he says, with them there for my people, and for my heritage, Israel. By these words the Prophet shows how precious to God is the salvation of his chosen people; for it is no ordinary thing for God to condescend to undertake their cause, as though he himself were offended and wronged; and God contends, because he would have all things in common with us. We now then, see the reason of this contention, — even because God so regards the salvation of his people, that he deems himself wronged in their person; as it is said in another place, “He who toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye”. And to confirm his doctrine still more, the Prophet adds, For mine heritage, Israel. God calls Israel here his heritage, to strengthen distressed minds, and also to comfort them; for if the Jews had only fixed their minds on their own state, they could not but think themselves unworthy of being regarded by God; for they were deemed abominable by all nations; and we also know that they were severely chastised for having departed from all godliness and for having, as it were, wholly alienated themselves from God. Since, then, they were like a corrupted body, they could not but despond in their adversity: but the Prophet here comes to their assistance, and brings forward the word heritage, as though he said, “God will execute judgment for you, not that ye are worthy, but because he has chosen you: for he will never forget the covenant which he made with your father Abraham ” We see, then, the reason he mentions heritage: it was, that the Jews might not despair on account of their sins; and at the same time he commends, as before, the gratuitous mercy of God, as though he had said, “The reason for your redemption is no other, but that God has allotted to himself the posterity of Abraham and designed them to be his peculiar people ” What remains we must defer until to-morrow.

Calvin: Joe 3:3

There follows now another indignity still greater; for they cast lot on God’s people, — On my people they have cast lot, and prostituted a boy for a harlot, and a girl have they sold for wine, that they might drink. By these words the Prophet enhances the injury done them; for the Jews had been reproachfully treated. Some measure of humanity is mostly shown when men are sold; but the Prophet here complains in the person of God, that the Jews had been exposed to sale, as though they were the off scourings of mankind, and of no account. They have cast lots he says; and this was to show contempt; and the Prophet expresses more clearly what he meant, and says, that a boy had been given for a harlot, and a girl for wine. Some consider the Prophet as saying, that boys were prostituted to base and scandalous purposes; but I prefer another view, — that the enemies sold them for a mean price to gratify their gluttony, or their lust; as though the Prophet had said, that the Jews had to endure a grievous reproach by being set to sale, as they say, and that at the lowest price. He farther adds another kind of contempt; for whatever price the enemies procured by selling, they spent it either on harlot or on feasting. We hence see that a twofold injury is here mentioned, — the Jews had been so despised as not to be regarded as men, and had been sold not for the usual prices, but had been disposed of in contempt by their enemies almost for nothing; — and the other reproach was, that the price obtained for them was afterwards spent on gluttony and whoredom: yet this people was sacred to God. Now this contumelious treatment, the Prophet says, God would not endure, but would avenge such a wrong as if done to himself. This is then the meaning.

But the reason which induces me thus to interpret the Prophet is because he says that a girl was sold for wine, as the boy for a harlot; and the construction of the Prophet’s words is the same. It is indeed certain that in the latter clause the Prophet meant nothing else but that the price was wickedly spent for vile and shameful purposes; then the former clause must be understood in the same way. Let us proceed —

Calvin: Joe 3:4

God expostulates here with Tyre and Sidon, and other neighboring nations, and shows that they vexed his people without cause Had they been provoked some excuse might have been made; but since they made war of their own accord, the wrong was doubled. This is what God means these words. What have ye to do with me, O Tyre and Sidon? He indeed continues the subject before explained: but he speaks of the concern here as hid own; he seems not now to undertake the protection of his own people, but detents his own cause. “What have ye to do with me?” he says. God then interposes himself; as though he said, that the Syrians and Sidonians were not only called by him to judgment because they had unjustly wronged his people, and brought many troubles on men deserving no such things; but he says also, that he stood up in his own defense. “What have I to do with you, O Syrians and Sidonians?” as we say in French, Qu’avons-nous a desmeller ? (what have we to decide?) Now the Prophet had this in view, that the Syrians and Sidonians became voluntary enemies to the Jews, when they had no dispute with them; and this, as we have said, was less to be borne. “What then have ye to do with me, O Syrians and Sidonians? Do I owe anything to you? Am I under any obligation to you? Do ye repay me my recompense?” that is, “Can you boast of any reason or just pretense for making, war on my people?” He then means, that there had been no wrong done to the Syrians and Sidonians, which they could now retaliate, but that they made an attack through their own wickedness, and were only impelled by avarice or cruelty thus to harass the miserable Jews: “Ye repay not,” he says, “a recompense to me; for ye cannot pretend that any wrong has been done to you by me.”

But if ye repay this to me, he says, I will swiftly return the recompense on your head גמל gimel means not only to repay, as the Hebrew scholars ever render it, but also to confer, to bestow, ( conferre, ut loquuntur Latine ) as it has been stated in another place. ‘What shall I repay to the Lord for all the things which he has recompensed to me?’ This is the common version; but it is an improper and inconsistent mode of speaking. David no doubt refers to God’s benefits; then it is, ‘What shall I repay for all the benefits which the Lord has bestowed on me?’ Then he who first does wrong, or bestows good, is said to recompense; and this is the sense in this place. ‘If ye,’ he says, ‘thus deal with me, “ swiftly ”, מהרה mere suddenly (for the word is to be taken as an adverb,) will I return recompense on your head;’ that is, “Ye shall not be unpunished, since ye have acted so unjustly with me and my people.” We now perceive the whole meaning of the Prophet: He enhances the crime of the Syrians and Sidonians, because they willfully distressed the Jews, and joined themselves to their foreign enemies, for the purpose of seizing on a part of the spoil. As, then, vicinity softened not their minds, their inhumanity was on this account more fully proved. But, as I have said, the Lord here places himself between the two parties, to intimate, that he performs his own proper office when he takes care of the safety of his Church.

He afterwards shows that this wickedness should not be unpunished — If ye deal thus with me, he says, I shall swiftly (suddenly) return the recompense on your heads. This passage contains a singular consolation; for God declares that whatever evils the faithful endure belong to him, and also that he will not suffer those under his protection and defense to be distressed with impunity, but will quickly return recompense on the heads of those who unjustly injure his heritage. We now understand the Prophet’s design: he doubtless intended to support the minds of the godly with this thought, — that their afflictions are objects of concern with God and that he will shortly be the avenger of them, however necessary it may be that they should for a time be thus violently and reproachfully treated by wicked men.

Calvin: Joe 3:5

Let us now proceed: He says that their silver and their gold had been taken away by the Syrians and the Sidonians. All who were the neighbors of that people, no doubt, derived gain from their calamity, as is usually the case. They were at first ill disposed towards them; there was then a new temptation; they gaped after booty: and they showed themselves openly their enemies, when they saw that there was hope of gain. Such was the case with the Syrians and Sidonians. There is no doubt, but that they sedulously courted the favor of the Assyrians, that they helped them with provisions and other things, that they might partake of the spoil. It was, therefore, no wonder that gold and silver was taken away by them, for the carriage of them to Assyria would have been tedious: and, as I have just hinted, it is usually the case, that conquerors gratify those by whom they have been assisted. Many extend this plunder generally to the whole wealth of the people; that is, that the enemies plundered what gold and silver there was in Judea, and that the Sidonians got a portion of it for themselves. But there seems to have been a special complaint, that the sacred vessels of the temple were taken away by the Syrians and Sidonians: I therefore prefer to render the word, temples, rather than palaces. Some say, ‘Ye have carried away my silver and my gold to your palaces.’ Though the word is capable of two meanings, yet the Prophet, I have no doubt, refers here to the temples. The Syrians, then, and the Sidonians profaned the silver and the gold of the temple by dedicating them to their idols; they adorned their idols with spoils taken from the only true God. This was the reason why God was so exceedingly displeased. There was, indeed, a cause why God, as we have said, contended for the whole nation of Israel: but it was a far more heinous wrong to spoil the temple, and to strip it of its ornaments, and then to adorn idols with its sacred vessels; for God was thus treated with scorn; and in contempt of him, the Syrians and Sidonians built, as it were, a trophy of victory in their own dens, where they performed sacrilegious acts in worshipping fictitious gods.

Ye have taken away, he says, my gold and silver, and my desirable good things. God speaks here after the manner of men; for it is certain that even under the law he stood in no need of gold or silver, or of other precious things; he wished the temple to be adorned with vessels and other valuable furniture for the sake of the ignorant ( rudis — rude) people; for the Jews could not have been preserved in pure and right worship, had not God assisted their weak faith by these helps. ( adminiculis — props, aids) But yet, as obedience is acceptable to him, he says that whatever was an ornament in the temple was a desirable thing to him; while, at the same time, by speaking thus, he put on, as I have said, a character not his own, as he has no need of such things, nor is he delighted with them. We ought not, indeed, to imagine God to be like a child, who takes delight in gold and silver and such things; but what is said here was intended for the benefit of the people, that they might know that God approved of that worship, for it was according to his command. He therefore calls every thing that was in the temple desirable, Ye have, he says, carried away into your temples my desirable good things.

Calvin: Joe 3:6

It follows, And the children of Judah, and the children of Jerusalem, have ye sold to the children of the Grecians ¹⁴. There is here another complaint subjoined, — that the Syrians and Sidonians had been sacrilegious towards God, that they had cruelly treated God’s afflicted people. In the last verse, God inveighed against the Syrians, and Sidonians for having prostituted to their idols gold and silver stolen from him; he now again returns to the Jews themselves, who, he says, had been sold to the children of the Grecians; that is, to people beyond the sea: for as Javan passed into Europe, he includes under that name the nations beyond the sea. And he says, that they sold the Jews to the Greeks that they might drive them far from their own borders, so that there might be no hope of return. Here the cruelty of the Syrians and Sidonians becomes more evident; for they took care to drive those wretched men far away, that no return to their country might be open to them, but that they might be wholly expatriated.

We now perceive what the Prophet had in view: He intended that the faithful though trodden under foot by the nations, should yet have allayed their grief by some consolation, and know that they were not neglected by God; and that though he connived at their evils for a time, he would yet be their defender, and would contend for them as for his own heritage, because they had been so unjustly treated. He afterwards adds —

Calvin: Joe 3:7

The Prophet declares here more fully and expressly, that God had not so deserted the Jews, but that he intended, in course of time, to stretch forth his hand to them again. It was indeed a temporary desertion: but it behaved the faithful in the meantime to rely on this assurance, — that God purposed again to restore his people: and of this the Prophet now speaks, Behold, he says, I will raise them from the place unto which ye have sold them; as though he said “ Neither distance of place, nor the intervening sea, will hinder me from restoring my people. ” As then the Syrians and Sidonians thought that the Jews were precluded a return to their country, because they were taken away into distant parts of the world, God says that this would be no obstacle in his way to collect again his Church.

But it may he asked, When has this prediction been fulfilled? as we indeed know that the Jews have never returned to their own country: for shortly after their return from exile, they were in various ways diminished; and at length the most grievous calamities followed, which consumed the greatest part of the people. Since this then has been the condition of that nation, we ought to inquire whether Christ has collected the Jews, who had been far dispersed. We indeed know that they were then especially scattered; for the land of Judea never ceased to be distressed by continual wars until Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people were almost wholly consumed. Since then it has been so, when can we say that this prediction has been fulfilled? Many explain the words allegorically, and say, that the Prophet speaks of apostles and martyrs, who, through various persecutions, were driven into different parts; but this is a strained view. I therefore do not doubt, but that here he refers to a spiritual gathering: and it is certain that God, since the appearance of Christ, has joined together his Church by the bond of faith; for not only that people have united together in one, but also the Gentiles, who were before alienated from the Church, and had no intercourse with it, have been collected into one body. We hence see, that what the Prophet says has been spiritually fulfilled; even the children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have been redeemed by the Lord, and restored again, not on foot or by sea; for Jerusalem has been built everywhere as it is said in Zechariah.

I will therefore gather them, he says; and he adds, I will return recompense on your head He again confirms what he said before, — that though the ungodly should exult, while ruling over the children of God, their cruelty would not be unpunished; for they shall find that the Church is never neglected by God; though he may subject it to various troubles, and exercise its patience, and even chastise it, he will yet be ever its defender. It follows —

Calvin: Joe 3:8

The Prophet describes here a wonderful change: the Syrians and Sidonians did sell the Jews; but who is to be the seller now? God himself will take this office, — I, he says, will sell your children, as though he said, “The Jews shall subdue you and reduce you to bondage,” — by whose authority? “It shall be, as if they bought you at my hands.” He means that this servitude would be legitimate; and thus he makes the Jews to be different from the Syrians and Sidonians, who had been violent robbers, and unjustly seized on what was not their own: and hence the manner of the sale is thus described, — “I myself shall be the author of this change, and the thing shall be done by my authority, as if I had interposed my own name;” and the Jews themselves shall sell, he says, your sons and your daughters to the Sabeans, a distant nation; that is, the people of the East: for the Prophet, I doubt not, by mentioning a part for the whole, meant here to designate Eastern nations, such as the Persians and Medes; but he says, that the Tyrians and Sidonians shall be driven to the meet distant countries; for the Sabeans were very far distant from the Phoenician Sea, and were known as being very nigh the Indians. ¹⁵

But it may be asked here, When has God executed this judgment? for the Jews never possessed such power as to be able to subdue neighboring nations, and to sell them at pleasure to unknown merchants. It would indeed be foolish and puerile to insist here on a literal fulfillment: at the same time, I do not say, that the Prophet speaks allegorically; for I am disposed to keep from allegories, as there is in them nothing sound nor solid: but I must yet say that there is a figurative language used here, when it is said, that the Syrians and Sidonians shall be sold and driven here and there into distant countries, and that this shall be done for the sake of God’s chosen people and his Church, as though the Jews were to be the sellers. When God says, “I will sell,” it is not meant that he is to descend from heaven for the purpose of selling, but that he will execute judgment on them; and then the second clause, — that they shall be sold by the Jews, derives its meaning from the first; and this cannot be a common sake, as if the Jews were to receive a price and make a merchandise of them. But God declares that the Jews would be the sellers, because in this manner he signifies his vengeance for the wrong done to them; that is, by selling them to the Sabeans, a distant nation. We further know, that the changes which then followed were such that God turned upside down nearly the whole world; for he drove the Syrian and the Sidonians to the most distant countries. No one could have thought that this was done for the sake of the Jews, who were hated and abominated by all. But yet God declares, that he would do this from regard to his Church even sell the Syrians and the Sidonians, though it was commonly unknown to men; for it was the hidden judgment of God. But the faithful who had been already taught that God would do this, were reminded by the event how precious to God is his heritage, since he avenges those wrongs, the memory of which had long before been buried. This then is the import of the whole. The Prophet now subjoins —

Defender: Joe 3:2

The valley of Jehoshaphat is probably where the confederation of Ammon, Moab and Edom were miraculously defeated, when they came against Judah and King Jehoshaphat in the general region between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. It has also been suggested as the valley between Mount Zion and Mount Olivet. The exact location is unknown, but evidently the whole region will be filled with armies when God gathers all nations there, probably on their way to Armageddon (2 Chronicles 20). It may be centered around the valley of Berachah (2Ch 20:26).

Defender: Joe 3:2

The land promised to Abraham, from the Nile to the Euphrates, has been "parted" by many nations in the four thousand years since. Most recently, the land was divided between Israel and Jordan by the United Nations in 1948, and has been in contention ever since."

Defender: Joe 3:6

There is ample evidence, that the Greek nation was well established and the Greek peoples widely known by the time of Joel. The prophet here looks beyond the Babylonian captivity to the subsequent Persian rule and then that of the Greek empire."

TSK: Joe 3:1

in those : Joe 2:29; Dan 12:1; Zep 3:19, Zep 3:20

when : Deu 30:3; 2Ch 6:37, 2Ch 6:38; Psa 14:7, Psa 85:1; Isa 11:11-16; Jer 16:15, Jer 23:3-8; Jer 29:14, Jer 30:3, Jer 30:18; Eze 16:53, Eze 37:21, Eze 37:22, Eze 38:14-18, Eze 39:25, Eze 39:28, Eze 39:29; Amo 9:14

TSK: Joe 3:2

also : Zep 3:8; Zec 14:2-4; Rev 16:14, Rev 16:16, Rev 19:19-21, Rev 20:8

the valley : Joe 3:12; 2Ch 20:26; Eze 39:11; Zec 14:4

will plead : Isa 66:16; Eze 38:22; Amo 1:11; Oba 1:10-16; Zec 12:3, Zec 12:4; Rev 11:18, Rev 16:6; Rev 18:20,Rev 18:21

and parted : Jer 12:14, Jer 49:1; Eze 25:8, Eze 35:10; Zep 2:8-10

TSK: Joe 3:3

2Ch 28:8, 2Ch 28:9; Amo 2:6; Oba 1:11; Nah 3:10; Rev 18:13

TSK: Joe 3:4

and what : Jdg 11:12; 2Ch 21:16, 2Ch 28:17, 2Ch 28:18; Act 9:4

O Tyre : Amo 1:6-10,Amo 1:12-14; Zec 9:2-8

will ye : Eze 25:12-17

swiftly : Deu 32:35; Isa 34:8, Isa 59:18; Jer 51:6; Luk 18:7; 2Th 1:6

TSK: Joe 3:5

ye : 2Ki 12:18, 2Ki 16:8, 2Ki 18:15, 2Ki 18:16, 2Ki 24:13, 2Ki 25:13-17; Jer 50:28, Jer 51:11; Dan 5:2, Dan 5:3

into : 1Sa 5:2-5

pleasant : Heb. desirable, Dan 11:38

TSK: Joe 3:6

have ye : Joe 3:3, Joe 3:8; Deu 28:32, Deu 28:68; Eze 27:13

Grecians : Heb. sons of the Grecians

TSK: Joe 3:7

I will : Isa 11:12, Isa 43:5, Isa 43:6, Isa 49:12; Jer 23:8, Jer 30:10,Jer 30:16, Jer 31:8, Jer 32:37; Eze 34:12, Eze 34:13, Eze 36:24, Eze 38:8; Zec 10:6-10

and will : Joe 3:4; Jdg 1:7; 1Sa 15:33; Est 7:10; Mat 7:2; 2Th 1:6; Jam 2:13; Rev 13:10; Rev 16:6, Rev 19:2

TSK: Joe 3:8

I will : Deu 32:30; Jdg 2:14, Jdg 4:2, Jdg 4:9

your sons : Isa 14:1, Isa 14:2, Isa 60:14

Sabeans : Job 1:15; Eze 23:42

far off : Jer 6:20

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Joe 3:1

For, behold - The prophet by the word, "for,"shows that he is about to explain in detail, what he had before spoken of, in sum. By the word, "behold,"he stirs up our minds for something great, which he is to set before our eyes, and which we should not be prepared to expect or believe, unless he solemnly told us, "Behold."As the detail, then, of what goes before, the prophecy contains all times of future judgment on those who should oppose God, oppress His Church and people, and sin against Him in them and all times of His blessing upon His own people, until the Last Day. And this it gives in imagery, partly describing nearer events of the same sort, as in the punishments of Tyre and Sidon, such as they endured from the kings of Assyria, from Nebuchadnezzar, from Alexander; partly using these, His earlier judgments, as representatives of the like punishments against the like sins unto the end.

In those days and in that time - The whole period of which the prophet had been speaking, was the time from which God called His people to repentance, to the Day of Judgment. The last division of that time was from the beginning of the Gospel unto that Day. He fixes the occasion of which he speaks by the words, "when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem."This form was used, before there was any general dispersion of the nation. For all captivity of single members of the Jewish people had this sore calamity, that it severed them from the public worship of God, and exposed them to idolatry. So David complains, "they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, go serve other gods"1Sa 26:19. The restoration then of single members, or of smaller bodies of captives, was, at that time, an unspeakable mercy. It was the restoration of those shut out from the worship of God; and so was an image "of the deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God"Rom 8:21, or of any "return"of those who had gone astray, "to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls 1Pe 2:25. The grievous captivity of the Jews, now, is to Satan, whose servants they made themselves, when they said, "we have no king but Caesar; His Blood be upon us and upon our children."Their blessed deliverance will be "from the power of Satan unto God"Act 26:18. It is certain from Paul Rom 11:26, that there shall be a complete conversion of the Jews, before the end of the world, as indeed has always been believed. This shall probably be shortly before the end of the world, and God would here say, "when I shall have brought to an end the "captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,"i. e., of that people "to whom were the promises"Rom 9:4, and shall have delivered them from the bondage of sin and from blindness to light and freedom in Christ, then will I gather all nations to judgment."

Barnes: Joe 3:2

I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat - It may be that the imagery is furnished by that great deliverance which God gave to Jehoshaphat, when "Ammon and Moab and Edom come against"him, "to cast God’ s people out of"His "possession,"which "He gave"them "to inherit"2Ch 20:11, and Jehoshaphat appealed to God, "O our God, wilt Thou not judge them?"and God said, "the battle is not yours but God’ s,"and God turned their swords everyone against the other, "and none escaped. And on the fourth day they assembled themselves in the valley of Berachah"(blessing); "for there they blesed the Lord"2 Chr. 24, 26. So, in the end, He shall destroy antichrist, not by human aid, but "by the breath of His mouth,"and then the end shall come and lie shall sit on the throne of His glory to judge all nations. Then shall none escape of those gathered against Judah and Jerusalem, but shall be judged of their own consciences, as those former enemies of His people fell by their own swords.

That valley, however, is nowhere called "the valley of Jehoshaphat."It continued to be "called the valley of Berachah,"the writer adds, "to this day."And it is so called still. Caphar Barucha, "the village of blessing,"was still known in that neighborhood in the time of Jerome ; it had been known in that of Josephus . Southwest of Bethlehem and east of Tekoa are still 3 or 4 acres of ruins , bearing the name Bereikut , and a valley below them, still bearing silent witness to God’ s ancient mercies, in its but slightly disguised name, "the valley of Bereikut"(Berachah). The only valley called the "valley of Jehoshaphat", is the valley of Kedron, lying between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, incircling the city on the east.

There Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah cast the idols, which they had burned 1Ki 15:13; 2Ch 30:14; 2Ki 23:6, 2Ki 23:12. The valley was the common burying-place for the inhabitants of Jerusalem . "There"was the garden where Jesus oftentimes resorted with His disciples; "there"was His Agony and Bloody Sweat; there Judas betrayed Him; thence He was dragged by the rude officers of the high priest. The temple, the token of God’ s presence among them, the pledge of His accepting their sacrifices which could only be offered there, overhung it on the one side. There, under the rock on which that temple stood, they dragged Jesus, "as a lamb to the slaughter"Isa 53:7. On the other side, it was overhung by the Mount of "Olives,"from where, "He beheld the city and wept over it,"because it "knew"not "in"that its "day, the things which belong to its peace;"whence, after His precious Death and Resurrection, Jesus ascended into, heaven.

There the Angels foretold His return, "This heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven"Act 1:11. It has been a current opinion, that our Lord should descend to judgment, not only in like manner, and in the like Form of Man, but in the same place, over this valley of Jehoshaphat. Certainly, if so it be, it were appropriate, that He should appear in His Majesty, where, for us, He bore the extremest shame; that He should judge "there,"where for us, He submitted to be judged. "He sheweth,"says Hilary (in Matt. 25), "that the Angels bringing them together, the assemblage shall be in the place of His Passion; and meetly will His Coming in glory be looked for there, where He won for us the glory of eternity by the sufferings of His humility in the Body."But since the Apostle says, "we shall meet the Lord in the air,"then, not "in"the valley of Jehoshaphat, but "over"it, in the clouds, would His throne be. : "Uniting, as it were, Mount Calvary and Olivet, the spot would be well suited to that judgment wherein the saints shall partake of the glory of the Ascension of Christ and the fruit of His Blood and Passion, and Christ shall take deserved vengeance of His persecutors and of all who would not be cleansed by His Blood."

God saith, "I will gather all nations,"of the gathering together of the nations against Him under antichrist, because He overrules all things, and while they, in "their"purpose, are gathering themselves against His people and elect, He, in His purpose secret to them, is gathering them to sudden destruction and judgment, "and will bring them down;"for their pride shall be brought down, and themselves laid low. Even Jewish writers have seen a mystery in the word, and said, that it hinteth "the depth of God’ s judgments,"that God "would descend with them into the depth of judgment", "a most exact judgment even the most hidden things."

His very presence there would say to the wicked , "In this place did I endure grief for you; here, at Gethsemane, I poured out for you that sweat of water and Blood; here was I betrayed and taken, bound as a robber, dragged over Cedron into the city; hard by this valley, in the house of Caiaphas and then of Pilate, I was for you judged and condemned to death, crowned with thorns, buffeted, mocked and spat upon; here, led through the whole city, bearing the Cross, I was at length crucified for you on Mount Calvary; here, stripped, suspended between heaven and earth, with hands, feet, and My whole frame distended, I offered Myself for you as a Sacrifice to God the Father. Behold the Hands which ye pierced; the Feet which ye perforated; the Sacred prints which ye anew imprinted on My Body. Ye have despised My toils, griefs, sufferings; ye have counted the Blood of My covenant an unholy thing; ye have chosen to follow your own concupiscences rather than Me, My doctrine and law; ye have preferred momentary pleasures, riches, honors, to the eternal salvation which I promised; ye have despised Me, threatening the fires of hell.

Now ye see whom ye have despised; now ye see that My threats and promises were not vain, but true; now ye see that vain and fallacious were your loves, riches, and dignities; now ye see that ye were fools and senseless in the love of them; but too late. "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."But ye who believed, hoped, loved, worshiped Me, your Redeemer, who obeyed My whole law; who lived a Christian life worthy of Me; who lived soberly, godly and righteously in this world, looking for the blessed hope and this My glorious Coming, "Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom of heaven prepared for you from the foundation of the World - And these shall go into everlasting fire; but the righteous into life eternal."Blessed he whoso continually thinketh or foreseeth, provideth for these things."

And will plead with them there - Woe to him, against whom God pleadeth! He saith not, "judgeth"but "pleadeth,"making Himself a party, the Accuser as well as the Judge , "Solemn is it indeed when Almighty God saith, "I will plead. He that hath ears to hear let him hear."For terrible is it. Wherefore also that "Day of the Lord"is called "great and terrible."For what more terrible than, at such a time, the pleading of God with man? For He says, "I will plead,"as though He had never yet pleaded with man, great and terrible as have been His judgments since that first destruction of the world by water. Past are those judgments on Sodom and Gomorrah, on Pharaoh and his hosts, on the whole people in the wilderness from twenty years old and upward, the mighty oppressions of the enemies into whose hands He gave them in the land of promise; past were the four Empires; but now, in the time of antichrist, "there shall be tribulation, such as there had not been from the beginning of the world."But all these are little, compared with that great and terrible Day; and so He says, "I will plead,"as though all before had not been, to "plead.""

God maketh Himself in such wise a party, as not to condemn those unconvicted; yet the "pleading"has a separate awfulness of its own. God impleads, so as to allow Himself to be impleaded and answered; but there is no answer. He will set forth what He had done, and how we have requited Him. And we are without excuse. Our memories witness against us; our knowledge acknowledges His justice; our conscience convicts us; our reason condemns us; all unite in pronouncing ourselves ungrateful, and God holy and just. For a sinner to see himself is to condemn himself; and in the Day of Judgment, God will bring before each sinner his whole self.

For My people - o : "God’ s people are the one true Israel, "princes with God,"the whole multitude of the elect, foreordained to eternal life."Of these, the former people of Israel, once chosen of God, was a type. As Paul says, "They are not all Israel which are of Israel"Rom 9:6; and again, "As many as walk according to this rule"of the Apostle’ s teaching, "peace be on them and mercy, and upon the Israel of God"Gal 6:16, i. e., not among the Galatians only, but in the whole Church throughout the world. Since the whole people and Church of God is one, He lays down one law, which shall be fulfilled to the end; that those who, for their own ends, even although therein the instruments of God, shall in any way injure the people of God, shall be themselves punished by God. God makes Himself one with His people. "He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of My eye"Zec 2:8. So our Lord said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"Act 9:4 and in the Day of Judgment He will say, "I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat. Forasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these My brethern, ye did it not to Me"Mat 25:34-35. : "By calling them "My heritage,"He shows that He will not on any terms part with them or suffer them to be lost, but will vindicate them to Himself forever."

Whom they have scattered among the nations - Such was the offence of the Assyrians and Babylonians, the first ""army,"which God sent against His people. And for it, Nineveh and Babylon perished. : "Yet he does not speak of that ancient people, or of its enemies only, but of all the elect both in that people and in the Church of the Gentiles, and of all persecutors of the elect. For that people were a figure of the Church, and its enemies were a type of those who persecute the saints."The dispersion of God’ s former people by the pagan was renewed in those who persecuted Christ’ s disciples from "city to city,"banished them, and confiscated their goods. Banishment to mines or islands were the slightest punishments of the early Christians .

Barnes: Joe 3:3

And they have cast lots - They treated God’ s people as of no account, and delighted in showing their contempt toward them. They chose no one above another, as though all alike were worthless. "They cast lots,"it is said elsewhere, "upon their honorable men"Nah 3:10, as a special indignity, above captivity or slavery. A "girl"they sold for an evening’ s revelry, and a "boy"they exchanged for a night’ s debauch.

Barnes: Joe 3:4

Yea, and what have ye to do with Me? - Literally, "and also, what are ye to Me?"The words, "And also,"show that this is something additional to the deeds of those before spoken of. Those, instanced before, were great oppressors, such as dispersed the former people of God and "divided their land."In addition to these, God condemns here another class, those who, without having power to destroy, harass and vex His heritage. The words, "what are ye to Me?"are like that other phrase, "what is there to thee and me?"(Jos 22:24, etc; Mat 8:29, ...), i. e., what have we in common? These words, "what are ye to Me?"also declare, that those nations had no part in God. God accounts them as aliens, "what are ye to Me?"Nothing. But the words convey, besides, that they would, unprovoked, have to do with God, harassing His people without cause. They obtruded themselves, as it were, upon God and His judgments; they challenged God; they thrust themselves in, to their destruction, where they had no great temptation to meddle, noticing, but inbred malice, to impel them.

This was, especially, the character of the relations of Tyre and Zidon and Philistia with Israel. They were allotted to Israel by Joshua, but were not assailed . On the contrary, "the Zidonians"are counted among those who "oppressed"Israel, and "out of"whose "hand"God "delivered"him, when he "cried"to God Jdg 10:12. The Philistines were the unwearied assailants of Israel in the days of the Judges, and Saul, and David Jdg 13:1; 1 Sam. 4; 13; 17; 1Sa 23:1; 1 Sam. 30; 1Sa 31:1-13; during 40 years Israel was given into the hands of the Philistines, until God delivered them by Samuel at Mizpeh. When David was king of all Israel, the Philistines still acted on the offensive, and lost Gath and her towns to David in an offensive war 2Sa 5:17-25; 2Sa 8:1; 1Ch 18:1; 2Sa 21:18; 2Sa 13:9-16. To Jehoshaphat some of them voluntarily paid tribute 2Ch 17:11; but in the reign of Jehoram his son, they, with some Arabians, marauded in Judah, plundering the king’ s house and slaying all his sons, save the youngest 2Ch 21:16-17; 2Ch 22:1. This is the last event before the time of Joel. They stand among the most inveterate and unprovoked enemies of God’ s people, and probably as enemies of God also hating the claim of Judah that their God was the One God.

Will ye render Me a recompense? - People never want pleas for themselves. The Philistines, although the aggressors, had been signally defeated by David. People forget their own wrong-doings and remember their sufferings. It may be then, that the Philistines thought that they had been aggrieved when their assaults were defeated, and looked upon their own fresh aggressions as a requital. If moreover, as is probable, they heard that the signal victories won over them were ascribed by Israel to God, and themselves also suspected, that these "mighty Gods"1Sa 4:7-8 were the cause of their defeat, they doubtless turned their hatred against God. People, when they submit not to God chastening them, hate Him. This belief that they were retaliating against God, (not, of course, knowing Him as God,) fully corresponds with the strong words, "will ye render Me "a recompense?"Julian’ s dying blasphemy, "Galilean, thou hast conquered,"corresponds with the efforts of his life against the gospel, and implies a secret consciousness that He whose religion he was straining to overthrow "might"be, What he denied Him to be, God. The phrase "swiftly,"literally "lightly, and speedily, denotes"the union of easiness with speed. The recompense is returned "upon"their head, coming down upon them from God.

Barnes: Joe 3:5

Ye have taken My silver and My gold - Not the silver and gold of the temple, (as some have thought.) At least, up to the prophet’ s time, they had not done this. For the inroad of the Philistines in the reign of Jehoram was, apparently, a mere marauding expedition, in which they killed and plundered, but are not said to have besieged or taken any city, much less Jerusalem. God calls "the silver and gold"which He, through His Providence, had bestowed on Judah, "My"gold and silver; as He said by Hosea Hos 2:8.

"She knew not that I multiplied her silver and gold, whereof she made Baal;"and by Haggai, "The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts"Hag 2:8. For they were His people, and what they had, they held of Him; and the Philistines too so accounted it, and dedicated a part of it to their idols, as they had the ark formerly, accounting the victory over God’ s people to be the triumph of their idols over God.

Barnes: Joe 3:6

The children also - Literally, "And the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem have ye sold to the sons of the Greeks."This sin of the Tyrians was probably old and inveterate. The Tyrians, as they were the great carriers of the world’ s traffic, so they were slave-dealers, and, in the earliest times, men-stealers. The Greek ante-historic tradition exhibits them, as trading and selling women, from both Greece and Egypt . As their trade became more fixed, they themselves stole no more, but, like Christian nations, sold those whom others stole or made captive. Ezekiel speaks of their trade in "the souls of men"Eze 27:13 with "Greece"on the one side, and "Tubal and Mesech"near the Black Sea on the other. The beautiful youth of Greece of both sexes were sold even into Persia .

In regard to the Moschi and Tibareni, it remains uncertain, whether they sold those whom they took in war (and, like the tribes of Africa in modern times, warred the more, because they had a market for their prisoners,) or whether, like the modern Cireassians, they sold their daughters. Ezekiel however, says "men,"so that he cannot mean, exclusively, women. From the times of the Judges, Israel was exposed in part both to the violence and fraud of Tyre and Sidon. The tribe of Asher seems to have lived in the open country among fortified towns of the Zidonians. For whereas of Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zabulon, it is said that the old inhabitants of the land dwelt among them Jdg 1:21, Jdg 1:27, Jdg 1:29-30, of Asher it is said, that they "dwelt among the Canaanites,"the "inhabitants of the land"Jdg 1:31-32, as though these were the more numerous. And not only so, but since they did "not drive out the inhabitants"of seven cities, "Accho, Zidon, Ahlab, Achzib, Helbah, Aphek, Rehob,"they must have been liable to incursions from them.

The Zidonians were among those who "oppressed Israel"(Jdg 5:30; see Jdg 4:3, Jdg 4:7, Jdg 4:13, Jdg 4:15-16). Sisera’ s army came from their territory, (for Jabin was king of Hazor,) and Deborah speaks of "a damsel or two,"as the expected prey of each man in the whole multitude of his host. An old proverb, mentioned 427 b.c., implies that the Phoenicians sent circumcised slaves into the fields to reap their harvest . But there were no other circumcised there besides Israel.

But the Phoenician slave-trade was also probably, even in the time of the Judges, exercised against Israel. In Joel and Amos, the Philistines and Tyrians appear as combined in the traffic. In Amos, the Philistines are the robbers of men; the Phoenicians are the receivers and the sellers Amo 1:6, Amo 1:9. Pagan nations retain for centuries the same inherited character, the same natural nobleness, or, still more, the same natural vices. The Phoenicians, at the date of the Judges, are known as dishonest traders, and that, in slaves. The Philistines were then also inveterate oppressors. On one occasion "the captivity of the land"coincided with the great victory of the Philistines, when Eli died and the ark of God was taken. For these two dates are given in the same place as the close of the idolatry of Micah’ s graven image. It endured "unto the captivity of the land"Jdg 18:30-31 and, "and all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh,"from where the ark was removed, never to return, in that battle when it was taken.

But "the captivity of the land"is not merely a subdual, whereby the inhabitants would remain tributary or even enslaved, yet still remain. A captivity implies a removal of the inhabitants; and such a removal could not have been the direct act of the Philistines. For dwelling themselves in the land only, they had no means of removing the inhabitants from it, except by selling them; and the only nation, who could export them in such numbers as would be expressed by the words "a captivity of the land,"were the Zidonians. Probably such acts were expressly prohibited "by the brotherly covenant"(see the note at Amo 1:9) or treaty between Solomon and Hiram King of Tyre. For Amos says that Tyre forgot that treaty, when she sold wholesale the captive Israelites whom the Philistines had carried off. Soon after Joel, Obadiah speaks of a captivity at "Sepharad,"or "Sardis"(see the note at Oba 1:20), the capital of the Lydian empire.

The Tyrian merchants were "the"connecting link between Palestine and the coasts of Asia Minor. The Israelites must have been sold there as slaves, and that by the Phoenicians. In yet later times the Tyrian merchants followed, like vultures, on the rear of armies to make a prey of the living, as the vultures of the dead. They hung on the march of Alexander as far as India . In the wars of the Maccabees, at Nicanor’ s proclamation, a thousand (2 Macc. 8:34) merchants gathered to the camp of Gorgias "with silver and gold, very much, to buy the children of Israel as slaves"(1 Macc. 3:41), and with chains , wherewith to secure them. They assembled in the rear of the Roman armies , "seeking wealth amid the clash of arms, and slaughter, and fleeing poverty through peril."Reckless of human life, the slave-merchants commonly, in their wholesale purchase of captives, abandoned the children as difficult of transport, whence the Spartan king was praised for providing for them .

The temptation to Tyrian covetousness was aggravated by the ease with which they could possess themselves of the Jews, the facility of transport, and, as it seems, their value. It is mentioned as the inducement to slave-piracy among the Cilicians. "The export of the slaves especially invited to misdeeds, being most gainful, for they were easily taken, and the market was not so very far off and was most wealthy .

The Jewish slaves appear also to have been valued, until those times after the taking of Jerusalem, when they had become demoralized, and there was a plethora of them, as God had predicted . The post occupied by the "little maid"who "waited on Naaman’ s wife"2Ki 5:2, was that of a favorite slave, as Greek tradition represented Grecian maidens to have been an object of coveting to the wife of the Persian Monarch . The "damsel or two"for the wives of each man in Jabin’ s host appear as a valuable part of the spoil. The wholesale price at which Nicanor set the Jews his expected prisoners, and at which he hoped to sell some 180,000 , shows the extent of the then traffic and their relative value. 2 British pounds. 14 shillings, 9d. as the average price of each of 90 slaves in Judea, implies a retail-price at the place of sale, above the then ordinary price of man.

This wholesale price for what was expected to be a mixed multitude of nearly 200,000, (for "Nicanor undertook to make so much money of the captive Jews as should defray the tribute of 2000 talents which the king was to pay to the Romans"(2 Macc. 8:10)), was nearly 5 times as much as that at which Carthaginian soldiers were sold at the close of the first Punic war . It was two-thirds of the retail price of a good slave at Athens , or of that at which, about 340 b.c., the law of Greece prescribed that captives should be redeemed ; or of that, (which was nearly the same) at which the Mosaic law commanded compensation to be made for a slave accidentally killed Exo 21:30. The facility of transport increased the value. For, although Pontus supplied both the best and the most of the Roman slaves , yet in the war with Mithridates, amid a great abundance of all things, slaves were sold at 3 shillings 3d. .

The special favors also shown to the Jewish captives at Rome and Alexandria show the estimation in which they were held. At Rome, in the reign of Augustus , "the large section of Rome beyond the Tiber was possessed and inhabited by Jews, most of them Roman citizens, having been brought as captives into Italy and made freedmen by their owners."On whatever ground Ptolemy Philadelphus redeemed 100,000 Jews whom his father had taken and sold , the fact can hardly be without foundation, or his enrolling them in his armies, or his employing them in public offices or about his own person.

Joel lived before the historic times of Greece. But there are early traces of slavetrade carried on by Greeks . According to Theopompus, the Chians, first among the Greeks, acquired barbarian slaves in the way of trade . The Ionian migration had tilled the islands and part of the coasts of Asia Minor with Greek traders about two centuries before Joel, 1069 b.c. . Greeks inhabited both the coasts and islands between Tyre and Sardis, where we know them to have been carried. Cyprus and Crete, both inhabited by Greeks and both in near contact with Phoenicia, were close at hand.

The demand for slaves must have been enormous. For wives were but seldom allowed them; and Athens, Aegina, Corinth alone had in the days of their prosperity 1,330,000 slaves . At the great slave-mart at Delos, 10,000 were brought, sold, removed in a single day .

That ye might remove them far from their border - The Philistines hoped thus to weaken the Jews, by selling their fighting men afar, from where they could no more return. There was doubtless also in this removal an anti-religious malice, in that the Jews clung to their land, as ""the Lord’ s land,"the land given by Him to their fathers; so that they, at once, weakened their rivals, aggravated and enjoyed their distress, and seemed again to triumph over God. Tyre and Sidon took no active share in making the Jews prisoners, yet, partaking in the profit and aiding in the disposal of the captives, they became, according to that true proverb "the receiver is as bad as the thief,"equally guilty of the sin, in the sight of God.

Barnes: Joe 3:7

Behold I will raise them - If this promise relates to the same individuals who had been sold, it must have been fulfilled silently; as indeed the return of captives to their own land, unless brought about by some historical event, belongs not to history, but to private life. The prophet, however, is probably predicting God’ s dealings with the nations, not with those individuals. The enslaving of these Hebrews in the time of Joram was but one instance out of a whole system of covetous misdeeds. The Philistines carried away captives from them again in the time of Ahaz 2Ch 28:18, and yet again subsequently Eze 16:27, Eze 16:57; and still more at the capture of Jerusalem Eze 25:15.

Barnes: Joe 3:8

I will sell your sons - God Himself would reverse the injustice of people. The sons of Zion should be restored, the sons of the Phoenicians and of the Philistines sold into distant captivity. Tyre was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, and then by Alexander, who sold "more than 13,000"of the inhabitants into slavery ; Sidon was taken and destroyed by Artaxerxes Ochus, and it is said, above 40,000 of its inhabitants perished in the flames . The like befell the Philistines (see the notes at Zep 2:4-7). The Sabaeans are probably instanced, as being the remotest nation in the opposite direction, a nation, probably, the partner of Tyre’ s traffic in people, as well as in their other merchandise, and who (as is the way of unregenerate nature) would as soon trade in Tyrians, as with Tyrians. The Sabaeans were like the Phoenicians, a wealthy merchant people, and, of old, united with them in the trade of the world, the Sabaeans sending forth their fleets across the Indian Ocean, as the Tyrians along the Mediterranean. Three fathers of distinct races bore the name Sheba; one, a descendant of Ham, the other two, descended from Shem. The Hamite Sheba was the son of Raamah, the son of Cush Gen 10:7, and doubtless dwelt of old in the country on the Persian gulf called by the name Raamah . Traces of the name Sheba occur there, and some even after our era . The Shemite Sabaeans, were, some descendants of Sheba, the tenth son of Joktan Gen 10:28; the others from Sheba, the son of Abraham and Keturah Gen 25:3. The Sabaeans, descended from Joktan, dwelt in the southwest extremity of Arabia, extending from the Red Sea to the Sea of Babel-mandeb. The country is still called "ard-es-Seba", "land of Saba;"and Saba is often mentioned by Arabic writers .

To the Greeks and Latins they were known by the name of one division of the race (Himyar) Homeritae. Their descendants still speak an Arabic, acknowledged by the learned Arabs to be a distinct language from that which, through Muhammed, prevailed and was diffused ; a "species"of Arabic which they attribute "to the times of (the prophet) Hud (perhaps Eber) and those before him."

It belonged to them as descendants of Joktan. Sabaeans are mentioned, distinct from both of these, as "dwelling in Arabia Felix, next beyond Syria, which they frequently invaded, before it belonged to the Romans."These Sabaeans probably are those spoken of as marauders by Job ; and may have been descendants of Keturah. Those best known to the Greeks and Romans were, naturally, those in the south western corner of Arabia. The account of their riches and luxuries is detailed, and, although from different authorities consistent; else, almost fabulous.

One metropolis is said to have had 65 temples , private individuals had more than kingly magnificence . Arabic historians expanded into fable the extent and prerogatives of their Paradise lands, before the breaking of the artificial dike, made for the irrigation of their country . They traded with India, availing themselves doubtless of the Monsoon, and perhaps brought thence their gold, if not also the best and most costly frankincense . The Sheba of the prophet appears to have been the wealthy Sheba near the Red Sea. Indeed, in absence of evidence to the contrary, it is natural to understand the name of those best known.

Solomon unites it with Seba Psa 72:10, (the Aethiopian Sabae.) The known frankincense-districts are on the southwest corner of Arabia . The tree has diminished, perhaps has degenerated through the neglect consequent on Muslim oppression, diminished consumption, change of the line of commerce; but it still survives in those districts ; a relic of what is passed away. Ezekiel indeed unites "the merchants of Sheba and Raamah"Eze 27:22, as trading with Tyre. "The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants; with the chief of all spices and with all precious stones and gold they occupied in thy fairs."It may be that he joins them together as kindred tribes yet it is as probable that he unites the two great channels of merchandise, east and west, Raamah on the Persian Gulf, and Sheba near the Red Sea. Having just mentioned the produce of Northern Arabia as poured into Tyre, he would, in this case, enumerate north, east, and west of Arabia as combined to enrich her.

Agatharcides unites the Sabaeans of southwest Arabia with the Gerrhaeans, who were certainly on the Persian Gulf . "No people,"he says , "is apparently richer than the Sabaeans and Gerrhaeans, who dispense forth everything worth speaking of from Asia and Europe. These made the Syria of Ptolemy full of gold. These supplied the industry of the Phoenicians with profitable imports, not to mention countless other proofs of wealth."Their caravans went to Elymais, Carmania; Charrae was their emporium; they returned to Gabala and Phoenicia . Wealth is the parent of luxury and effeminacy. At the time of our Lord’ s Coming, the softness and effeminacy of the Sabaeans became proverbial. The "soft Sabaeans"is their characteristic in the Roman poets . Commerce, navigation, goldmines, being then carried on by means of slaves, and wealth and luxury at that time always demanding domestic slaves, the Sabaeans had need of slaves for both. They too had distant colonies , where the Tyrians could be transported, as far from Phoenicia, as the shores of the Aegean are from Palestine. The great law of divine justice, "as I have done, so God hath requited me"Jdg 1:7, was again fulfilled. It is a sacred proverb of God’ s overruling Providence, written in the history of the world and in people’ s consciences.

Poole: Joe 3:1

Behold: it is a note of great attention, and heeding what is to be here spoken.

When I shall bring again the captivity when I shall by Cyrus the type bring Judah’ s people out of Babylonish captivity, the emblem of a greater and worse captivity. Judah after the flesh as the type, but, according to the mystery of it, Judah signifieth the whole remnant or residue of those God will save.

Jerusalem both literally and typically understood; so that beside what refers to the history of the two tribes, or kingdom of the house of David, restored out of captivity by Cyrus, the bringing back the captivity of the whole Israel of God by Christ the Messiah is here to be considered, and all along through this chapter.

Poole: Joe 3:2

I will also gather all nations: in the type, it is not simply all nations, but all those nations that have with hostile minds oppressed and scattered Judah; in the antitype, it is all nations that have been enemies to Christ and the church.

And will bring them down: this is spoken with respect to the low situation of the place, being a valley, and we descend into low parts; so here they are caused to go down

into the valley of Jehoshaphat: much difficulty interpreters find in explaining this; we must look to it as a type to somewhat signified by it, and so apply it. The valley of blessing where Jehoshaphat discomfited mighty and numerous enemies, and then triumphed in God with praises to him, 2Ch 20:22 , &c.: so the whole church may be this valley of blessing, and in this God will judge the enemies of his people, and give them occasions of praising God for his righteous judgments; and Jerusalem his church shall see this, as the inhabitants of Jerusalem might see what is done in the valley of Jehoshaphat, if they would be at a little pains to go out of the city.

Will plead with them after the manner of a just and impartial judge I will debate my people’ s cause, and do them right.

There in midst of my church, signified by the valley of Jehoshaphat, the valley of the judgment of God.

For my people Judah, the two tribes, but, as in their history, bearing a type of the church of Christ.

For my heritage Israel purchased and possessed by me ever since they were brought out of Egypt; though many times invaded and injured by their unjust neighbours, who were so much their enemies because they were my peculiar people, and kept to my worship.

Whom they have scattered among the nations either by force driving them out of their habitations, or else carrying them into captivity, and dispersing them in their insolent humour, of which dispersion more follows, Joe 3:3,6,8 .

And parted my land divided among themselves the land I gave to my people to hold immediately of me; so it was my land that they divided, their robbery and spoil was sacrilege. Such is the injustice and oppression of persecutors of the church now, and so God will judge them in due time.

Poole: Joe 3:3

It was customary with conquerors to divide the captives by lot, and so did these enemies of the Jews, Ob 11 ; and so did the Chaldeans on the captive Ninevites, Nah 3:10 : though this was grievous, yet it was the common lot of captives.

Have given a boy for an harlot either procured a boy to bestow on some harlot or other which they kept, or gave a boy, instead of money, the price of an harlot to be enjoyed by lewd soldiers.

And sold a girl a young girl, which, being captive, fell to their lot, they have valued at a base, low price, and sold

for wine that they might drink; so much as at one sitting one of them could drink; or perhaps for one draught of wine, when the barbarous soldier was dry or minded to be drunk.

Poole: Joe 3:4

What have ye to do with me? what just cause of quarrel have you against me? Have I done you any wrong which now you avenge upon my people? or do you begin to violate the law of neighbourhood and friendship, and think to escape? Do ye think you have to do with a poor oppressed people, my people, and I nothing concerned at it?

Tyre a great mart town, which neighbour to the Jews, and ought to be friends, either joined forces with the enemy against them, or, retaining friendship with the enemy, bought the Jews for slaves, and sold them again to strangers, to Grecians: this, in his man trade, Tyre was accustomed to, Eze 27:13 .

Zidon a famous ancient emporium, whose merchants also bought up captive Jews at cheap rates of these barbarous soldiers.

All the coasts of Palestine which lay along the midland sea, among which were towns of trade, and merchants that bought and sold these captives.

Will ye render me a recompence? Do ye this by way of reprisal? Have I or my people so dealt with you or yours?

Speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head I will, since you deal so with my people, and with me, certainly and speedily avenge myself and my people on you; as you have used them they shall use you. It is probable this may refer to the Assyrian invasion, when Sennacherib took all the fenced cities of Judah, and might sell the captives, or to Shalmaneser’ s time’ , when he captured the ten tribes; or it may be a prediction of what Tyre, and Zidon, and these cities of Palestine would do in the Babylonish successes, and a threat what God would do against them for it; but to whatever particular history it refer, who sees not this in it, that God will plead the cause of his oppressed church, and avenge it as his own cause?

Poole: Joe 3:5

Ye have taken you Tyrians, Zidonians, and Philistines have received at the hands of those you confederated with, you have taken them either as part of the spoil, or as part of your pay.

My silver and my gold silver and gold vessels dedicated to my service in the temple, and about the altar.

And have carried into your temples and in contempt of me, with proud insulting, have presented them in your temples to your idols, as if they were mightier and more glorious than I: so did the Philistines carry the ark into Dagon’ s temple, but it cost Dagon his head, 1Sa 5:4 ; and Nebuchadnezzar carried away the sacred vessels when he spoiled the temple.

My goodly pleasant things God speaks of these after the manner of man, and so accounteth of these things.

Poole: Joe 3:6

The children also of Judah the Jews who dwelt in the land, and the children of Jerusalem, the citizens of Jerusalem; or perhaps the young ones, boys and girls, as Joe 3:3 , both of city and country.

Ye Tyrians, Zidonians, and Philistines, though neighbours, and oftentimes befriended by the Jews, yet you have done this.

Sold unto the Grecians or sons of Grecians, who either employed them as slaves in Greece, or else sold them to other nations for slaves.

That ye might remove them far from their border that there might be no hope to these poor captives ever to return to their country, nor fear to the Tyrians and Zidonians of being called to account for the injury by them it was done unto. Amo 1:6,9 , mentions this sin of the Philistines, and God’ s displeasure at it.

Poole: Joe 3:7

Behold observe it well, for as it will be strange when done, so it shall certainly be done, to your joy, O my people, and to the astonishment of your enemies.

I will raise them awaken and raise them; though they lay sleeping, or as dead men, I will stir up some who shall befriend them. Out of the place whither ye have sold them; fulfilled when Alexander the Great and his successors, as Josephus, lib. 13. cap. 5, reports, dismissed all Jews that were slaves in Greece, and gave them leave to return to their own country.

And will return your recompence upon your own head and more than this, I will pay you in your own coin, you shall read and know your sin in your punishment.

Poole: Joe 3:8

I will sell your sons and your daughters give them up into the hands of the Jews, who thereby shall have opportunities of disposing of them as they see good; so you did with my people, so I will recompense you.

Into the hand of the children of Judah to the Jews, the posterity and kindred of those you sold.

They shall sell them either as factors for Nebuchadnezzar or Alexander the Great and his successors, or else as merchants trading on their own account, they shall make this one part of their trade, to sell Grecians, Tyrians, &c. Now though we should not have any particular history that relates the transactions of those people in this kind, yet we may rest assured it was done, since God said it should be done; nor can we expect, or is it necessary it should be, that the Jews should by a conquest of these people bring them captives, and sell them: the Zidonians, Tyrians, and Philistines did not so against the Jews, but they bought particular persons out of the hands of Syrians and Assyrians, who took the Jews captives; so when Tyre, and Zidon, and the Philistines shall be captivated by the Babylonish power, or by the Grecian, these shall sell their captives either into the hands or by the hands of the Jews.

Sabeans were a people in the parts of Arabia most remote from Tyre and Zidon; they were accounted the ends of the earth, Mat 12:42 , and spread themselves along by the sea-coast on both sides of the Arabian bay or Red Sea, and passed over that sea, and planted in Africa, and were part of that country which now doth, or lately did belong to the emperor of Abyssinia, who (as the king of Spain in both Indies) glorieth in being king of both Sabeas, and successor to the queen of Sheba; to one or both of these Sabeans did the Jewish men-sellers dispose of those slaves.

To a people far off: this may be an elliptic speech, thus to be filled up, and the Sabeans shall sell them (i.e. whom they bought of the Jews) unto another nation far off from the Sabeans; or else it is an additional description of this people and their country,

For the Lord hath spoken it then it was done, whether we know when, or by whom, or how many were sold, or not.

Haydock: Joe 3:1

Back. The people were just returned when the nations around fell upon them, and were miraculously defeated. (Theodoret) ---

We shall follow the system respecting God, given [in] Ezechiel xxxviii. (Calmet) ---

Most people, with St. Jerome, suppose that the general judgment is described, though some explain it of the captives delivered from their enemies. (Worthington)

Haydock: Joe 3:2

Josaphat, "the judgment of the Lord," (Haydock) marks the place where the Judge will sit, on the east of Jerusalem, between the temple and Olivet, whence our Lord ascended into heaven. (Worthington) ---

There also had been seized and treated contumeliously. (Haydock) ---

But many of the Fathers assert that the whole world will be the scene of judgment, and the first author who determines the situation of Josaphat, is one in the works of Ven. Bede. Here it may denote the great plain reaching from Carmel to the Jordan, where the army of Cambyses perished with its chief. People of almost all nations were there, Ezechiel xxxviii. ---

Land. The Chaldeans, now governed by a Persian, had scattered the Jews, and the Idumeans had seized part of their land.

Haydock: Joe 3:3

Boy, to gratify their brutal passions; (Lamentations v.) or, they have exchanged such for harlots, (Calmet) and paid the latter with captive boys. (Septuagint) (Haydock)

Haydock: Joe 3:4

Me. These cities and nations had rejoiced at the ruin of the Jews, Ezechiel xxv. (Calmet) ---

Coast. Septuagint, "Galilee of strangers." (Haydock)

Haydock: Joe 3:5

Temples, or palaces. The Chaldeans had done so, and perhaps had sold some to others.

Haydock: Joe 3:6

Greeks: the Ionians carried on such a traffic, Ezechiel xxvii. 13. Tyre and the Philistines were ready to sell, Ezechiel xxvi. 2., and xxv. 15.

Haydock: Joe 3:7

Them, particularly under Hystaspes and Artaxerxes.

Haydock: Joe 3:8

Sabeans; probably at the bottom of Arabia. (Calmet) ---

Thirty thousand Tyreans were sold by Alexander. (Arrian ii.) ---

The Jews would not fail to purchase. (Calmet)

Gill: Joe 3:1

For, behold, in those days, and at that time,.... Which Kimchi refers to the times of the Messiah; and is true of the latter times of the Messiah, of his spiritual reign yet to come:

when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem: not from the Edomites, Tyrians, and Philistines, that had carried them captive in the times of Ahaz; nor from Babylon, where they had been carried captive by Nebuchadnezzar; for nothing of what is after foretold followed upon the return of these captivities: but this designs the present captivity of the Jews, and the restoration of them to their own land; of which see Isa 52:8.

Gill: Joe 3:2

I will also gather all nations,.... Or cause or suffer them to be gathered together against his people; not the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites, in the times of Jehoshaphat, as Aben Ezra; but either the Turks, prophesied of under the name of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel, Eze 38:1; and a multitude of other nations with them, who shall be gathered together against the Jews, to regain the land of Judea from them, they will upon their conversion inhabit; or else all the antichristian kings and nations, which shall be gathered to the battle of the great day of God Almighty, Rev 16:14;

and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat: Kimchi thinks this was some valley near to Jerusalem, in which Jehoshaphat built or wrought some works, and so was called by his name: Joseph Ben Gorion ^x speaks of a valley, called the valley of Jehoshaphat, which was near Jerusalem, to the further end of which one Zachariah, a good man, in the times of the Jewish wars, was rolled and died, being cast down from the top of a tower upon the wall east of Jerusalem; and which is confirmed by R. Abraham, as quoted by Lively; and the true Josephus says ^y, that the valley into which this man was cast lay directly under Jerusalem; and Benjamin of Tudela ^z makes mention of a valley of this name, which he says lies between Jerusalem and the mount of Olives; where Jerom ^a places it by the name of Caelas; with whom Mr. Maundrell ^b agrees, who says that this valley lies between Mount Moriah and Mount Olivet, and has its name from the sepulchre of Jehoshaphat: and, according to Lyra on the place, who is followed by Adrichomius ^c, it is the same with the valley of Kidron, which was so situated; but, why that should be called the valley of Jehoshaphat, no reason is given. Aben Ezra and others are of opinion that this is the same with the valley of Berachah, where Jehoshaphat obtained a very great victory over many nations, 2Ch 20:1; but it does not appear to have been called by his name, and, besides, seems to be at a great distance from Jerusalem; though there may be an allusion to it, that as many nations were there collected together and destroyed, so shall it be in the latter day; and I am of opinion that no proper name of a place is here meant, as going by it in common, but is so called from the judgment of God here executed upon his and his people's enemies. So Jarchi calls it "the valley of judgments"; Jehoshaphat signifying "the judgment" of the Lord: Kimchi says it may be so called because of judgment, the Lord there pleading with the nations, and judging them: and in the Targum it is rendered,

"the valley of the division of judgment:''

and to me it designs no other than Armageddon, the seat of the battle of Almighty God, Rev 16:16; and which may signify the destruction of their troops; See Gill on Rev 16:16;

and will plead with them there for my people, and for my heritage Israel; the people of the Jews, who will now be converted, who will have the "loammi", Hos 1:9, taken off of them, and will be called the people of the living God again, and be reckoned by him as his portion and inheritance; though not them only, but all the saints; all that have separated from antichrist, his doctrine and worship, and have suffered by him:

whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land; Kimchi refers this to the scattering of the Jews by Titus and his army, and the partition of Judea among them, which is not amiss; in consequence of which they are still a scattered people, and their land has been parted between Turks and Papists ^d; sometimes inhabited by the one, and sometimes by the other, and now by both, on whom God will take vengeance; he will plead the cause of his people, by the severe judgments he will inflict on his and their enemies. This may respect the persecuting of the Christians from place to place, and seizing on their lands and estates, and parting them, as well as the dispersion of the Jews, and the partition of the land of Canaan.

Gill: Joe 3:3

And they have cast lots for my people,.... Not only parted their land, but cast lots for their persons, Or played at dice for them, how many captives each soldier should have, and which should be their share and property: ninety seven thousand Jews, Josephus ^d says, were carried captive by the Romans, who, very probably, cast lots for them, as was usual in such cases; see Nah 3:10;

and have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink; either they gave a boy to be prostituted to natural lusts, in lieu of a whore; and a girl to be debauched for a bottle of wine: or they gave a boy for the price of a whore, as the Targum and Kimchi interpret it; that is, they gave a boy, instead of money, to a whore, to lie with her, as the eunuch was given to Thais; and they gave a girl to the wine merchant for as much wine as they could drink at one sitting. These phrases both express their uncleanness and intemperance, and also the low price and value they set upon their captives; and is applicable enough to the Papists, notorious for the same abominable lusts.

Gill: Joe 3:4

Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine?.... The Tyrians, Zidonians, and Philistines, were near neighbours of the Jews, and implacable enemies to them; and are here put for the enemies of the true church of Christ, the Papists and Turks, and in whose possession those places now are: these are addressed by the Lord, inquiring or demanding the reason of their ill usage of him and his people: "what have ye to do with me?" to be called by my name, or accounted my people? I know you not, nor will I have any fellowship with you: or what have ye to do with my people, to disturb and distress them? what wrong have I or they done you, that you thus use them?

will ye render me a recompence? for turning you out of your land, and putting my people into it? do you think to retaliate this?

and if ye recompense me; by doing an injury to my people:

swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head; bring swift and sudden destruction upon you.

Gill: Joe 3:5

Because ye have taken my silver and my gold,.... Which is all the Lord's, Hag 2:8; or which he had bestowed upon his people, and they had taken from them:

and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things; either the rich furniture of the houses of his people, which they carried into their own houses, or "palaces" ^e, as it may be rendered; having either taken them away themselves, or bought them of others that had taken them: or else the rich vessels of the temple; as these were carried away by the Chaldeans, and put into their idol temples, Dan 1:2; so afterward they were taken by the Romans, and put into the temples of their gods: whether any of these came into the hands of the Tyrians, &c. by any means, and were put into their idol temples, as the temple of Hercules, is not certain; however, it is notorious that the Papists, the Tyrians are an emblem of, not only build stately temples, and dedicate them to angels and saints, but most profusely adorn them with gold and silver, and all goodly and desirable things; which is putting them to an idolatrous use they were not designed for.

Gill: Joe 3:6

The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem,.... Not children in age literally, as Kimchi, kidnapped or bought by the Tyrians; but the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem:

have ye sold unto the Grecians; or sons of Javan; it was one part of the merchandise of Tyre to trade in the persons of men; and Javan, or the Greeks, with others, were their merchants for them, Eze 27:13; and the souls of men are a part of the trade of the merchants of Rome, typified by the Tyrians, Rev 18:13;

that ye might remove them far from their border; from their own land, or place of dwelling, that so they might not be easily redeemed, and return to it any more. Rome, the antichristian Tyre, trading with the souls of men, is to their eternal damnation, as much as in them lies. Cocceius interprets this of the children of the church being trained up in the doctrine of Aristotle, in the times of the schoolmen.

Gill: Joe 3:7

Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them,.... That is, bring them back to their own land, from their places whither they have been carried captive, and where they have dwelt in obscurity, and as if theft had been buried in graves, but now should be raised up and restored; and this their restoration will be as life from the dead. So the Targum,

"behold, I will bring them publicly from the place whither ye have sold them;''

this is to be understood, not of the same persons, but of their posterity, they being the same natural body. Kimchi interprets it of them and their children; them at the resurrection of the dead, their children at the time of salvation. Some think this had its accomplishment in Alexander and his successors, by whom the Jews, who had been detained captives in other countries, were set free; particularly by Demetrius, as Josephus ^f relates: though it may be applied to the future restoration of the Jews, out of all countries, unto their own land; or rather to the gathering together the spiritual Israel, or people of God, who have been persecuted from place to place by their antichristian enemies;

and will return your recompence upon your own head; do to them as they have done to others; pay them in their own coin; retaliate the wrongs done to his people; see Rev 13:10.

Gill: Joe 3:8

And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah,.... That is, deliver them into their hands, to dispose of them; this is thought to have been literally fulfilled in the Tyrians, when thirty thousand ^g of them were sold for slaves, upon the taking of their city by Alexander, who put some of them into the hands of the Jews, they being in friendship with him: it mystically designs the power that the Jewish church, converted, and in union with Gentile Christians, will have over the antichristian states:

and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; the inhabitants of Sheba, a country by the Jews reckoned the uttermost parts of the earth; see Mat 12:42. These are not the same with the Sabeans, the inhabitants of Arabia Deserts, that took away Job's oxen and asses; but rather those who were the inhabitants of Arabia Felix, which lay at a greater distance. So Strabo ^h says, the Sabeans inhabited Arabia Felix; and Diodorus Siculus ⁱ reckons the Sabeans as very populous, and one of the Arabian nations, who inhabited that Arabia which is called Felix, the metropolis of which is Saba; and he, as well as Strabo, observes, that this country produces many odoriferous plants, as cassia, cinnamon, frankincense, and calamus, or the sweet cane; hence incense is said to come "from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country", Jer 6:20; and since the Jews traded with these people for those spices, it is easy to conceive how they sold their captives to them: now these lived at a great distance, in the extreme parts of Arabia, both towards the Indian sea and the Arabian gulf. And Diodorus Siculus ^k observes, that δια τον εκτοπισμος, because of the distance of their situation, they never came into the power or under the dominion of any, or were never subdued. These seem to be the descendants of Cush, the son, of Ham; and if they were the descendants of Joktan, the son of Shem, as some think, these are placed by Vitringa ^l in Carmania; and where Pliny ^m makes mention of a city called Sabe, and of the river Sabis; and it is worthy of notice that the ancient Greek fathers ⁿ, with one consent, interpret the Sabeans of the Saracens: and whether they may not design the Turks, in whose possession this country now is, and into whose hands the antichristian powers may be delivered by means of the Christians, both Jews and Gentiles, may be considered;

for the Lord hath spoken it; and therefore it shall be accomplished. The Targum is,

"for by the word of the Lord it is so decreed;''

whose counsels and decrees can never be frustrated. This, in an ancient book of the Jews called Mechilta, is referred to the prophecy of Noah concerning Canaan, whose sons inhabited Tyre, "a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren", Gen 9:25, as Jarchi observes.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Joe 3:1

¹ sn Joel 3:1 in the English Bible is 4:1 in the Hebrew text (BHS). See also the note at 2:28.

² tc The MT and LXX read “in those days,” while MurXII reads “in that day.”

³ tc The Kethib reads אָשִׁיב (’ashiv, “return the captivity [captives]), while the Qere is אָשׁוּב (’ashuv, “restore the fortunes”). Many modern English versions follow the Qere reading. Either reading seems to fit the context. Joel refers to an exile of the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem in 3:2-6 and their return from exile in 3:7. On the other hand, 2:25-26 describes the reversal of judgment and restoration of the covenant blessings. However, the former seems to be the concern of the immediate context.

⁴ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

NET Notes: Joe 3:2

¹ sn There is a play on words here. Jehoshaphat in Hebrew means “the Lord has judged,” and the next line in v. 2 further explicates this thought. The location of this valley is uncertain (cf. v. 12). Many interpreters have understood the Valley of Jehoshaphat to be the Kidron Valley, located on the east side of old Jerusalem. Since this is described as a scene of future messianic activity and judgment, many Jews and Muslims have desired to be buried in the vicinity, a fact attested to in modern times by the presence of many graves in the area. A variation of this view is mentioned by Eusebius, Onomasticon 1:10. According to this view, the Valley of Jehoshaphat is located in the Hinnom Valley, on the south side of the old city. Yet another view is held by many modern scholars, who understand the reference to this valley to be one of an idealized and nonliteral scene of judgment.

² tn Heb “I will execute judgment.”

³ tn Heb “concerning my people and my inheritance Israel.”

NET Notes: Joe 3:3

¹ tn Heb “gave.”

² sn Heb “and they drank.” Joel vividly refers to a situation where innocent human life has little value; its only worth is its use in somehow satisfying selfish appetites of wicked people who have control over others (cf. Amos 2:6 and 8:6).

NET Notes: Joe 3:4

¹ tn Heb “What [are] you [doing] to me, O Tyre and Sidon?”

² tn Or “districts.”

³ tn Heb “quickly, speedily, I will return your recompense on your head.” This is an idiom for retributive justice and an equitable reversal of situation.

NET Notes: Joe 3:5

¹ tn Or perhaps, “temples.”

NET Notes: Joe 3:6

¹ tn Heb “border.”

NET Notes: Joe 3:7

¹ tn Heb “I will return your recompense on your head.”

NET Notes: Joe 3:8

¹ tn Heb “into the hand of.”

² tn Heb “the sons of Judah.”

³ sn The Sabeans were Arabian merchants who were influential along the ancient caravan routes that traveled through Arabia. See also Job 1:15; Isa 43:3; 45:14; Ps 72:10.

Geneva Bible: Joe 3:1

For, behold, in ^{( a )} those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,

^{( a )} When I will deliver my Church, which consists of both Jews and Gentiles.

Geneva Bible: Joe 3:2

I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the ^{( b )} valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and [for] my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

^{( b )} It appears that he alludes to the great victory of Jehoshaphat, whom God used without man's help to destroy the enemies, (2Ch 20:20-26); also he is referring to this word Jehoshaphat, which signifies pleading or judgment, because God would judge the enemies of his Church, as he did there.

Geneva Bible: Joe 3:3

And they have cast lots for my people; and have ^{( c )} given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.

^{( c )} That which the enemy received for the sale of my people, they bestowed upon harlots and drink.

Geneva Bible: Joe 3:4

Yea, and ^{( d )} what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me ^{( e )} a recompence? and if ye recompense me, swiftly [and] speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head;

^{( d )} He takes the cause of his Church in hand against the enemy, as though the injury were done to himself.

^{( e )} Have I done you wrong, that you will render me the same?

Geneva Bible: Joe 3:8

And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they ^{( f )} shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken [it].

^{( f )} For afterward God sold them by Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great, because of the love he had for his people, and by this they were comforted, as though they themselves had sold them.

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Joe 3:1-21

1 God's judgments against the enemies of his people.

9 God will be known in his judgment.

18 His blessing upon the church.

MHCC: Joe 3:1-8

The restoration of the Jews, and the final victory of true religion over all opposers, appear to be here foretold. The contempt and scorn with which the Jews have often been treated as a people, and the little value set upon them, are noticed. None ever hardened his heart against God or his church, and prospered long.

Matthew Henry: Joe 3:1-8

We have often heard of the year of the redeemed, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion; now here we have a description of the transactions of that year, and a prophecy of what shall be done when it comes, whenever it comes, for it comes often, and at the end of time it will come once for all.

I. It shall be the year of the redeemed, for God will bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, Joe 3:1. Though the bondage of God's people may be grievous and very long, yet it shall not be everlasting. That in Egypt ended at length in their deliverance into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Let my son go, the he may serve me. That in Babylon shall likewise end well. And the Lord Jesus will provide for the effectual redemption of poor enslaved souls from under the dominion of sin and Satan, and will proclaim that acceptable year, the year of jubilee, the release of debts and servants, and the opening of the prison to those that were bound. There is a day, there is a time, fixed for the bringing again of the captivity of God's children, for the redeeming of them from the power of the grave; and it shall be the last day and the end of all time.

II. It shall be the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. Though God may suffer the enemies of his people to prevail against them very far and for a long time, yet he will call them to an account for it, and will lead captivity captive (Psa 68:18), will lead those captive that led his people captive, Rev 13:10. Observe,

1. Who those are that shall be reckoned with - all nations, Joe 3:2. This intimates, (1.) That all the nations had made themselves liable to the judgment of God for wrong done to his people. Persecution is the reigning crying sin of the world; that lying in wickedness itself is set against godliness. The enmity that is in the old serpent, the god of this world, against the seed of the woman, appears more or less in the children of this world. Marvel not if the world hate you. (2.) That, whatsoever nation injured God's nation, they should not go unpunished; for he that touches the Israel of God shall be made to know that he touches the apple of his eye. Jerusalem will be a burdensome stone to all people, Zec 12:3. But the neighboring nations shall be particularly reckoned with - Tyre, and Sidon, and all the coasts of Palestine, or the Philistines, who have been troublesome neighbours to the Israel of God, Joe 3:4. When the more remote and potent nations that laid Israel wastes are reckoned with the impotent malice of those that lay near them, and helped forward the affliction, (Zec 1:15), and made a hand of it (Eze 26:2), shall not be passed by. Note, Little persecutors shall be called to an account as well as great ones; and, though they could not do much mischief, shall be reckoned with according to the wickedness of their endeavors and the mischief they would have done.

2. The sitting of this court for judgment. They shall all be gathered (Joe 3:2), that those who have combined together against God's people, with one consent (Psa 83:5), may together receive their doom. They shall be brought down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, which lay near Jerusalem, and there God will plead with them, (1.) Because it is fit that criminals should be tried in the same country where they did the fact. (2.) For their greater confusion, when they shall see that Jerusalem which they have so long endeavored and hoped for the ruin of, in spite of all their rage, made a praise in the earth. (3.) For the greater comfort and honor of God's Jerusalem, which shall see God pleading their cause. (4.) Then shall be re-acted what God did for Jehoshaphat when he gave him victory over those that invaded him, and furnished him and his people with matter of joy and praise, in the valley of Berachah. See 2Ch 20:26. (5.) It was in this valley of Jehoshaphat (as Dr. Lightfoot suggests) that Sennacherib's army, or part of it, lay, when it was destroyed by an angel. They came together to ruin Jerusalem, but God brought them together for their own ruin, as sheaves into the floor, Mic 4:12.

3. The plaintiff called, on whose behalf this prosecution is set on foot; it is for my people, and for my heritage Israel. It is their cause that God will now plead with jealousy. Note, God's people are his heritage, his peculiar, his portion, his treasure, above all people, Exo 19:5; Deu 32:9. They are his demesne, and therefore he has a good action against those that trespass upon them.

4. The charge exhibited against them, which is very particular. Many affronts they had put upon God by their idolatries, but that for which God has a quarrel with them is the affront they have put upon his people and upon the vessels of his sanctuary.

(1.) They had been very abusive to the people of Israel, had scattered them among the nations and forced them to seek for shelter where they could find a place, or carried them captive into their respective countries and there industriously dispersed them, for fear of their incorporating for their common safety. They parted their land, and took every one his share of it as their own; nay, they have cast lots for my people, and sold them. When they had taken them prisoners, [1.] They made a jest of them, made a scorn of them as of no value. They would not release them and yet thought them not worth the keeping; they made nothing of playing them away at dice. Or they made a dividend of the prisoners by lot, as the soldiers did of Christ's garments. [2.] They made a gain of them. When they had them they sold them, yet with so much contempt that they did not increase their wealth by their price, but sold them for their pleasure rather than their profit; they gave a boy taken in war for the hire of a harlot, and a girl for so many bottles of wine as would serve them for one sitting, a goodly price at which they valued them, and goodly preferment for a son and daughter of Israel to be a slave and a drudge in a tavern or a brothel. Observe, here, how that which is got by sin is commonly spent upon another. The spoil which these enemies of the Jews gathered by injustice and violence they scattered and threw away in drinking and whoring; such is frequently the character, and such the conversation, of the enemies and persecutors of the people of God. The Tyrians and Philistines, when they seized any of the children of Judah and Jerusalem, either took them prisoners in war or kidnapped them, they sold them to the Grecians (with whom the men of Tyre traded in the persons of men, Eze 27:13), that they might remove them far from their own border, Joe 3:6. It was a great reproach to Israel, God's first-born, his free-born, to be thus bought and sold among the heathen.

(2.) They had unjustly seized God's silver and gold (Joe 3:5), by which some understand the wealth of Israel. The silver and gold which God's people had he calls his, because they had received it from him and devoted it to him; and whosoever robbed them God took it as if they had robbed him and would make reprisals accordingly. Those who take away the estates of good men for well-doing will be found guilty of sacrilege; they take God's silver and gold. But it seems rather to be meant of the vessels and treasures of the temple, which God here calls his goodly pleasant things, precious and desirable to him and all that are his. These they carried into their temples as trophies of their victory over God's Israel, thinking that therein they triumphed over Israel's God, nay, and that their idols triumphed over him. Thus the ark was put in Dagon's temple. Thus they did unjustly. " What have you to do with me (Joe 3:4), with my people; what wrong have they done you? What provocation have they given you? You had nothing to do with them, and yet you do all this against them. Devices are devised against the quiet in the land, and those offended and harmed that are harmless and inoffensive: Will you render me a recompence? "Can they pretend that either God or his people have done them any injury, for which they may justify themselves by the law of retaliation in doing them these mischiefs? No; they have no colour for it. Note, It is no new thing for those who have been very civil and obliging to their neighbours to find them very unkind and unneighbourly and for those who do no injuries to suffer many.

5. The sentence passed upon them. In general (Joe 3:4), "If you recompense me, if you pretend a quarrel with me, if you provoke me thus to jealousy, if you touch the apple of my eye, I will swiftly and speedily return your recompence upon your own head. "Those that contend with God will find themselves unable to make their part good with him. He will recompense them suddenly, when they little think of it, and have not time to prevent it; if he take them to task, he will soon effect their ruin. Particularly, it is threatened, (1.) That they should not gain their end in the mischief they designed against God's people. They thought to remove them so far from their border that they should never return to it again, Joe 3:6. But (says God) " I will raise them out of the place whither you have sold them, and they shall not, as you intended, be buried alive there."Men's selling the people of God will not deprive him of his property in them. (2.) That they shall be paid in their own coin, as Adonibezek was (Joe 3:8): " I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah; you shall lie as much at their mercy as they have been at yours,"Isa 60:14. Thus the Jews had rule over those that hated them, Est 9:1. And then they shall justly be sold to the Sabeans, to a people far off. This (some think) had its accomplishment in the victories obtained by the Maccabees over the enemies of the Jews; others think it looks as far forward as the last day, when the upright shall have dominion (Psa 49:14) and the saints shall judge the world. It is certain that none ever hardened his heart against God, or his church, and prospered long; no, not Pharaoh himself, for the Lord has spoken it, for the comfort of all his suffering servants, that vengeance is his and he will repay.

Keil-Delitzsch: Joe 3:1

(Heb. Bib. ch. 4.) Judgment upon the World of Nations, and Glorification of Zion- Joe 3:1, Joe 3:2. "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. Joe 3:3. 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 judgment-day predicted in Joe 2:31 commences with an explanatory כּי . The train of thought is the following: When the day of the Lord comes, there will 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 hinnēh , 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 Joe 2:28 : "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. שׁוּב את שׁבוּת is not used here in the sense of "to bring back the prisoners,"but, as in Hos 6:11, 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 וקבּצתּי the prediction of judgment is appended to the previous definition of the time in the form of an apodosis. The article in כּל־הגּוים (all the nations) does not refer to "all those nations which were spoken of in Hos 1:1-11 and 2 under the figure of the locusts"(Hengstenberg), but is used because the prophet had in his mind all those nations upon which hostility towards Israel, the people of God, is charged immediately afterwards as a crime: so that the article is used in much the same manner as in Jer 49:36, because the notion, though in itself an indefinite one, is more fully defined in what follows (cf. Ewald, §227, a ). The valley of Y^e hōshâphât , i.e., Jehovah judges, is not the valley in which the judgment upon several heathen nations took place under Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20), and which received the name of Valley of blessing , from the feast of thanksgiving which Jehoshaphat held there (2Ch 20:22-26), 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 Chronicles l.c.), and still less "the plain of Jezreel"(Kliefoth), but was situated in the neighbourhood of the ruins of Bereikût , which have been discovered by Wolcott (see Ritter, Erdkunde , 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 Zec 14:4), in or near Jerusalem; and the name, which does not occur anywhere else in either the Old or New Testament, excepting here and in Joe 3:12, is formed by Joel, like the name ‛ēmeq hechârūts in v. 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. κοιλάς , Caelas , and Itiner. Anton. p. 594; cf. Robinson, Pal. i. pp. 396, 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 (2Sa 18:18), or valley of Shaveh (Gen 14:17). There would the Lord contend with the nations, hold judgment upon them, because they had attacked His people ( nachălâthı̄ , the people of Jehovah, as in Joe 2:17) and His kingdom ( 'artsı̄ ). The dispersion of Israel among the nations, and the division ( חלּק ) of the Lord's land, cannot, of course, refer to the invasion of Judah by the Philistines and Arabians in the time of Joram (2Ch 21:16-17). 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 Joe 3:4-8 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.

Keil-Delitzsch: Joe 3:2-8

In Joe 3:2 and Joe 3:3 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 argument in favour of the allegorical interpretation of the army of locusts in ch. 1 and 2. For since Moses had already foretold that Israel would one day be driven out among the heathen (Lev 26:33.; Deu 28:36.), 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. 1 and 2. Joe 3:3 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. v. 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.

(Note: After the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem, Titus disposed of the prisoners, whose number reached 97,000 in the course of the war, in the following manner: Those under seventeen years of age were publicly sold; of the remainder, some were executed immediately, some sent away to work in the Egyptian mines, some kept for the public shows to fight with wild beasts in all the chief cities of Rome; and only the tallest and most handsome for the triumphal procession in Rome (compare Josephus, de bell. Jud. vi. 9, 2, 3). And the Jews who were taken prisoners in the Jewish war in the time of Hadrian, are said to have been sold in the slave-market at Hebron at so low a price, that four Jews were disposed of for a measure of barley. Even in the contests of the Ptolemaeans and Seleucidae for the possession of Palestine, thousands of Jews were sold as prisoners of war. Thus, for example, the Syrian commander Nicanor, in his expedition against the Jews in the Maccabaean war, sold by anticipation, in the commercial towns along the Mediterranean, such Jews as should be made prisoners, at the rate of ninety prisoners for one talent; whereupon 1000 slave-dealers accompanied the Syrian army, and carried fetters with them for the prisoners (1 Maccabees 3:41; 2 Maccabees 8:11, 25; Jos. Ant. xii. 7, 3).)

But, as many of the earlier commentators have clearly seen, we must not stop even at this. The people and inheritance of Jehovah are not merely the Old Testament Israel as such, but the church of the Lord of both the old and new covenants, upon which the Spirit of God is poured out; and the judgment which Jehovah will hold upon the nations, on account of the injuries inflicted upon His people, is the last general judgment upon the nations, which will embrace not merely the heathen Romans and other heathen nations by whom the Jews have been oppressed, but all the enemies of the people of God, both within and without the earthly limits of the church of the Lord, including even carnally-minded Jews, Mohammedans, and nominal Christians, who are heathens in heart.

(Note: As J. Marck correctly observes, after mentioning the neighbouring nations that were hostile to Judah, and then the Syrians and Romans: "We might proceed in the same way to all the enemies of the Christian church, from its very cradle to the end of time, such as carnal Jews, Gentile Romans, cruel Mohammedans, impious Papists, and any others who either have borne or yet will bear the punishment of their iniquity, according to the rule and measure of the restitution of the church, down to those enemies who shall yet remain at the coming of Christ, and be overthrown at the complete and final redemption of His church.")

Before depicting the final judgment upon the hostile nations of the world, Joel notices in Joe 3:4-8 the hostility which the nations round about Judah had manifested towards it in his own day, and foretels to these a righteous retribution for the crimes they had committed against the covenant nation. Joe 3:4. "And ye also, what would ye with me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all ye coasts of Philistia? will ye repay a doing to me, or do anything to me? Quickly, hastily will I turn back your doing upon your head. Joe 3:5. That ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have brought my best jewels into your temples. Joe 3:6. And the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem ye have sold to the sons of Javan, to remove them far from their border. Joe 3:7. Behold, I waken them from the place whither ye have sold them, and turn back your doing upon your head. Joe 3:8. And sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of Javan, and they sell them to the Sabaeans, to a people far off; for Jehovah has spoken it." By v^e gam the Philistines and Phoenicians are added to the gōyim already mentioned, as being no less culpable than they; not, however, in the sense of, "and also if one would inquire more thoroughly into the fact"(Ewald), or, "and even so far as ye are concerned, who, in the place of the friendship and help which ye were bound to render as neighbours, have oppressed my people"(Rosenmüller), for such additions as these are foreign to the context; but rather in this sense, "and yea also ... do not imagine that ye can do wrong with impunity, as though he had a right so to do." מה־אתּם לי does not mean, "What have I to do with you?"for this would be expressed differently (compare Jos 22:24; Jdg 11:12); but, "What would ye with me?"The question is unfinished, because of its emotional character, and is resumed and completed immediately afterwards in a disjunctive form (Hitzig). Tyre and Sidon, the two chief cities of the Phoenicians (see at Jos 19:29 and Jos 11:8), represent all the Phoenicians. כל גּלילות פל , "all the circles or districts of the Philistines,"are the five small princedoms of Philistia (see at Jos 13:2). גּמוּל , the doing, or inflicting (sc., of evil), from gâmal , to accomplish, to do (see at Isa 3:9). The disjunctive question, "Will ye perhaps repay to me a deed, i.e., a wrong, that I have done to you, or of your own accord attempt anything against me?"has a negative meaning: "Ye have neither cause to avenge yourselves upon me, i.e., upon my people Israel, nor any occasion to do it harm. But if repayment is the thing in hand, I will, and that very speedily ( qal m^e hērâh , see Isa 5:26), bring back your doing upon your own head"(cf. Psa 7:17). To explain what is here said, an account is given in Joe 3:5, Joe 3:6 of what they have done to the Lord and His people, - namely, taken away their gold and silver, and brought their costly treasures into their palaces or temples. These words are not to be restricted to the plundering of the temple and its treasury, but embrace the plundering of palaces and of the houses of the rich, which always followed the conquest of towns (cf. 1Ki 14:26; 2Ki 14:14). היכליכם also are not temples only, but palaces as well (cf. Isa 13:22; Amo 8:3; Pro 30:28). Joel had no doubt the plundering of Judah and Jerusalem by the Philistines and Arabians in the time of Jehoram in his mind (see 2Ch 21:17). The share of the Phoenicians in this crime was confined to the fact, that they had purchased from the Philistines the Judaeans who had been taken prisoners, by them, and sold them again as salves to the sons of Javan, i.e., to the Ionians or Greeks of Asia Minor.

(Note: On the widespread slave-trade of the Phoenicians, see Movers, Phönizier , ii. 3, p. 70ff.)

The clause, "that ye might remove them far from their border,"whence there would be no possibility of their returning to their native land, serves to bring out the magnitude of the crime. This would be repaid to them according to the true lex talionis (Joe 3:7, Joe 3:8). The Lord would raise up the members of His own nation from the place to which they had been sold, i.e., would bring them back again into their own land, and deliver up the Philistines and Phoenicians into the power of the Judaeans ( mâkhar b^e yâd as in Jdg 2:14; Jdg 3:8, etc.), who would then sell their prisoners as slaves to the remote people of the Sabaeans, a celebrated trading people in Arabia Felix (see at 1Ki 10:1). This threat would certainly be fulfilled, for Jehovah had spoken it (cf. Isa 1:20). This occurred partly on the defeat of the Philistines by Uzziah (2Ch 26:6-7) and Hezekiah (2Ki 18:8), where Philistian prisoners of war were certainly sold as slaves; but principally after the captivity, when Alexander the Great and his successors set many of the Jewish prisoners of war in their lands at liberty (compare the promise of King Demetrius to Jonathan, "I will send away in freedom such of the Judaeans as have been made prisoners, and reduced to slavery in our land,"Josephus, Ant. xiii. 2, 3), and portions of the Philistian and Phoenician lands were for a time under Jewish sway; when Jonathan besieged Ashkelon and Gaza (1 Maccabees 10:86; 11:60); when King Alexander (Balas) ceded Ekron and the district of Judah (1 Maccabees 10:89); when the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeaus conquered Gaza, and destroyed it (Josephus, Ant. xiii. 13, 3; bell. Jud. i. 4, 2); and when, subsequent to the cession of Tyre, which had been conquered by Alexander the Great, to the Seleucidae, Antiochus the younger appointed Simon commander-in-chief from the Ladder of Tyre to the border of Egypt (1 Maccabees 1:59).

Constable: Joe 2:28--Amo 1:1

IV. A far future day of the Lord: another human invasion and deliverance 2:28--3:21

The preceding promises foreshadowed even greater deliverance and blessing for the Israelites in their far distant future. The clues to a leap to the distant future in the prophet's perspective are the words "after this" (2:28), "in those days" (2:29), "the great and awesome day of the Lord" (2:31; cf. 2:11), "in those days and at that time" (3:1), and "in that day" (3:18).

Constable: Joe 3:1-17

B. God's judgment on Israel's enemy nations 3:1-17

God's judgment on unbelievers would accompany the spiritual renewal and deliverance of His own in the future day of the Lord. As God promised to wipe out the locusts for despoiling Judah, now He promised to do the same to the nations that had despoiled Judah (cf. Zeph. 3:8; Ezek. 38-39; Matt. 25:31-46).

Constable: Joe 3:1-8

1. The announcement of judgment 3:1-8

3:1-3 When God would restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem in that future day (cf. Deut. 30:3), He would gather the other nations to the valley of Jehoshaphat (lit. "Yahweh judges"). This is the only passage in Scripture that names the site of this judgment (cf. Zech. 14:3-5). Its exact location is debatable since no valley by this name appears elsewhere in Scripture (cf. vv. 12, 14).³² There He would judge them for scattering His covenant people, God's inheritance, and for dividing up His land (cf. Lam. 5:2). They had thought so little of the Hebrews that they gambled for them. They had valued them no higher than the hire of a prostitute or the cost of a drink.

3:4 The Lord addressed the Phoenicians and Philistines directly. They had no special relationship to Yahweh, as Israel did, and they had not been just in dealing with the Israelites. The Lord promised to repay them for their sins. Probably these nations are representative of all Israel's enemies since God said later that He would judge all of them (v. 12).

3:5-6 Specifically these Gentile nations had robbed God and had sold the children of His chosen people as slaves to the Greeks. These nations had stolen from the Israelites. Amos also referred to the Phoenician and Philistine slave trade (Amos 1:6, 9; cf. Ezek. 27:13, 19).

3:7-8 To pay back these nations, the Lord said He would revive the Israelites in the remote places to which they had been sold. The Israelites would grow strong there and would sell the descendants of these Phoenicians and Philistines to the Sabeans (cf. Ezek. 27:22-23). Thus He would pay them back in kind, which is His customary method of retribution (Gal. 6:7). This may have been fulfilled in the fourth century B.C., or the fulfillment may still be future.³³ Probably the fulfillment lies in the future, specifically the end of the Tribulation, since this whole section of Joel deals with what God will do in that day of the Lord. Again, Phoenicia and Philistia probably represent all the enemies of Israel (cf. Isa. 25:10-12; Obad.) over whom Israel will eventually gain ascendancy.

Guzik: Joe 3:1-21

Joel 3 - Judgment in the Valley of Decision

A. A warning to the nations.

1. (1-3) A promise to bring back scattered and mistreated Israel.

"For behold, in those days and at that time, when I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people, My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; they have also divided up My land. They have cast lots for My people, have given a boy as payment for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they may drink."

a. In those days and at that time: Joel's prophecy still concerns the time period connected with it shall come to pass afterward mentioned in Joel 2:28. This is the broad period of the Last Days, initiated by the Ascension of Jesus and the birth of the Church on the Day of Pentecost.

i. Many have the wrong idea of the "last days," thinking only in terms of the final years or months immediately before the return of Jesus in glory to this earth, or the rapture of the Church. Scripturally, we can think of the last days as an era, one that began with the birth of the Church on the Day of Pentecost. Since that time, the Church has not been rushing towards a distant edge that represents the consummation of all things. Instead, at the Day of Pentecost the Church came to the edge - and has run parallel to the brink for some 2,000 years.

b. When I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem: In a lesser, immediate sense this was fulfilled in the return from the Babylonian exile. In the greater, ultimate sense it will be fulfilled in the end-times regathering of Israel, to the point where an expectant Israel welcomes Jesus saying, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord" (Matthew 23:39) and salvation comes to Israel as a whole (Romans 11:26-27).

c. I will also gather all nations, and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat: Joel here describes the final gather of the nations in rebellion against God at the Battle of Armageddon (Revelation 16:12-16). There is no place in Israel known as the Valley of Jehosphaphat but the name Jehoshaphat means, "The Lord Judges." It describes God's place of judgment.

i. "There is no such valley in the land of Judea; and hence the name must be symbolical. It signifies the judgment of God, or Jehovah judgeth." (Clarke)

ii. This is a judgment of all nations. Joel was written at a time when a terrible plague of locusts brought the judgment of God upon the people of God. At a time like that, it is easy to think "God, You are dealing harshly with us, but what about the ungodly nations? We may be bad, but they are worse. Don't you care about them?" God uses Joel 3 to assure Israel that the nations will be dealt with.

d. I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people: God's complaint against the nations is that they have mistreated His people. Primarily, this has in view the way the nations treat Israel, but also extends to how the nations treat the Church. When God's people are mistreated, God takes it personally and will avenge it.

i. In the judgment of the nations Jesus described in Matthew 25:31-46, the criteria is not faith in Jesus Christ but how the nations have treated the people of Israel - the brethren of Jesus. Held on the earth after His return in glory, this judgment determines who is allowed to enter into the Millennial Earth, and who goes straight to judgment.

ii. They have cast lots for My people: It is bad enough for man to regard any human life as cheap; it is worse to regard the people of God as cheap. God remembers and will repay.

2. (4-8) God warns the nations that He will retaliate against those who have mistreated His people.

"Indeed, what have you to do with Me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coasts of Philistia? Will you retaliate against Me? But if you retaliate against Me, swiftly and speedily I will return your retaliation upon your own head; because you have taken My silver and My gold, and have carried into your temples My prized possessions. Also the people of Judah and the people of Jerusalem you have sold to the Greeks, that you may remove them far from their borders. Behold, I will raise them out of the place to which you have sold them, and will return your retaliation upon your own head. I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the LORD has spoken."

a. Will you retaliate against Me? God virtually challenges the nations to come against Him or His people. He vows to return your retaliation upon your own head to those who come against Him or His people.

i. Judgment is about the only aspect of God's plan of the ages that is plainly logical. The grace and mercy of God is not plainly logical. Salvation by grace through faith is not plainly logical. The high standing and destiny of the believer in Jesus is not plainly logical. Judgment - God simply giving those who reject Him what they deserve - is plainly logical. It is as if God says to the wicked, "You rejected the saving logic of heaven, so I will give you the plain logic of earth: you will receive what you deserve before the holy court of My justice."

b. I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah: The nations treated God's people with contempt, and had no sense of their worth. Therefore, God will repay them with the contempt they put upon His people, vowing to return your retaliation upon your own head.

i. Trapp details the horrors that befell the ten Emperors of the Roman Empire that persecuted Christians:

· Nero lost 30,000 of his subjects by pestilence, had his armies utterly defeated in Britain, suffered a revolution in Armenia, and was so hated by the senators of Rome that they forced him to kill himself

· Domitian was butchered by his own soldiers

· Trajan died of a foul disease

· Severus died miserably on a military campaign in Britain

· Maximus was cut in pieces, together with his own son

· Decius died as an exile in a far country

· Valerian was whipped to death by the King of Persia who captured him

· Aurelian was killed by his own soldiers

· Dioclesian poisoned himself

· Maximum hanged himself

ii. "Ye cannot tread upon the least toe in Christ's mystical body, but the head cries out from heaven, Why hurtest thou me?" (Trapp) Paul found this out on the road to Damascus, when Jesus asked him Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? (Acts 9:4)

B. A proclamation to the nations.

1. (9-13) Gathering the nations for a war of judgment.

Proclaim this among the nations: "Prepare for war! Wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, 'I am strong.'" Assemble and come, all you nations, and gather together all around. Cause Your mighty ones to go down there, O LORD. "Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow; for their wickedness is great."

a. Prepare for war! God challenges the nations to prepare for war against Him. They will do this exact thing (Revelation 16:12-16), but God will simply laugh at the puny and futile preparations by the nations (Psalm 2).

i. Beat your plowshares into swords: If you are going to go into battle against God, you should have every weapon available! You should also practice your best positive thinking: let the weak say, "I am strong." Nevertheless, the most positive attitude can't work when man sets himself against His Maker. There was a Broadway play titled "Your Arms are Too Short to Box with God." This is what the nations don't know, but will learn the hard way.

b. I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations: Though the nations come against God and His Messiah with every weapon and the most positive frame of mind, it is all for nothing. They will be plucked like a ripe harvest and crushed in judgment.

ii. Psalm 2 beautifully expresses the folly of the nations and the triumph of the LORD: Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us." He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall hold them in derision. Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure: "Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion." (Psalm 2:1-6)

c. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; for the winepress is full: Revelation 14:14-20 also uses this image of the winepress of the wrath of God to describe Jesus' judgment on the nations at Armageddon.

2. (14-17) The Day of the LORD in the valley of decision.

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will diminish their brightness. The LORD also will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; the heavens and earth will shake; but the LORD will be a shelter for His people, and the strength of the children of Israel. "So you shall know that I am the LORD your God, dwelling in Zion My holy mountain. Then Jerusalem shall be holy, and no aliens shall ever pass through her again."

a. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! Joel looks out upon the Valley of Jehoshaphat at the Battle of Armageddon, and sees multitudes facing their eternal fate - truly, it is a valley of decision, and those who fight against the LORD and His Messiah are in the wrong place in the valley of decision, ultimately fulfilled at the Battle of Armageddon.

i. The idea of the "Valley of Decision" has been used in countless evangelistic meetings to show people that they stand in the "Valley of Decision," and must decide for or against Jesus. Joel's context is exactly the opposite. Man does indeed stand in the valley of decision, but it is God who does the deciding, not man. It is a valley of judgment - and we should decide for Jesus right now so we never stand in this valley of decision.

b. The heavens and earth will shake: Joel goes back to the descriptions of cosmic cataclysm that were mentioned in Joel 2:30-31. In the midst of it all, the LORD will be a shelter for His people, and the strength of the children of Israel, and He will restore both His people and His city to glory.

3. (18-21) Blessing on God's people, desolation for the nations.

And it will come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drip with new wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water; a fountain shall flow from the house of the LORD and water the Valley of Acacias. "Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom a desolate wilderness, because of violence against the people of Judah, for they have shed innocent blood in their land. But Judah shall abide forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. For I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed, whom I had not acquitted; for the LORD dwells in Zion."

a. The mountains shall drip with new wine . . . all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water: After God's final victory, there is lasting abundance and the days of drought are just a distant memory. Instead, Egypt shall be a desolation, along with the other enemies of the LORD and His people.

i. A fountain shall flow from the house of the LORD: Ezekiel 47 describes waters flowing from the house of the LORD in the time after Jesus' triumphant return, in the Millennium. Zechariah 14:8 also speaks of a great flow of water from Jerusalem, emptying both into the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

ii. The Valley of Acacias (Valley of Shittim) was a place associated with both failure and victory. It is located on the eastern side of the Jordan River, to the north of the Dead Sea. It was where the King of Moab sent his young women to the men of Israel to seduce them into idolatry and sexual immorality (Numbers 25:1-3). It was also the launching place for the armies of Israel when they set out against Jericho and Canaan in the days of Joshua (Joshua 2:1 and 3:1). When water from the house of the LORD flows down to the valley of Acacias, then God's grace and provision covers the past - every sin, every victory is covered over by Him.

b. But Judah shall abide forever . . . for the LORD dwells in Zion: God will show mercy to His people, and grant them forgiveness. This prophecy of Joel, which began with the desperate plague of locusts, ends with a promise of restoration and redemption.

i. "This is the last promise, but not the least. It referreth, saith Danaeus, to Christ taking our flesh, by which he dwelt among us being God manifest in the flesh . . . since he dwelleth with his Church for ever, as it is in the precedent verse, and maketh her a true Jehovah Shammah, as she is called Ezekiel 48:35." (Trapp)

ii. "This prophet, who has many things similar to Ezekiel, ends his prophecy in nearly the same way: Ezekiel says of the glory of the Church, Yehovah shammah, THE LORD IS THERE. Joel says, Yehovah shochen betsiyon, THE LORD DWELLETH IN ZION. Both point out the continued indwelling of Christ among his people." (Clarke)

© 2001 David Guzik - No distribution beyond personal use without permission

Commentary -- Other

Critics Ask: Joe 3:6

JOEL 3:6 —How could Joel mention the Greeks if his book was written before the 4th century B.C. ?

PROBLEM: According to many scholars, Joel was written in the 9th century B .C. However, the Greek reference in Joel 3:6 indicates that the earliest the book could have been written is the late 4th century B.C .

SOLUTION: It is not necessary to suppose that the mention of Greeks places the composition of the book in the late 4th century B.C. The context of chapter 3 is the judgment of the nations. God promises punishment specifically upon the Phoenicians and the Philistines because they had plundered His people and sold them into slavery to the Greeks. Verse 6 states that these nations had sold His people to the Greeks: “That you may remove them far from their borders.” If Joel had been written after the expansion of the empire of Greece by Alexander the Great in the middle of the 4th century B .C. , then God could not have accused the Phoenicians and the Philistines of selling the Jews to the Greeks who were “far from their borders.” The Greeks are referred to in ancient Neo-Babylonian inscriptions as early as the 7th-century B.C . , and the Cretan Linear B tablets indicate the beginning of the Greek civilization and language from about 1500 B.C . So, it is not possible to use this reference to date Joel’s prophecy in the fourth century B .C.   

Evidence: Joe 3:1

The missionary church is a praying church,The history of missions is a history of prayer. Everything vital to the success of the world's evangelization hinges on prayer. Are thousands of missionaries and tens of thousands of native workers needed? "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest. " JOHN R. STOTT

Introduction / Outline

JFB: Joel (Book Introduction)

JOEL (meaning "one to whom Jehovah is God," that is, worshipper of Jehovah) seems to have belonged to Judah, as no reference occurs to Israel; whereas he speaks of Jerusalem, the temple, the priests, and the ceremonies, as if he were intimately familiar with them (compare Joe 1:14; Joe 2:1, Joe 2:15, Joe 2:32; Joe 3:1-2, Joe 3:6, Joe 3:16-17, Joe 3:20-21). His predictions were probably delivered in the early days of Joash 870-865 B.C.; for no reference is made in them to the Babylonian, Assyrian, or even the Syrian invasion; and the only enemies mentioned are the Philistines, Phœnicians, Edomites, and Egyptians (Joe 3:4, Joe 3:19). Had he lived after Joash, he would doubtless have mentioned the Syrians among the enemies whom he enumerates since they took Jerusalem and carried off immense spoil to Damascus (2Ch 24:23-24). No idolatry is mentioned; and the temple services, the priesthood, and other institutions of the theocracy, are represented as flourishing. This all answers to the state of things under the high priesthood of Jehoiada, through whom Joash had been placed on the throne and who lived in the early years of Joash (2Ki 11:17-18; 2Ki 12:2-16; 2Ch 24:4-14). He was the son of Pethuel.

The first chapter describes the desolation caused by an inroad of locusts--one of the instruments of divine judgment mentioned by Moses (Deu 28:38-39) and by Solomon (1Ki 8:37). The second chapter (Joe 2:1-11): the appearance of them, under images of a hostile army suggesting that the locusts were symbols and forerunners of a more terrible scourge, namely, foreign enemies who would consume all before them. (The absence of mention of personal injury to the inhabitants is not a just objection to the figurative interpretation; for the figure is consistent throughout in attributing to the locusts only injury to vegetation, thereby injuring indirectly man and beast). Joe 2:12-17 : exhortation to repentance, the result of which will be: God will deliver His people, the former and latter rains shall return to fertilize their desolated lands, and these shall be the pledge of the spiritual outpouring of grace beginning with Judah, and thence extending to "all flesh." Joel 2:18-3:21 : God's judgments on Judah's enemies, whereas Judah shall be established for ever.

Joel's style is pre-eminently pure. It is characterized by smoothness and fluency in the rhythms, roundness in the sentences, and regularity in the parallelisms. With the strength of Micah it combines the tenderness of Jeremiah, the vividness of Nahum, and the sublimity of Isaiah. As a specimen of his style take the second chapter wherein the terrible aspect of the locusts, their rapidity, irresistible progress, noisy din, and instinct-taught power of marshalling their forces for their career of devastation, are painted with graphic reality.

JFB: Joel (Outline)

• THE DESOLATE ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY THROUGH THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS; THE PEOPLE ADMONISHED TO OFFER SOLEMN PRAYERS IN THE TEMPLE; FOR THIS CALAMITY IS THE EARNEST OF A STILL HEAVIER ONE. (Joel 1:1-20)
• THE COMING JUDGMENT A MOTIVE TO REPENTANCE. PROMISE OF BLESSINGS IN THE LAST DAYS. (Joel 2:1-32) A more terrific judgment than that of the locusts is foretold, under imagery drawn from that of the calamity then engrossing the afflicted nation. He therefore exhorts to repentance, assuring the Jews of Jehovah's pity if they would repent. Promise of the Holy Spirit in the last days under Messiah, and the deliverance of all believers in Him.
• GOD'S VENGEANCE ON ISRAEL'S FOES IN THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. HIS BLESSING ON THE CHURCH. (Joel 3:1-21)

TSK: Joel (Book Introduction)

It is generally supposed, that the prophet Joel blends two subjects of affliction in one general consideration, or beautiful allegory; and that, under the devastation to be produced by locusts in the vegetable world, he portrays the more distant calamities to be inflicted by the armies of the Chaldeans in their invasion of Judea. These predictions are followed by a more general denunciation of God’s vengeance, delivered in such language as to be in some measure descriptive of the final judgment of mankind. The prophet intermingles these declarations with earnest exhortations to repentance, and with promises of returning prosperity productive of Gospel blessings; foretelling, in the clearest terms, the general effusion of the Holy Spirit under the Christian dispensation, and the awful consequences of obstinately rejecting the sacred influence, especially to the Jews. The state of this nation at the present day, fully attests the Divine inspiration of the prophecy.

TSK: Joel 3 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Joe 3:1, God’s judgments against the enemies of his people; Joe 3:9, God will be known in his judgment; Joe 3:18, His blessing upon the church.

Poole: Joel (Book Introduction)

THE ARGUMENT

Since so many undeterminable points of less moment occur in our prophet, as of what tribe he was, whether his father were a prophet, whether he prophesied in Jeroboam’ s or Hezekiah’ s time, whether contemporary with Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah; whether he preached to the ten tribes, or to the two tribes, or to both; whether the locusts are literal only, or typical and significative of enemies, or how many years they continued, what nations they did prefigure, when the execution began, when it ended; or when he began, or how long he continued to prophesy; — we may well rest ourselves contented in the undisputable things of greater moment, such as are, the Divine authority with which he came, attested by himself, Joe 1:1 , and confirmed to us by the apostle, Act 2:17 Rom 10:13 , and by Christ himself, Mat 24:29 Mar 13:24 Luk 21:25 : all he spake is the word of God. The pernicious consequences of national sins, such as were visible on God’ s own people at this very time in parching droughts, devouring locusts, and famine; the only method for removing these judgments, fasting, prayer, and amendment of our life; the successive sufferings of the church under the several monarchies till the coming of the Messiah, with the wonderful preservation of the good during those times; the just and final decisions God will make for his against their oppressors in those kingdoms, doing it by raising the succeeding empire to punish and overthrow the precedent; the conversion of the Jews, the calling of the Gentiles; the advancement of the kingdom of the Messiah and communications of gifts and graces to his church; the final and universal decision of all things that concern God and his church on the one side, and their enemies on the other; the general judgment of quick and dead, — are the great subjects he doth in plainer or darker terms set before us. In unfolding of the whole, whose excludes the letter and historical reference will fail on one hand, and whose excludes the typical and mystical reference will err as much on the other hand. In a due and just application of both lieth the true mean, which hath been aimed at in this enterprise, and how far attained is submitted to the judgment of those that read the ensuing annotations.

Poole: Joel 3 (Chapter Introduction)

CHAPTER 3

God’ s judgments against the enemies of his people, Joe 3:1-17 . His blessing upon the church, Joe 3:18-21 .

Though our dividing this chapter from the former seems to some a beginning of some new matter, yet indeed the prophet prosecutes his old subject, and proceeds to declare how that great thing mentioned in the last verse of the second chapter should be effected, and in this verse you have a transition to that thing.

MHCC: Joel (Book Introduction)

From the desolations about to come upon the land of Judah, by the ravages of locusts and other insects, the prophet Joel exhorts the Jews to repentance, fasting, and prayer. He notices the blessings of the gospel, with the final glorious state of the church.

MHCC: Joel 3 (Chapter Introduction)

(Joe 3:1-8) God's judgments in the latter days.

(Joe 3:9-17) The extent of these judgments.

(Joe 3:18-21) The blessings the church shall enjoy.

Matthew Henry: Joel (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Book of the Prophet Joel

We are altogether uncertain concerning the time when this prophet prophesied; it is probable that it was about the same time Amos prophesied, not for the reason that the rabbin give, " Because Amos begins his prophecy with that wherewith Joel concludes his, The Lord shall roar out of Zion, " but for the reason Dr. Lightfoot gives, " Because he speaks of the same judgments of locusts, and drought, and fire, that Amos laments, which is an intimation that they appeared about the same time, Amos in Israel and Joel in Judah. Hosea and Obadiah prophesied about the same time; and it appears that Amos prophesied in the says of Jeroboam, the second king of Israel, Amo 7:10. God sent a variety of prophets, that they might strengthen the hands one of another, and that out of the mouth of two or three witnesses every word might be established. In this prophecy, I. The desolations made by hosts of noxious insects is described, ch. 1 and part of ch. 2. II. The people are hereupon called to repentance, ch. 2. III. Promises are made of the return of mercy upon their repentance (ch. 2), and promises of the pouring out of the Spirit in the latter days. IV. The cause of God's people is pleaded against their enemies, whom God would in due time reckon with (ch. 3); and glorious things are spoken of the gospel - Jerusalem and of the prosperity and perpetuity of it.

Matthew Henry: Joel 3 (Chapter Introduction)

In the close of the foregoing chapter we had a gracious promise of deliverance in Mount Zion and Jerusalem; now this whole chapter is a comment upon that promise, showing what that deliverance shall be, how it shall be wrought by the destruction of the church's enemies, and how it shall be perfected in the everlasting rest and joy of the church. This was in part accomplished in the deliverance of Jerusalem from the attempt that Sennacherib made upon it in Hezekiah's time, and afterwards in the return of the Jews out of their captivity in Babylon, and other deliverances wrought for the Jewish church between that and Christ's coming. But it has a further reference, to the great redemption wrought out for us by Jesus Christ, and the destruction of our spiritual enemies and all their agents, and will have its full accomplishment in the judgment of the great day. Here is a prediction, I. Of God's reckoning with the enemies of his people for all the injuries and indignities that they had done them, and returning them upon their own head (Joe 3:1-8). II. Of God's judging all nations when the measure of their iniquity is full, and appearing publicly, to the everlasting confusion of all impenitent sinners and the everlasting comfort of all his faithful servants (Joe 3:9-17). III. Of the provision God has made for the refreshment of his people, for their safety and purity, when their enemies shall be made desolate (Joe 3:18-21). These promises were not of private interpretation only, but were written for our learning, " that we, through patience and comfort of this scripture, might have hope."

Constable: Joel (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Title and Writer

The title of this book is the name of its writer, as is true of all the prophetical books of the Old Testament.

We know little about Joel, whose name means "Yahweh is God." He was the son of Pethuel, who does not appear to have been a specially significant person. Eleven other individuals in the Old Testament bore the name Joel (1 Sam. 8:2; 1 Chron. 4:35; 5:4; 7:3; 11:38; 15:7; 26:22; 27:20; 2 Chron. 29:12; Ezra 10:43; Neh. 11:9).

Unity

All the extant Hebrew manuscripts and the ancient versions of Joel attest to the unity of the book. Critics who deny its unity and argue for two different writers do so on the basis of supposed literary and conceptual differences, usually between the first two chapters and the third. Specifically they assign the historical passages to Joel and the apocalyptic ones to another writer. However there is a consistent theme that ties the whole book together, so most conservative interpreters believe that Joel wrote all three chapters.

Date

The date of Joel is its largest introductory problem. There are four most likely possibilities. First, some scholars advocate an early pre-exilic date during the reign of King Jehoshaphat (872-848 B.C.) or possibly his grandson, King Joash (835-796 B.C.). Arguments in favor of this period include the position of Joel in the Hebrew canon. It appears among other prophetic writings of this period. Also the enemies of Israel that Joel named (Tyre, Sidon, Philistia [cf. 2 Chron. 21:16-17], Egypt [cf. 1 Kings 14:15-16], and Edom [cf. 2 Kings 8:20-22]; 3:2-7, 19) were enemies of Israel during this time. The prominence Joel gave to Judah's priests and elders rather than to her king--Joash was a boy king under the influence of Jehoiada, the high priest, early in his reign--is a further argument for this view. However, all these conclusions are open to other interpretations.¹

Second, some authorities believe a mid-pre-exilic date of composition, probably during the reign of Joash's grandson, King Uzziah (792-740 B.C.), fits the evidence best. Supporters of this view also claim the first two arguments cited in favor of the early pre-exilic view above. They argue, also, that the absence of references to Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia make a later date, when these nations were the major ancient Near Eastern superpowers, unlikely. Joel's reference to Greece in 3:6 may fit this period since the Ionian Greeks were at this time expanding their commercial influence in Asia Minor. Joel's reference to the Sabeans in 3:8 is appropriate for this period as well. Internal references and linguistic characteristics may also reflect Uzziah's times and are similar to the writings of the other eighth-century prophets (i.e., Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah). However, again, much of the same evidence can fit other periods of Judah's history.²

Third, some interpreters opt for a late pre-exilic date. Statements in Joel could fit this period, and some of his statements are similar to those of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and may reflect pre-captivity conditions, perhaps between 597 and 587 B.C. If true, Joel would have been a contemporary of Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Yet Joel 2:18-19 seems to imply that God had been merciful to Joel's generation, suggesting that the people had repented, but there is no record of this happening during this period.³

The fourth view is that Joel wrote at a postexilic date, perhaps 515-500 B.C. or even as late as sometime in the 400s B.C. Interpreters who see Joel 3:1-2 and 17 as references to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity take the references to the temple in 1:9, 13 and 2:17 as applying to the second temple (completed in 515 B.C.). Yet all these texts could apply to earlier periods.⁴

As should be obvious from this brief review, the dating of the book rests on interpretations of various verses that are not clear. No other Old Testament book mentions Joel either. Consequently dating the book amounts to guesswork, though some writers were quite dogmatic about their convictions. I prefer an early or mid-pre-exilic date mainly because of Joel's position in the Hebrew text among other writers of this period. I think he was probably one of the earliest writing prophets.

Place of Composition and Audience

Joel's frequent references to Judah and Jerusalem suggest that he lived and ministered in the Southern Kingdom (cf. 1:2, 9, 13-14, 16, 23, 32; 2:1, 14-15, 17, 23; 3:1-8, 12, 14, 17-21).

"Joel was a man of vitality and spiritual maturity. A keen discerner of the times, he delivered God's message to the people of Judah in a vivid and impassioned style, with a precision and originality of thought that served as a veritable quarry out of which many subsequent prophetic building stones were to be hewn."⁵

Purpose

Joel wrote to warn his audience about a coming day in which God would judge His people. He compared this devastating judgment to a terrible locust invasion that had fairly recently swept through the land. What he said about this coming judgment has only seen partial fulfillment; some of it still lies in the eschatological future. God would send blessing as well as judgment, however, and this too has only come partially on the Israelites so far. The prophet warned his hearers that unless they repented of their empty formalism in worship and turned back to Yahweh wholeheartedly, devastating judgment would overtake them. If they repented, God would pardon them and restore His blessings to them abundantly.

Theology

The sovereignty of God and the inevitability of divine punishment for covenant unfaithfulness are dominant themes in Joel. Thus the administration of God is a strong motif--how God exercises His sovereignty when His people sin.

Another important theological contribution of Joel is his prediction of God pouring out the Holy Spirit on all humanity (2:28-32).

Message⁶

The Book of Joel contains a threefold vision.

The first part of Joel's vision concerned a locust plague that had recently swept over the Promised Land. Joel prophesied about this plague because of the desolation that it had produced. The second part of his vision concerned a coming invasion from a foreign army in the fairly near future. He used the recent locust plague to illustrate the devastating effect of the coming military invasion. The third part of his vision concerned another coming invasion in the far distant future that would also be like the recent locust invasion, only worse.

Joel described each of these devastations as "the day of the Lord." The term itself refers to a time when God had been or would be controlling events for Israel in an unusually direct way. It was "His day" in the sense that at those times Yahweh was and would be especially prominent in what happened. Thus this term referred to a past "day," a near future "day," and a far distant "day" from the prophet's perspective. "The day of the Lord" was the burden of his prophecy.

The Book of Joel has two preeminent timeless values. It illustrates the basic principles by which Yahweh governs, and it reveals the basic plan of Yahweh through the ages. It is important for us to grasp these basic principles and this basic plan because the other prophets reveal more about them. They expound them giving more detail. Again, as we saw with Obadiah (how God feels about pride and those who mistreat the Jews), God gave His people the simple, general lessons first. Then He gave more detailed information through the prophets that followed.

First, Joel illustrates the principles by which Yahweh governs. This book does not reveal them in the sense of explaining them fully. Isaiah explains them more fully. Joel illustrates these principles briefly.

Joel viewed Yahweh as enthroned in heaven controlling affairs on earth. Joel saw Him presiding patiently over all the situations through which His people pass. He saw Him pressing into His service all the processes of nature and human activity. He also saw Him achieving ultimate victory in "His day," "the day of the Lord." He had accomplished victory by judging His people with a locust invasion recently. He would accomplish victory by disciplining His people with an invasion from a foreign foe in the near future. And He would accomplish victory by restoring His people through a fresh outpouring of His Spirit in the distant future. So one major lesson of this book is that God is enthroned in heaven and that He is ruling over the affairs of humanity.

A second illustration of the principles by which Yahweh governs is Joel's emphasis on grace. Grace is at the heart of God's government. Grace is the inspiration of His government. We see this in God's appeal to the Israelites through Joel to repent, to "rend your hearts rather than your garments" (2:13a). The locust plague was a wake up call to repent. The Israelites' repentance would affect the imminent invasion they faced. God promised judgment, but He offered mercy if the people would repent (2:13b-14). Grace is also evident in the promise of a far distant future outpouring of God's Spirit in spite of the unfaithfulness of His people. God rules with grace. He is gracious to humanity in the way He governs people.

When the locust invasion swept through the land, the people bemoaned the tragedy. The locusts had so stripped the grapevines that even the drunkards could not find grapes to make wine. The people had so little grain that they could not bring offerings to the temple. They could hardly make bread for themselves to eat. They viewed the devastation as a natural disaster. Joel reminded them that the locust invasion had come by the will and hand of God. The people had forgotten God, but God wanted to get their attention, so He sent the plague. He had allowed this to happen so the people would think of Him and return to Him. When the invasion happened it was His "day." It was God who had done this (1:1-14).

Joel went on to remind the people that because they had forgotten about Him God was going to bring a worse devastation on them that would make the recent locust plague seem tame by comparison. If they turned back to Him, they could avoid this worse fate because God would be gracious to them (2:12-13). The coming invasion by humans rather than by locusts would also be a day in which the Lord acted prominently. Joel even said the Lord would lead this army of invaders (2:11).

Yet in spite of future devastating judgment, God would act again dramatically and definitely for His people (3:28-32). He would bring restoration and blessing to them even when they had suffered His chastening discipline. He would just as surely and personally do this for them as He would punish them. This, too, would be one of His "days." And it would be the ultimate illustration of His grace.

A second great timeless value of this book is its revelation of God's plan for His people Israel's future.

First, there would be coming judgment that the people could affect by their repentance (2:14). Had the Israelites repented the Captivities would not have overtaken them. When the Assyrians attacked Judah, the people did repent and the Lord delivered them. But when the Babylonians attacked Judah, they failed to repent and suffered defeat and deportation. Joel could honestly say for God, "Return to me with all your heart" (2:12). When the people failed to repent, judgment befell them.

Second, there would be even worse judgment in the distant future because the prophet foresaw that the people would continue to apostatize (3:1-17). This refers to the judgments on Israel during the Tribulation. Yet after that the Lord promised to restore and bless His people (2:18-32). These are millennial blessings. It is in this context of millennial blessings that the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit appears (3:28-29). That outpouring is still future from our position in history.

But what about what Peter said on the day of Pentecost? He said that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit then was what Joel prophesied (Acts 2:17-18). This has led many Bible students to conclude that God fulfilled His promises to Israel in the church. This is the viewpoint of amillennial and postmillennial interpreters. Others see a double or partial fulfillment on the day of Pentecost with the church, and a future fulfillment with Israel in the Millennium. This is the viewpoint of many premillennialists. A third view is that fulfillment will only be in the Millennium and that what Peter meant was that what happened on the day of Pentecost was similar to or like what Joel prophesied. I favor this interpretation, as do many other premillennialists. Peter did not say that what was happening fulfilled Joel's prophecy. What he said could just as easily mean that what happened then was in harmony with or analygous to what Joel had predicted would happen in the Millennium. The two events were similar but not identical. It should be clear that they were not the same because in the middle of the section of Joel's prophecy that Peter quoted (3:28-32a), Joel mentioned the sun turning into darkness and the moon to blood (Acts 2:20). That did not happen on the day of Pentecost. It will happen in the Tribulation just before God pours out His Spirit on all flesh in the Millennium. The New Testament writers frequently spoke of fulfillment in an analogical sense (e.g., Matt. 2:15; Hos. 11:1).

Joel gave revelation about important aspects of God's plan for the future. He referred to the upcoming invasion by a foreign power, which took place shortly after he prophesied. He also talked about a far distant future time of judgment on Israel, the Tribulation. Then he revealed great blessing for all types of Israelites, from the most lowly to the most exalted, including the restoration of Israel during the Millennium. Sin, judgment, and restoration to privilege and power are what would mark Israel's future.

I would summarize the message of Joel this way. Though God will judge Israel for her apostasy with locust invasion-like devastation in the future, He will also later restore her to blessings greater than she has ever experienced illustrating that He governs the world graciously. Remember that "Israel" is not synonymous with the modern State of Israel.

When Joel wrote, it was man's day, not the day of the Lord. The Lord had acted in the locust invasion, and He would act in judgment and in blessing in the future. These would be His days. But when Joel prophesied, the people failed to see God at work because He was not active as He was and will be on these great days when His presence was and will be manifest. We too live in man's day. Most people, including many Christians, conclude that God either does not exist or takes no active role in human affairs because He is not obviously working. At least His working is not apparent to them because what is happening can be explained as natural or chance phenomena. Thus we live in a day very similar to Joel's day.

Whether people recognize it or not, God is executing His plan for the world. He will break into human experience again in the future. Thus it is imperative that we sound the same warning that Joel did. Judgment is coming, but people can avoid His judgment by repenting. "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered" (2:32; Acts 2:21). Humanity as a whole will fail to repent, just as the Israelites failed to repent (cf. 1 Tim. 4; 2 Tim. 3). Then a far worse fate will befall them. Yet God's plans for His people include incredible blessing, even though we fail Him. This evidence of God's grace should motivate God's people to repent and remain faithful to Him now. Thus God's government of Israel and His plan for Israel serve as a paradigm for His dealings with all humanity.

Constable: Joel (Outline)

Outline

I. Introduction 1:1

II. A past day of the Lord: a locust invasion 1:2-20

A. An initial appeal 1:2-4

B. A call to mourn 1:5-13

C. A call to repent 1:14

D. The significance of the plague 1:15-20

III. A near future day of the Lord: a human invasion 2:1-27

A. The invading army 2:1-11

1. The nearness of the army 2:1-2

2. The destructive power of the army 2:3-5

3. The relentlessness of the army 2:6-9

4. The invincibility of the army 2:10-11

B. A call to repentance 2:12-17

1. An appeal for private repentance 2:12-14

2. An appeal for public repentance 2:15-17

C. The possibility of forgiveness and restoration 2:18-27

1. The Lord's gracious response 2:18

2. The Lord's promise of blessing 2:19-27

IV. A far future day of the Lord: another human invasion and deliverance 2:28-3:21

A. Israel's spiritual renewal and deliverance 2:28-32

B. God's judgment on Israel's enemy nations 3:1-17

1. The announcement of judgment 3:1-8

2. The description of judgment 3:9-17

C. Israel's ultimate restoration 3:18-21

Constable: Joel

Joel

Bibliography

Allen, Leslie C. The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah. The New International Commentary on the Old Testament series. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976.

Archer, Gleason L., Jr. A Survey of Old Testament Introduction. Revised ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1974.

Chisholm, Robert B., Jr. "Joel." In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, pp. 1409-24. Edited by John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck. Wheaton: Scripture Press Publications, Victor Books, 1985.

_____. "A Theology of the Minor Prophets." In A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, pp. 397-433. Edited by Roy B. Zuck. Chicago: Moody Press, 1991.

Constable, Thomas L. Talking to God: What the Bible Teaches about Prayer. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995.

Driver, S. R. The Books of Joel and Amos. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges series. Cambridge, Eng.: University Press, 1915.

Dyer, Charles H., and Eugene H. Merrill. The Old Testament Explorer. Nashville: Word Publishing, 2001.

Freeman, Hobart E. An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets. Chicago: Moody Press, 1968.

Keil, Carl Friedrich. The Twelve Minor Prophets. 2 vols. Translated by James Martin. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Reprint ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1949.

Kapelrud, Arvid S. Joel Studies. Uppsala, Sweden: A. B. Lundequistska Bokhandeln, 1948.

Patterson, Richard D. "Joel." In Daniel-Minor Prophets. Vol. 7 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary. 12 vols. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein and Richard P. Polcyn. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1985.

Rudolph, Wilhelm. Joel-Amos-Obadja-Jona. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1971.

Smith, George Adam. The Book of the Twelve Prophets. 2 vols. Revised ed. New York: Harper & Brothers, n.d.

Stuart, Douglas. "The Sovereign's Day of Conquest." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 220/21 (December 1975, February 1976):159-64.

Thompson, J. A. "Joel's Locusts in the Light of Near Eastern Parallels." Journal of Near Eastern Studies 14 (1955):52-55.

_____. "Translation of the Words for Locust." Bible Translator 25 (October 1974):405-11.

von Rad, Gerhard. "The Origin of the Concept of the Day of the Lord." Journal of Semitic Studies 4 (1959):97-108.

Whiting, John D. "Jerusalem's Locust Plague." National Geographic, December 1915, pp. 511-50.

Wolff, Hans Walter. Joel and Amos. Translated by Waldemar Janzen, S. Dean McBride Jr., and Charles A. Muenchow. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977.

Young, Edward J. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Revised ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1960.

Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

Haydock: Joel (Book Introduction)

THE PROPHECY OF JOEL.

INTRODUCTION.

Joel , whose name, according to St. Jerome, signifies the Lord God, (or, as others say, the coming down of God ) prophesied about the same time in the kingdom of Juda as Osee did in the kingdom of Israel. He foretells, under figures, the great evils that were coming upon the people for their sins; earnestly exhorts them to repentance, and comforts them with the promise of a teacher of justice, viz., Christ Jesus, our Lord, and of the coming down of his Holy Spirit (Challoner) upon the hundred and twenty faithful assembled in Sion. He describes the land of the twelve tribes made desolate, and the people cast off. (St. Jerome ad Paulin.) --- Yet he speaks chiefly of the kingdom of Juda, and mentions the house of God, sacrifices, &c. (Worthington) --- St. Jerome infers from his being placed after Osee, without any fresh title, (Calmet) that he lived in that order of time. (Worthington) --- But this rule is not general, as Jonas lived before Amos; and [the] Septuagint observe not the same disposition of the prophets as we do. The exact time of the famine, when Joel prophesied, cannot be ascertained. It seems he addressed the people in autumn, when a second year's famine was apprehended. He paints every thing with great force and beauty of style. (Calmet)

Gill: Joel (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO JOEL

In some Hebrew Bibles this prophecy is called "Sepher Joel", the Book of Joel; in the Vulgate Latin version, the Prophecy of Joel; and in the Syriac version, the Prophecy of the Prophet Joel; and the Arabic version, the Prophet Joel; and so the Apostle Peter quotes him, Act 2:16. His name, according to Hillerus ^a, signifies "the Lord is God"; but others derive it from lay, which in "Hiphil" is lyawh, and signifies "he willed, acquiesced, or is well pleased, so Abarbinei; and hence Schmidt thinks it answers to Desiderius or Erasmus. According to Isidorus ^b, he was born at Bethoron, in the tribe of Reuben, and died and was buried there; and so says Pseudo-Epiphanius ^c. In what age he lived is not easy to say. Aben Ezra expressly affirms there is no way to know it; and so R. David Ganz ^d says, his time we know not; and likewise Abarbinel. Some think he prophesied about the same time Hoses did, after whom he is next placed; and so Mr. Whiston ^e and, Mr. Bedford ^f make him to prophesy much about the same time with Isaiah and Hoses, about eight hundred years before Christ; but, in the Septuagint version, this book is in the fourth order, and not Hoses, but Amos and Micah, are placed before him; and so the author of Juchasin ^g puts the prophets in this order, first Hoses, then Amos, next Isaiah, then Micah, and after him Joel. Some of the Jewish writers, as Jarchi, Kimchi, and Abendana relate, make Joel contemporary with Elisha, and say he prophesied in the, lays of Jehoram the son of Ahab, when the seven years' famine called for came upon the land, 2Ki 8:1. Both in Seder Olam Rabba and Zuta ^h he is placed in the reign of Manasseh; and so in Hilchot Gedolot, as Jarchi observes. And it seems indeed as if he prophesied after the ten tribes were carried captive, which was in the sixth year of Hezekiah's reign, since no mention is made of Israel but with respect to future times, only of Judah and Jerusalem, But, be it when it will that he prophesied, there is no doubt to be made of the authenticity of this book, which is confirmed by the quotations of two apostles out of two: Peter and Paul, Act 2:16.

Gill: Joel 3 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO JOEL 3

This chapter, which some make the fourth, contains a prophecy of God's judgments on all the antichristian nations at the time of the Jews' conversion, and the reasons of them, Joe 3:1; a threatening of Tyre and Zidon, by way of retaliation, for carrying the riches of the Jews into their temples, and selling their persons to the Greeks, Joe 3:4; an alarm to prepare for the battle of Armageddon, or the destruction that shall be made in the valley of Jehoshaphat, Joe 3:9; and after that an account of the happy state of the church of Christ, their safety and security, plenty, prosperity, and purity, to the end of the world, Joe 3:16.