Joel 2:18

The Lord’s Response

2:18 Then the Lord became ¹  zealous for his land;

he had compassion on his people.

Joel 1:8

A Call to Lament

1:8 Wail ²  like a young virgin ³  clothed in sackcloth,

lamenting the death of ⁴  her husband-to-be. ⁵ 

Joel 1:5

1:5 Wake up, you drunkards, ⁶  and weep!

Wail, all you wine drinkers, ⁷ 

because the sweet wine ⁸  has been taken away ⁹  from you. ¹⁰ 

Joel 1:11

1:11 Be distressed, ¹¹  farmers;

wail, vinedressers, over the wheat and the barley.

For the harvest of the field has perished.

Joel 2:29

2:29 Even on male and female servants

I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

Joel 1:6

1:6 For a nation ¹²  has invaded ¹³  our ¹⁴  land.

There are so many of them they are too numerous to count. ¹⁵ 

Their teeth are like those ¹⁶  of a lion;

they tear apart their prey like a lioness. ¹⁷ 

Joel 2:5

2:5 They sound like ¹⁸  chariots rumbling ¹⁹  over mountain tops,

like the crackling ²⁰  of blazing fire consuming stubble,

like the noise of ²¹  a mighty army ²²  being drawn up for battle. ²³ 

Joel 2:2

2:2 It will be ²⁴  a day of dreadful darkness, ²⁵ 

a day of foreboding storm clouds, ²⁶ 

like blackness ²⁷  spread over the mountains.

It is a huge and powerful army ²⁸  –

there has never been anything like it ever before,

and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come! ²⁹ 

Joel 2:13

2:13 Return to the Lord your God,

for he is merciful and compassionate,

slow to anger and boundless in loyal love ³⁰  – often relenting from calamitous punishment. ³¹ 

Joel 2:17

2:17 Let the priests, those who serve the Lord, weep

from the vestibule all the way back to the altar. ³² 

Let them say, “Have pity, O Lord, on your people;

please do not turn over your inheritance to be mocked,

to become a proverb ³³  among the nations.

Why should it be said ³⁴  among the peoples,

“Where is their God?”

Joel 2:28

An Outpouring of the Spirit

2:28 (3:1) ³⁵  After all of this ³⁶ 

I will pour out my Spirit ³⁷  on all kinds of people. ³⁸ 

Your sons and daughters will prophesy.

Your elderly will have revelatory dreams; ³⁹ 

your young men will see prophetic visions.

Joel 3:2

3:2 Then I will gather all the nations,

and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. ⁴⁰ 

I will enter into judgment ⁴¹  against them there

concerning my people Israel who are my inheritance, ⁴² 

whom they scattered among the nations.

They partitioned my land,

[2:18]  ¹ tn The time-frame entertained by the verbs of v.18 constitutes a crux interpretum in this chapter. The Hebrew verb forms used here are preterites with vav consecutive and are most naturally understood as describing a past situation. However, some modern English versions render these verbs as futures (e.g., NIV, NASV), apparently concluding that the context requires a future reference. According to Joüon 2:363 §112.h, n.1 Ibn Ezra explained the verbs of Joel 2:18 as an extension of the so-called prophetic perfect; as such, a future fulfillment was described with a past tense as a rhetorical device lending certainty to the fulfillment. But this lacks adequate precedent and is very unlikely from a syntactical standpoint. It seems better to take the verbs in the normal past sense of the preterite. This would require a vantage point for the prophet at some time after the people had responded favorably to the Lord’s call for repentance and after the Lord had shown compassion and forgiveness toward his people, but before the full realization of God’s promises to restore productivity to the land. In other words, it appears from the verbs of vv. 18-19 that at the time of Joel’s writing this book the events of successive waves of locust invasion and conditions of drought had almost run their course and the people had now begun to turn to the Lord.

[1:8]  ² sn The verb is feminine singular, raising a question concerning its intended antecedent. A plural verb would be expected here, the idea being that all the inhabitants of the land should grieve. Perhaps Joel is thinking specifically of the city of Jerusalem, albeit in a representative sense. The choice of the feminine singular verb form has probably been influenced to some extent by the allusion to the young widow in the simile of v. 8.

[1:8]  ³ tn Or “a young woman” (TEV, CEV). See the note on the phrase “husband-to-be” in the next line.

[1:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “over the death of.” The term “lamenting” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.

[1:8]  ⁵ sn Heb “the husband of her youth.” The woman described here may already be married, so the reference is to the death of a husband rather than a fiancé (a husband-to-be). Either way, the simile describes a painful and unexpected loss to which the national tragedy Joel is describing may be compared.

[1:5]  ³ sn The word drunkards has a double edge here. Those accustomed to drinking too much must now lament the unavailability of wine. It also may hint that the people in general have become religiously inebriated and are unresponsive to the Lord. They are, as it were, drunkards from a spiritual standpoint.

[1:5]  ⁴ sn Joel addresses the first of three groups particularly affected by the locust plague. In v. 5 he describes the effects on the drunkards, who no longer have a ready supply of intoxicating wine; in vv. 11-12 he describes the effects on the farmers, who have watched their labors come to naught because of the insect infestation; and in vv. 13-14 he describes the effects on the priests, who are no longer able to offer grain sacrifices and libations in the temple.

[1:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “over the sweet wine, because it.” Cf. KJV, NIV, TEV, NLT “new wine.”

[1:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “cut off” (so KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV); NAB “will be withheld.”

[1:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “your mouth.” This is a synecdoche of part (the mouth) for whole (the person).

[1:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “embarrassed”; or “be ashamed.”

[1:6]  ⁵ sn As becomes increasingly clear in what follows, this nation is to be understood figuratively. It refers to the locust invasion as viewed from the standpoint of its methodical, destructive advance across the land (BDB 156 s.v. גּוֹי 2). This term is used figuratively to refer to animals one other time (Zeph 2:14).

[1:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “has come up against.”

[1:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “my.”

[1:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “[It] is huge and there is not number.”

[1:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “its teeth are the teeth of a lion.”

[1:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “its incisors are those of a lioness.” The sharp, cutting teeth are metonymical for the action of tearing apart and eating prey. The language is clearly hyperbolic. Neither locusts nor human invaders literally have teeth of this size. The prophet is using exaggerated and picturesque language to portray in vivid terms the enormity of the calamity. English versions vary greatly on the specifics: KJV “cheek teeth”; ASV “jaw-teeth”; NAB “molars”; NASB, NIV, NRSV “fangs.”

[2:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “like the sound of.”

[2:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “jostling” or “leaping.” There is question whether this pictures chariots rumbling over the mountains (e.g., 2 Sam 6:14,16; 1 Chr 15:29; Nah 3:2) or the locusts flying – or “leaping” – over the mountains (e.g., Job 21:11); see BDB 955 s.v. רָקַד.

[2:5]  ⁸ tn Heb “sound.”

[2:5]  ⁹ tn The phrase “the noise of” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is implied by the parallelism, so it has been supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[2:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “people.”

[2:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “being arrayed of battle.”

[2:2]  ⁷ tn The phrase “It will be” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of smoothness and style.

[2:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “darkness and gloom.” These two terms probably form a hendiadys here. This picture recalls the imagery of the supernatural darkness in Egypt during the judgments of the exodus (Exod 10:22). These terms are also frequently used as figures (metonymy of association) for calamity and divine judgment (Isa 8:22; 59:9; Jer 23:12; Zeph 1:15). Darkness is often a figure (metonymy of association) for death, dread, distress and judgment (BDB 365 s.v. חשֶׁךְ 3).

[2:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “a day of cloud and darkness.”

[2:2]  ¹⁰ tc The present translation here follows the proposed reading שְׁחֹר (shÿkhor, “blackness”) rather than the MT שַׁחַר (shakhar, “morning”). The change affects only the vocalization; the Hebrew consonants remain unchanged. Here the context calls for a word describing darkness. The idea of morning or dawn speaks instead of approaching light, which does not seem to fit here. The other words in the verse (e.g., “darkness,” “gloominess,” “cloud,” “heavy overcast”) all emphasize the negative aspects of the matter at hand and lead the reader to expect a word like “blackness” rather than “dawn.” However, NIrV paraphrases the MT nicely: “A huge army of locusts is coming. They will spread across the mountains like the sun when it rises.”

[2:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “A huge and powerful people”; KJV, ASV “a great people and a strong.” Many interpreters understand Joel 2 to describe an invasion of human armies, either in past history (e.g., the Babylonian invasion of Palestine in the sixth century b.c.) or in an eschatological setting. More probably, however, the language of this chapter referring to “people” and “armies” is a hypocatastic description of the locusts of chapter one. Cf. TEV “The great army of locusts advances like darkness.”

[2:2]  ¹² tn Heb “it will not be repeated for years of generation and generation.”

[2:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “and great of loyal love.”

[2:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “and he relents from calamity.”

[2:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “between the vestibule and the altar.” The vestibule was located at the entrance of the temple and the altar was located at the other end of the building. So “between the vestibule and the altar” is a merism referring to the entire structure. The priestly lament permeates the entire house of worship.

[2:17]  ¹⁰ tn For the MT reading לִמְשָׁל (limshol, an infinitive, “to rule”), one should instead read לְמָשָׁל (lÿmashal, a noun, “to a byword”). While the consonantal Hebrew text permits either, the context suggests that the concern here is more one of not wanting to appear abandoned by God to ongoing economic depression rather than one of concern over potential political subjection of Israel (cf. v. 19). The possibility that the form in the MT is an infinitive construct of the denominative verb II מָשַׁל (mashal, “to utter a proverb”) does not seem likely because of the following preposition (Hebrew בְּ [bÿ], rather than עַל [’al]).

[2:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Why will they say?”

[2:28]  ¹⁰ sn Beginning with 2:28, the verse numbers through 3:21 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 2:28 ET = 3:1 HT, 2:29 ET = 3:2 HT, 2:30 ET = 3:3 HT, 2:31 ET = 3:4 HT, 2:32 ET = 3:5 HT, 3:1 ET = 4:1 HT, etc., through 3:21 ET = 4:21 HT. Thus Joel in the Hebrew Bible has 4 chapters, the 5 verses of ch. 3 being included at the end of ch. 2 in the English Bible.

[2:28]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Now it will be after this.”

[2:28]  ¹² sn This passage plays a key role in the apostolic explanation of the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost recorded in Acts 2:17-21. Peter introduces his quotation of this passage with “this is that spoken by the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16; cf. the similar pesher formula used at Qumran). The New Testament experience at Pentecost is thus seen in some sense as a fulfillment of this Old Testament passage, even though that experience did not exhaustively fulfill Joel’s words. Some portions of Joel’s prophecy have no precise counterpart in that experience. For example, there is nothing in the experience recorded in Acts 2 that exactly corresponds to the earthly and heavenly signs described in Joel 3:3-4. But inasmuch as the messianic age had already begun and the “last days” had already commenced with the coming of the Messiah (cf. Heb 1:1-2), Peter was able to point to Joel 3:1-5 as a text that was relevant to the advent of Jesus and the bestowal of the Spirit. The equative language that Peter employs (“this is that”) stresses an incipient fulfillment of the Joel passage without precluding or minimizing a yet future and more exhaustive fulfillment in events associated with the return of Christ.

[2:28]  ¹³ tn Heb “all flesh.” As a term for humanity, “flesh” suggests the weakness and fragility of human beings as opposed to God who is “spirit.” The word “all” refers not to all human beings without exception (cf. NAB, NASB “all mankind”; NLT “all people”), but to all classes of human beings without distinction (cf. NCV).

[2:28]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “your old men will dream dreams.”

[3:2]  ¹¹ 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.

[3:2]  ¹² tn Heb “I will execute judgment.”

[3:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “concerning my people and my inheritance Israel.”