Monday
The word of the LORD that came to Joel son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten. Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white. Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the husband of her youth. Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the LORD. The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails. Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed. The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree — all the trees of the field — are dried up. Surely the joy of mankind is withered away. - Joel 1:1-12
Well one thing we can say is that Joel is not exactly an upbeat guy! This prophetic book begins with a very ominous tone and it seems to only get gloomier as it goes. However, if we stay with Joel and reflect deeply on his message, we will discover that it is actually one of the most hopeful of all the prophetic books!
We know almost nothing about this prophet Joel other than his name, which means “Yahweh is God”. The author identified himself only as “Joel the son of Pethuel” (1:1), the prophecy provides little else about the man. Even the name of his father is not mentioned elsewhere in the OT. We don’t even know precisely when Joel lived or had his prophetic ministry. However, the lack of historical detail really doesn’t hinder our understanding of Joel, because in many ways, the prophetic message is timeless and relevant to any age.
The primary theme of the book of Joel is what the prophet himself calls “The Day of the LORD”. The Day of the Lord does not always refer to the end of the world or to “Judgment Day”. The Hebrew word for day is ‘yom’ and it can be used in a variety of ways. You have probably heard of the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur, or the “day of atonement”. The phrase ‘yom elohim’ or “the day of the Lord” does not necessarily have a reference to a specific chronological time period, but to a general period of judgment uniquely belonging to the Lord. It is exclusively the day which unveils His character - mighty, powerful, and holy, thus terrifying for His enemies.
In the beginning of the first chapter of Joel, we are told about a terrible locust plague that devastated the nation of Israel and the surrounding region. There is a good deal of scholarly debate about what this locust plague actually means. Some scholars think it is simply an actual swarm of locusts that swept through the region. Others think it is a foreshadowing of the Babylonian and/or Assyrian armies that would come and lay waste to Israel and Judah. Still others feel that it is primarily a metaphor used to describe the final “Day of the LORD” in which God will bring His final judgment on all people - I think a very strong case can be made that Joel is talking about all three. Certainly he is referring to a very real and recent plague of locusts when he says, “Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers?” And as we read on in the prophecy, we see that Joel is also looking through the locust swarm to the future day of the Lord, when he says in 1:15, “Alas for that day! For the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.”
Now, I have to admit that I am always nervous about Christians who claim that a certain natural disaster is the judgment of God on the people who have suffered through it. I recall being angry when I heard about pastors and leaders pronouncing that the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment on an immoral society. As Christians, we should be very careful about determining what is and what is not an act of God. But this is not primarily the point that Joel is making here. The question is not who sent the locusts? The question is will we see in this natural disaster a call to wake up to the reality of God? Will we allow this event (whatever it may be) to wake us up to the reality of God justice and judgment in the coming “day of the LORD”? This is what Joel is really concerned about.
I do not think God is sending all kinds of disasters here and there to punish or judge people, He will handle all of the judgment through His perfect justice on the great and final day of the LORD.
I do, however, think that God can use the tragic and painful events of our lives to draw us back to Him if we will only listen. As C.S. Lewis put it in his book The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”.
Jeff Frazier
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