In Stuart’s outline of this section he labelsverses 2-3 a “call to reflection/reaction”. Verse 4 is a “description oftragedy”, verses 5-18 he labels a “call to mourning”, which breaks down intothese four sections: verses 5-7—the mourning of drunkards, verses 8-10—ageneral call to mourning, verses 11-12—a call for the farmers to mourn, verses13-18—a call for priests to mournWhat’s interesting about verses 5-18 is thatJoel calls the drunkard, the farmer, and the priests... Read Full Story

     Now for a few evidences that lead me tobelieve that the foe in v. 4 and in v. 6 are the same, and that this is an armyof men that Joel equates with a plague of swarming locusts. The locust plagueof v. 4 serves as an image that promoted the comprehensive nature of theeffects described in the devastation inflicted by this invader. What more canwe make of this rhetorical question asked by Joel back in verse 2? If Joel isreferring to the invasion by a literal army of dese... Read Full Story

     V. 4 is one of the places where one’sinterpretation of the passage may be influenced by one’s view of Joel’s placein history, or vice versa. If one accepts the interpretation that the locustsin v. 4 are figurative and the army in v. 6 is literal, then this prophesy ofJoel’s must have occurred at or just before one of the noted invasion in Judah. Asmentioned previously, in 701 BC, the Assyrians invaded but not to the point ofJudah’s destruction and exile. The Babylonia... Read Full Story

     In v. 4-18 Joel describes the enemy and itseffects and calls the people to lament. In v. 4 in particular, Joel imagines anunrivaled swarm of locusts. As Yahweh God, their Father was drawing them out ofEgypt, Pharaoh hardened his heart against the descendants of Abraham and Godsent a series of plagues to convince Pharaoh to let His people go but alsodisplaying the power that the One True Creator God had over the very images ofcreated things the Egyptians had worship. T... Read Full Story

     In verses 1-3 we find Joel’s introduction andcall on the people to hear the Word of the Lord. This entire chapter and the 1stpart of chapter 2 have to do mainly with the destruction coming on Judahand the call for the people to lament its effects. Verses 2-3 give Joel’shearers and us as well, a call to remember the destructive force of locustsfrom the plague that occurred in the Exodus. Joel is setting the people up tocompare their present suffering through invasion t... Read Full Story

     In this introduction to the prophesy of Joel we have seen the difficultiesscholars have had placing Joel’s ministry on a timeline: we’ve made a briefsurvey of the history of the Old Kingdom andthe possible kings who reigned during the ministry of Joel. We’ve alsoconsidered God’s other prophets who might have ministered His Word at aroundthe same time. And in addition to those topics we also considered severalthemes of the book, the major ones being: First, we see in J... Read Full Story

     Well, if at this point you’re still askingyourselves, “What does this really have to do with Joel?” Recall that Imentioned the confusion that may have occurred in the typical Jewish mind; ascircumcised members of visible Israel,they largely didn’t expect God’s wrath to ever befall them, and they especiallydidn’t expect the judgment contained in the prophesy of the DotL to be directedtoward them because it was a day where they all expected salvation. And that’sjust lik... Read Full Story

     The confusion of covenant signage and familiallineage being equated with God’s favor, in part, was how the Jews had falleninto all sorts of race, class and gender based discrimination: non-Jews werenecessarily thought of as godless. Of course, they generally were but were notall necessarily forsaken. Women were dependent on the covenant sign having beenplaced on the patriarch with whom they were associated. And the poor wereoppressed as generally having reaped the slo... Read Full Story

     The judgment that God was going to bring downon the people He called out of Egyptwas neither unfounded nor arbitrary; it was rooted in the covenant. Themeta-narrative of God’s story of redeeming the world, the big picture if youwill, revolves around this covenantal language. We hear it first in Ex. 6:7,then in Lev. 26:12, and finally in Rev. 21:3. “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them,and they will be his people, and God himself will ... Read Full Story

     We now have two major ideas in mind withregards to the “zeitgeist” of the temporal Jewish kingdom: One, that theprophets delivered their messages in the context of the covenant (with itsblessings and curses) and two, that the Jewish people had largely misunderstoodhow God’s plan to create a people for Himself would be fulfilled in what wecall the ecclesia or Church. They hadit in their minds that in essence, to be loved by God and to live as Hisbeneficiary was to be n... Read Full Story