Joel 2:2

A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness,.... Alluding to the gloomy and thick darkness caused by the locusts, which sometimes come in prodigious numbers, like thick

A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be

A day of darkness and of gloominess; metaphorically taken for a time of exceeding great troubles and calamities, according to the style of the Scriptures, which express prosperity by the metaphor of light, and adversity by darkness. which certainly is intended here; and the synonymous terms are here multiplied, to intimate the extremity and length of these troubles. And this passage may well allude to the day of judgment, and the calamities which shall precede that day. Thick darkness does undoubtedly imply, as the gradual approach, so the dismal effect of God’ s judgments and the Jews’ miseries. See this word used , with 12-16 Psalms 18:9,11. It was such terror with which God gave the law, and in such he will punish the transgressors of his law. As the morning spread upon the mountains; as the morning spreads itself suddenly over all the hemisphere, and as it first spreads itself upon the high mountains, so should the approaching calamities overtake this people. A great people: this seems more directly to intend the Babylonians rather than locusts, yet both are numerous, as the word imports, Heb.: see . And a strong; bold to attempt, and mighty in strength to execute; both true of Assyrians or Babylonians, or the locusts. There hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more: locusts, emblem of the warlike nations, and the spoil done by both, are here described the greatest that ever yet were known; and of the Assyrian or Babylonian spoil made in Judea, the history doth ascertain this. Even to the years of many generations; if ever the like be, it shall not be in many ages to come.

Joe 2:2 A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, [even] to the years of many generations.Ver. 2. A day of darkness and of gloominess] Lest they should imagine it to be some light matter that hath been, and is still threatened, he sets forth to the life, the bitterness of that day, so lowering and lightless, that it can hardly be called a day; a dark and doleful doomsday it will be to the impenitent, infaustus et infelix, dismal and dreadful. What better can be expected by those Tenebriones, that delight in the deeds of darkness, and are acted by those rulers of the darkness of this world, Ephesians 6:12, the devils, whom they follow as they are led, 1 Corinthians 12:2, till they fall into outer darkness, σκοτοςεξωτερον, even that darkness beyond a darkness (as the dungeon is beyond or below the prison), where they shall never see the light again till they see all the world on a light fire. Let those Lucifugae look to it, that love darkness better than light; for, besides what they meet with here, they shall one day have their bellies full of it in that dungeon of darkness. A day of clouds and of thick darkness]. Caused by that huge army of locusts, coming in great swarms and darkening the air. As the morning spread upon the mountains] i.e. longe, lateque, far and near, all the country over, and that in an instant; even as the morning spreadeth abroad suddenly over the tops of hills, though they be a great way off. Postera vix summos spargebat lumine montes Orta dies (Virg.) Lux subit, et primo feriente cacumina sole. (Ovid.) Hereby is imported that the calamity here threatened is such as they can neither avert nor avoid. Irretensibilis est, saith Luther. A great people and a strong] So the locusts are called, see Joe 1:4-6, not without some respect to the Chaldeans, that should afterwards carry them captive, as Jerome here glosseth. There hath not been ever the like] sc. in the land of Judea, nor of the like continuance. See Joe 1:2-3. Even to the years of many generations] Heb. Of an age and an age, so Deuteronomy 32:7 Joe 3:20. This assureth us of the greatness of this people’ s sin, since they were so signally punished, for God doth not use to kill flies with beetles, as they say.

(2) The morning spread upon the mountains.—The Hebrew word here used for morning is derived from a verb, Shachar, which has for one meaning “to be or become black,” for the second “to break forth” as light. From this latter signification is derived the word for morning—dawn; from the former comes the word “blackness,” which gives the name Sihor to the Nile (Isaiah 23:3). It seems accordingly more in harmony with the present context to take the sense of the word in its reference to blackness, and to understand it as indicating a thick, dark, rolling cloud settled upon the mountain top. The description following comprehends equally the natural and political locusts.

Verse 2. A day of darkness, c.] The depredations of the locusts are described from the second to the eleventh verse, and their destruction in the twentieth. Dr. Shaw, who saw locusts in Barbary in 1724 and 1725, thus describes them: - "I never observed the mantes, bald locusts, to be gregarious. But the locusts, properly so called, which are so frequently mentioned by sacred as well as profane writers, are sometimes so beyond expression. Those which I saw in 1724 and 1725 were much bigger than our common grasshopper and had brown spotted wings, with legs and bodies of a bright yellow. Their first appearance was toward the latter end of March, the wind having been for some time south. In the middle of April their numbers were so vastly increased that, in the heat of the day, they formed themselves into large and numerous swarms; flew in the air like a succession of clouds; and, as the prophet Joel expresses it, (Joe 2:10) they darkened the sun. When the wind blew briskly, so that these swarms were crowded by others, or thrown one upon another, we had a lively idea of that comparison of the psalmist, (Psalms 109:23,) of being 'tossed up and down as the locust.' In the month of May, when the ovaries of those insects were ripe and turgid, each of these swarms began gradually to disappear; and retired into the Mettijiah, and other adjacent plains, where they deposited their eggs. These were no sooner hatched in June, than each of these broods collected itself into a compact body of a furlong or more in square; and, marching immediately forward in the direction of the sea, they let nothing escape them; eating up every thing that was green and juicy, not only the lesser kinds of vegetables, but the vine likewise; the fig tree, the pomegranate, the palm, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, Joe 1:12; in doing which they kept their ranks like men of war; climbing over, as they advanced, every tree or wall that was in their way. Nay, they entered into our very houses and bedchambers, like so many thieves. The inhabitants, to stop their progress, made a variety of pits and trenches all over their fields and gardens, which they fined with water; or else they heaped up in them heath, stubble, and such like combustible matter, which were severally set on fire upon the approach of the locusts. But this was all to no purpose, for the trenches were quickly filled up, and the fires extinguished, by infinite swarms succeeding one another; while the front was regardless of danger, and the rear pressed on so close, that a retreat was altogether impossible. A day or two after one of these broods was in motion, others were already hatched to march and glean after them; gnawing off the very bark, and the young branches, of such trees as had before escaped with the loss only of their fruit and foliage.

2–11. The signs of the approaching Day. A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness] So Zephaniah 1:15. Four synonyms are combined, for the purpose of emphasizing the darkness, which the prophet has in view. Darkness is, in Hebrew poetry, a common figure for calamity (comp. on Amos 5:18); but here, no doubt, the image is suggested by the fact that a flight of locusts, as it approaches, presents the appearance of a black cloud, which, as it passes, obscures the sun, and even sometimes darkens the whole sky. Speaking of a ‘column of locusts,’ which appeared in India, a writer says, ‘it was so compact that, like an eclipse, it completely hid the sun; so that no shadow was cast by any object, and some lofty tombs, not more than 200 yards distant, were rendered quite invisible’ (ap. Kirby on Entomology, Letter VI.). “Our attention has often been attracted by the sudden darkening of the sun in a summer sky, accompanied by the peculiar noise which a swarm of locusts always makes moving through the air” (Van Lennep, Bible Lands, p. 315; comp. the illustration, p. 317). Many other observers speak similarly; cf. below, p. 87 ff. As the dawn spread upon the mountains, a people great and strong!] The words as the dawn &c. are to be connected with what follows, not with what precedes (which belongs rather to Joe 2:1); and the allusion is probably to the glimmering brightness produced by the reflexion of the sun’s rays from the wings of the locusts, which the prophet compares poetically to the early dawn as it first appears upon the mountains. “The day before the locusts arrived, we were certain that they were, approaching from a yellow reflexion produced by their yellow wings in the heavens. As soon as this was observed, no one doubted that a vast swarm of locusts was at hand” (from a description quoted by Credner, p. 274). Of a flight of locusts in the Sinai peninsula, the Rev. F. W. Holland writes, “They soon increased in number, and as their glazed wings glanced in the sun, they had the appearance of a snow-storm. Many settled on the ground, which was soon in many places quite yellow with them, and every blade of green soon disappeared” (ap. Tristram, N.H.B[35] p. 316). “Their flight may be likened to an immense snow storm, extending from the ground to a height at which our visual organs perceive them only a minute, darting scintillations …, a vast cloud of animated specks, glittering against the sun. On the horizon they often appear as a dust tornado, riding upon the wind like an ominous hail-storm, eddying and whirling about and finally sweeping up to and past you, with a power that is irresistible” (C. V. Riley, The Rocky Mountain Locust, p. 85 f.). [35] .H.B. … H. B. Tristram, Natural History of the Bible (1868).a great people and a strong] terms applied elsewhere to a human nation (Exodus 1:9; Deuteronomy 7:1 : comp. on ch.

A day of darkness and of gloominess - o: “A day full of miseries; wherefore he accumulates so many names of terrors. There was inner darkness in the heart, and the darkness of tribulation without.

1. By the blowing of the horn the priests are to warn the people (Amos 3:6) of the near approach of the day of Jehovah and to gather them into the temple to pray. The latter thought is not expanded until Joe 2:15.