Joel 2
Butler2 : 1 BLOW ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain ; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble : for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand ; 2 a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, as the dawn spread upon the mountains ; a great people and a strong, there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after them, even to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them ; and behind them a flame burneth : the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness ; yea, and none hath escaped them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses ; and as horsemen, so do they run. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of the mountains do they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. At their presence the peoples are in anguish : all faces are waxed pale. They run like mighty men ; they climb the wall like men of war ; and they march every one on his ways, and they break not their ranks. Neither doth one thrust another ; they march every one in his path : and they burst through the weapons, and break not off their course. They leap upon the city ; they run upon the wall ; they climb up into the houses ; they enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth quaketh before them ; the heavens tremble : the sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining : and the LORD uttereth his voice before his army ; for his camp is very great ; for he is strong that executeth his word : for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible ; and who can abide it ? Yet even now, saith the LORD, turn ye unto me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning : and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God ; for he is gracious and full
14 of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repenteth him of the evil. Who knoweth whether he will not turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meal offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God?
15,16. Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the old men, gather the children, and those that suck the
17 breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the peoples, Where is their God?
18,19. Then was the LORD jealous for his land, and had pity on his people. And the LORD answered and said unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye
20 shall be satisfied therewith: and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations: but I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, his forepart into the eastern sea, and his hinder part into the western sea; and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.
21,22. Fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice; for the LORD hath done great things. Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field; for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth
23 her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength. Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he giveth you the former rain in just measure, and he causeth to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain, in the first
24 month. And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.
25. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the
26 caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. And ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and shall praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath
27 dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and there is none else: and my people shall never be ashamed.
28. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men
29 shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I
30 pour out my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and
31 fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood,
32 before the great and terrible day of the LORD come. And it shall come to pass, that who-soever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as the LORD hath said, and among the remnant those
3: 1 whom the LORD doth call. For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall
2 bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my
3 land. And they have cast lots for my people: and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold
4 a girl for wine, that they might drink. Yea, and what are ye to me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the regions of Philistia? will ye render me a recompence? and if ye recompense me,
5 swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head. Forasmuch as ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant
6 things; the children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the sons
7 of the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border: behold, I will stir them up out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your
8 own head; and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the men of Sheba, to a nation far off: for the LORD hath spoken it.
9. Proclaim ye this among the nations; prepare war: stir up the mighty men; let all the
10 men of war draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your
11 pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Haste ye, and come, all ye nations round about, and gather yourselves together: thither cause thy mighty ones to come
12 down, O LORD. Let the nations bestir themselves, and come up to the valley of Jehosha-
13 phat: for there will I sit to judge all the nations round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, tread ye; for the winepress is full, the fats overflow; for their wick-
14 edness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! for the day of the LORD
15 is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars with- 16 draw their shining. And the LORD shall roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be a refuge unto his 17 people, and a strong hold to the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am the LORD your God, dwelling in Zion my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall 18 no strangers pass through her any more. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall flow with waters; and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the LORD, 19 and shall water the valley of Shittim. Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for the violence done to the children of Judah, because they have shed 20 innocent blood in their land. But Judah shall abide for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. And I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed: for the LORD dwelleth in Zion.
Chap. 2. The great alarm is sounded forth from the temple as usual in the presence of some dire calamity (verse 1); a more full description of the locusts is given—in part personal (verses 4-9), and in part general and in the line of their effects (verses 2, 3, 10, 11); the Lord exhorts the people to return to Him (verses 12-14). A solemn assembly is called for fasting and prayer (verses 15-17); the Lord answers graciously (verses 18-20), and passes over to rich promises of mercy, including rain and abundant harvests (verses 21-27); and finally to the fuller promise of His Spirit in the latter time (verses 23, 28-32).
1. “Blowing the trumpet and sounding an alarm” from the temple was of Divine appointment in the law given through Moses. (See Num. 10: 1-10.) It convened the people to consider and act upon any case of general calamity, and had the promise—“Ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.” The near “coming of the day of the Lord” is analogous to chap. 1: 15, and must be explained in the same way. H. C.
The day of the Lord. Again the temporal visitation is represented as typical of, and completed in, the final and great judgment. The temporal visitation “cometh,” takes place; the final judgment “is nigh at hand,” not yet come.
2-11. A description of the destroyers; the previous chapter had described the land which they had destroyed. B. C.
2. This darkness swept on as an avalanche of cloud, and rested like a dark pall of gloom and terror on the whole land. That this visitation should be described as surpassing any ever known before, and even any that should come after for many generations, need not surprise us. It may have been strictly true of it while it lasted, and in reference to judgments of this sort. H. C.
The prophet repeatedly alludes to the gloom and darkness occasioned by the arrival of the locusts. In fact, they fly so closely, and in such dense masses, that the sun is obscured, and the light is reduced to that of the sun under eclipse. We remember, when sitting writing on a summer afternoon at Baghdad, to have been startled by a sudden obscuration, reducing the light to that of a cloudy or foggy day in this country. This could not be accounted for from any obvious cause under the always cloudless sky of Chaldea, and we rushed out to see what was the matter—the first impression being that there was an eclipse of the sun. It proved to be a vast and dense cloud of locusts, passing over the city, which it covered like a pall. The flight was low; and the air seemed filled with them, as with us in a heavy fall of snow. Indeed, there is nothing that will give a better idea to the English reader than this of the appearance presented and the motion observed. Only that in this case the movement was horizontal, and the flakes (formed by the body of the locusts) being opaque, seemed black between the spectator and the sun. In many parts the cloud of locusts was quite black by its thickness, which allowed not the rays of the sun to pass through; but in other parts, especially toward the outer margin, the mass was less dense, and allowed the light to penetrate. Kitto.
3. “Fire” and “flame” are probably figurative; the desolation they wrought being like that of fire on the prairies, as if fire swept on before them, and again behind them, leaving absolutely nothing more to be destroyed. Exquisitely forcible and touching is this—the land seen in all the beauty of Eden before them, but behind them only a desolate wilderness.
4,5. The figure of an army moving in solid phalanx and fearful array is constantly present to the mind. Yet the thing described is an army, not of men, but of locusts. The locusts are like armed horsemen. He does not say that armed horsemen are coming on, and are like locusts. H. C.
The noise of their wings and legs when they leap resembles that of the ancient war chariots bounding over the rough hill-roads; it is like the crackling of the flame as it sweeps over a field in stubble; it is like the clashing of arms with which, in antique times, military hosts used to fire themselves for battle (verse 5). They inspire a terror as universal, as abject, as that felt before a conquering and invading army; “before them the nations tremble; all faces go pale” (verse 6). That holds good to this day; it is with a paralyzing agony of despair that an Oriental people awaits their approach. Cox.
6. Travelling along the western coast of Africa, I once beheld this terrible infliction. A few hundred yards to our right, darkening the air, the great innumerable host came on slowly and steadily, advancing in a direct line and in a mighty moving column. At the extremity of the field I saw the husbandmen bending over their staffs, and gazing with hopeless eyes upon that host of death, which swept like a destroying angel over the land, and consigned to ruin all the prospects of the year; for wherever that column winged its flight, beneath its withering influence the golden glories of the harvest perished, and the leafy honors of the forest disappeared. There stood those ruined men, silent and motionless, overwhelmed with the magnitude of their calamity, yet conscious of their utter inability to control it. Lord Carnarvon.
7-9. A closely accurate description of locusts, as they sweep along in their onward march for devastation. Every feature is in its place, made true to the reality by a master’s hand. That the sword avails nothing against them goes to confirm this view, and to shut off the possibility of applying the description to the Assyrian army. H. C.
Australian papers state that in the Riverina district the grasshoppers, or locusts, have been very troublesome recently, not only destroying crops, but filling up wells and water-tubs, and even consuming textile fabrics, such as blinds and window-curtains in the houses. Times, January, 1875.
10. Strong feeling naturally expresses itself in strong language. The darkening of the sun, moon and stars is a common figure for a great calamity; as, on the other hand, sun-rising and the joyous light of day are symbols of prosperity. The reader may find scriptural examples in abundance—e.g., of the former class, Jer. 4:28; Ezek. 32:7, 8; Isa. 13:10; Matt. 24:29. H. C.—The description is now passing on from the type to the antitype; from the terror of the locusts and temporal foes to the terrors which are to precede the last day. Yet without any violence done to the type.
11. His army. Showing that those who afflict and destroy, whether temporally or at the end of all things, are still Jehovah’s executors of vengeance. In Isa. 13:3 the Medes and Persians are “His sanctified ones” for the destruction of Babylon. B. C.
Who can abide it? The future punishment of the wicked may be regarded as a necessary result of a sinful existence. Sin carries with it its own punishment to a certain extent, while men exist on earth; and if their existence be perpetuated in the world to come, that existence must be miserable. For the society and employments of heaven there is neither relish nor sympathy in their moral nature; and severed from God and heaven they must be, even if they had their choice. Heaven itself would be a hell to the wicked. The elements of misery are essentially and inseparably connected with sin. Divine mercy has provided a remedy, and if men reject that remedy, their doom is the result of their own conduct, and impugns not either the benevolence or the justice of God. W. Cooke.
12. Up to this point Joel’s denunciation has consisted of lamentation and mourning and woe, in a pathetic strain of unbroken severity and sternness. Here the first gleam of hope and tender anticipation of better things breaks in. B. C.
12-14. This is the only appropriate thing to be done—the only source of hope for deliverance—to return and seek the Lord in penitence, for He is gracious and delights in mercy. Who knows but He may turn from scourging to blessing, and leave us at least so much that we can bring meat and drink offerings before Him at His temple? This moral lesson is for all time, and for all sorts of affliction and calamity befalling men in this world. Everywhere and always, be the scourge what it may, it behooves men to turn to God, confessing sin, imploring mercy, daring to hope, since they may, that the Lord will yet turn from judgment to mercy. H. C.
12. He that would so turn to the Lord, as to find mercy with Him, must not turn from one sin to another, or from one sect to another, or from one religion to another only; but he must turn from all his sins, from all his former wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts, and must “turn unto the Lord with all his heart”—that is, our hearts must be wholly inclined to God, and our souls be offered up as a whole burnt-offering unto Him, without any mental reservation or hypocritical equivocation. There is no agreement between Christ and Belial, between God and sin in the same heart. Bp. Beveridge.
The real meaning of judgment is mercy. The locusts have come, inflicting so much misery, suggesting portents of such terror, only that men may turn unto the Lord with all their hearts, sincerely repenting them of the sins because of which the judgment has come. This penitence is to be shown in fasting, in tears, in mourning, in amendment. The words, “Rend your hearts, and not your garments,” remind them that God requires the inward grace of spiritual contrition—requires “that within which passeth show.” To induce this spiritual and godly sorrow, to suggest its power with God, the prophet recalls the most solemn proclamation of the Divine nature and mercy ever made to their fathers. On Mount Sinai the Lord God had descended in cloud and storm, through a trembling heaven to a quaking earth, that He might pass before Moses, proclaiming His name, “Jehovah, Jehovah El, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means always leave unpunished.” It is an echo of that voice from Sinai which sounds in verse 13:
“For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness, And repenteth Him of the evil.”
If they return to Him with genuine contrition, may they not hope that He, whose very name suggests a longsuffering grace and mercy, will show His great kindness and forgive their sin. If He repents of the evils they have compelled Him to inflict, may not they well repent of the evils by which they have compelled Him to judge and punish? For Himself the prophet has little doubt. “Who knoweth?” he asks, and the question is equivalent to “peradventure.” “Who knoweth? He may return and repent, and leave behind him a blessing,” even on this visit of judgment; and such a blessing, such ample stores of corn and wine and oil, that once more there will be “offering and libation,” joy and gladness, solemn services and merry feasts in the house of the Lord. Cox.
13. Repenteth Him of the evil. The doctrine of “God’s repentance” in inflicting evil, dwelt on so strongly and so often in Holy Scripture (Ex. 32:14; 2 Sam. 24:16; Jer. 18:8; Jonah 4:2), is not merely the result of the infirmity of human language in its application to the Divine Being. Its object is to impress upon us the personal character of God, totally distinct and differing from a law; that in this character the first quality is mercy, which displays itself immediately that obstacles are withdrawn; that His threatened judgments are conditional and may be averted, as in the case of Nineveh; that the power of human repentance is boundless. “If we repent of our sins, He too repents of His threat, and the evil with which He had threatened us He does not bring upon us, and with our change of mind He too is changed.” B. C.
18-20. The Lord’s answer promises blessings that lie over against the previous curse. He will gloriously reverse the calamities with corresponding mercies. II. C.—The judgment came in mercy; for it came to revive that consciousness of the Divine presence and care and goodness, to give that sacred beauty to life, and that impressive reality to worship, without which no nation can be strong and happy and free. And so soon as the merciful purpose of the judgment was reached they were redeemed from judgment; as they returned to Him, God returned to them. The locusts were driven into the desert and the sea; copious rains replenished the fountains and caused the water-courses to overflow; the pastures grew green; the fields laughed with corn; fig-tree and vine yielded their strength; the barns grew full of grain, the vats ran over with oil and wine; and joy, a pure devout joy, returned to the sons of men. Nay, more; while their hearts were quick and tender, new and larger spiritual blessings were vouchsafed to them. The downfall of rain was but a prelude to the outpouring of the Spirit, the recovered fertility and beauty of the land were but a type of the heightened vigor and fruitfulness of that loftier phase of spiritual life to which they were to be raised: with their happier conditions there was to come a happier character, new energies, purer affections. Cox.
20. In our own times we have seen swarms of locusts covering the land of Judea, and afterward, by the mercy of God, when the wind rose, they have been driven into the front and hinder sea. And the shore of both seas being covered with heaps of dead locusts thrown out by the water, they have putrefied and become so noxious as to infect the air and produce a pestilence of men and beasts. Jerome.
21,22. By a bold personification the “land” and the “beasts” are exhorted not to fear any more, for God will remove His fearful scourge. “The Lord will do great things,” is here finely contrasted with the locusts “doing great things,” as in verse 20. However great their devastations, the Lord can make His ensuing blessings far greater. He delights to set His mercies over against the mischiefs and miseries that sin brings on men, and to show in this way how exceedingly He can surpass them in the greatness and glory of His grace. H. C.
23. The following is a paraphrase of the whole verse: “And be glad, ye children of Zion: rejoice in the Lord your God, for according to His righteousness, He is giving you the autumn rains after your repentance: as His immediate blessing, He is sending you the rain, the autumn rain and the spring rain, and afterward, in the latter days, He will pour His Spirit upon all flesh.” B. C.
25. My great army. We have here a key to the grand and beautiful description which runs through these two chapters. Every reader must be struck with the poetical and sublime manner in which the allegory is conducted. There is not a more splendid piece of poetry extant. Abp. Newcome.
Wasted and blasted years are a fact in most human lives. Few can look back, even from the standpoint of mid-age, without being startled and humbled at the number and size of the bare spots scattered over the area of his years. And the appalling thing about this waste is not the large fragments which are struck out by sickness or by accident, without any responsibility of ours. It is the years which have been eaten up by little, scarcely appreciable agencies like a caterpillar or a cankerworm. Years which have gone, frittered away, we do not know how, and for which we have nothing whatever to show; years devoured in trifles, escaped, like subtle vapor, in musing and brooding over something we meant to do, but which we never did; years that flected, as on the wings of a hurricane, in the wild rush of dissipation, and out of which are left only the broken strains of old songs, and a few dry leaves of withered garlands. There they lie back in the past, in the sad light of a sinking sun, precious, golden spaces, teeming with possibilities of good, tracts of rich soil, on which we note the aimless traces of our idle feet, as we lounged with our eyes at the ends of the earth; lo, they are blighted and bare now, as though the army of locusts had swept over them. How late we are in learning what grand harvests are to be reaped from husbanded minutes! We begin to economize time as the penitent spendthrift does money, only when he sees the bottom of the chest between the scanty pieces.
But we have the general, sweeping promise of God: “I will restore the eaten years.” That tells us that restoration, according to a Divine ideal—quite possibly a different ideal from ours, certainly a higher ideal—is a possibility and a fact in the Divine economy. But we may go further. Some features of this process we know. For example, God turns the man entirely away from the thought and the work of literal restoration. In other words, He does not ask of him to make good, in the sense of a literal equivalent, the waste of the past. He is bidden to turn his back on the bare and wasted places. His concern is with the present and the future, not with the past. As for the problem of making good the ruin, he must leave that all with God. Whatever He may do with the faultful past, a penitent soul can only leave it in God’s hands. His work now is not to make good the past, but to give himself to the development of his new life as a new creature in Christ Jesus. God believes in the possibility of a genuine repentance, and frankly accepts it. We do not and cannot know what God does with the irrevocable and the irremediable in men’s evil past; but we do know that He makes those barren and blasted heritages bloom again, and bring forth thirty, sixty, and an hundred-fold. Both the Bible and Christian history are full of the grand, fruitful work of restored men, men with large tracts of blasted years behind them. God’s promise of restoration to His penitent people, given by His prophet in this chapter, is no stinted or modified promise. It is as full and generous as if the years had not been blighted. He says, “I will restore. As for thee, forget the things which are behind. Run with patience the race before thee. Look unto Jesus and not unto the past. Thou shalt eat in plenty and be satisfied, and shalt praise the name of the Lord thy God that hath dealt wondrously with thee, and my people shall never be ashamed.” Vincent.
28-32. Yet there is another prediction still more important—the promise of the effusion of the Spirit of God upon His people in the latter times. God’s ancient Church, as well as the Christian Church, had a participation in the Spirit of God. They could not have been His people without it. His Spirit was the bond of communion, the only inward bond which could, or can, exist between God and men in covenant with God. But in the Old Testament the graces of His Spirit were less rich and less generally bestowed. Until Christ had returned to His Father, the Comforter could not come and bestow Himself in His fulness (John 16 : 7). Joel is the first to predict that He should so come—“afterward,” not in the prophet’s own day. Now God would, in answer to penitent prayer, give the natural rains which were needed to repair the injuries of the locust devastation. Hereafter He would rain down His Spirit in an abundance which had never before been vouchsafed. Moses had long ago uttered the ejaculation, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them” (Num. 11 : 29). Joel takes up his words and predicts that this longing shall be accomplished “in the latter days.” Isaiah (11 : 9 ; 32 : 15 ; 54 : 13), Jeremiah (31 : 33), Ezekiel (36 : 26), Zechariah (12 : 10), intimate the same truth; but it is Joel who, both from the priority and the clearness of his prediction, is in an especial manner the prophet of the manifestation of the Holy Ghost, as others were prophets of the manifestation of the Messiah. B. C.
There can be no doubt that this passage predicts the effusion of the Spirit in the Gospel sense, and particularly, though not exclusively, in Gospel times. The only designation of time given here, “afterward,” in future time, was purposely left thus indefinite. The period before Christ and subsequent to Joel is not necessarily excluded; the early years of the Christian age are certainly included, as Peter shows (Acts 2 : 16-21) in his citation of this passage as then having its fulfilment; nor can the yet future periods of the Gospel age be shut out. Indeed, numerous prophecies show that in the times yet future there shall be far richer manifestations of the Spirit’s power than the world has yet seen. Nothing in prophecy, nothing in Peter’s reference to Joel on the day of Pentecost, forbids this belief. Finally, let us notice the favor shown by the Lord to the saints of that early age, in setting before them such glimpses of the better Gospel days yet to come, and particularly such revelations of the future effusions of the Spirit. It must have ministered greatly to their faith in God and to their hope and joy in His kingdom among men. H. C.
The extent of this blessing, in respect of the persons on whom it shall be bestowed; the Spirit shall be poured out upon all flesh, not as hitherto upon Jews only, but upon Gentiles also; for in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Greek (Rom. 10 : 11, 12). Hitherto Divine revelation was confined to the seed of Abraham; none but those of the land of Israel had the Spirit of prophecy; but in the last days all flesh shall see the glory of God (Isa. 40 : 5), and shall come to worship before Him (Isa. 66 : 23). Peter himself did not fully understand it as speaking of the Gentiles, till he saw it accomplished in the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Cornelius and his friends, who were Gentiles (Acts 10 : 44, 45), which was but a continuation of the same gift which was bestowed on the Day of Pentecost. The Spirit shall be poured out upon all flesh, upon all those whose hearts are made hearts of flesh, soft and tender, and so prepared to receive the impressions and influences of the Holy Ghost; upon all flesh, upon some of all sorts of men; the gifts of the Spirit shall not be so sparing, or so much confined, as they have been, but shall be more general and diffusive of themselves. H.
The Holy Ghost is the great agent of the Gospel, who brings nigh to us its blessings, its pardons and its hopes, as He brings us to that state of mind, that repentance and faith, without which we can never receive them. Hence, in the discharge of His work, according to the promise of the Saviour, He convinces “the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.” He brings truth, in its clearness and power, before the mind, and opens the mind to receive it. He sets the obligations of the truth before the view, and quickens the conscience to feel them. When the facts of the Gospel come home to the mind and heart, as great and solemn and stirring realities, the Holy Ghost is there. When conscious guilt troubles the spirit, and fear takes hold upon one, so as to force from him the anxious inquiry, “What shall I do to be saved?” the Spirit of God is there. When the cross of Christ, girt with its bow of promise and of hope, and yet red with the blood of atonement, meets the eye, and the soul bows and casts itself, humbled, penitent and believing, at the Redeemer’s feet, the Holy Ghost is there. Thus, without His influences, we see no evil in sin, and no beauty in the cross; without His influences, we know not the remonstrances of a Gospel-stirred conscience, nor the peace-speaking power of atoning blood. Conviction is His gift; repentance, faith are His gifts. His design is to bring us to the experience of the former and to the exercise of the latter, and thus to place us in that moral position where alone the blood of Christ, in its efficacy, and the forgiveness of God, in its fulness and freeness, can possibly reach us. E. M.
All the influences which bear upon the renewed soul, the guidance, the strength, the energy, the succor, the comfort, by which the life of the believer is sustained and developed—all are ascribed alike by Paul and Peter, James and John, solely to the power of the indwelling Spirit. The power of the Holy Ghost, they affirm again and again, is put forth in the soul of every believer through life. The beautiful and effective graces, the enriching experiences, and the beneficent results of a sanctified life are attributed alone to the immediate personal inworking of the Divine Spirit in the human. The light to discern duty and the energy to perform it, the courage to dare, to do or to speak for God and the right, the determination to avoid or resist evil, the fortitude to endure trial which characterize the believer’s conduct, the satisfaction, the peace, the hope, the solace and the joy which enter into his experience—all that marks the process of renewal going on day by day in the inner man is the sole product of the Spirit’s might, continually exerted therein, through the truth He has revealed. B.
The dispensation of the Holy Spirit will last, and His work extend over the ages, till all which may be done by Him for human salvation will have been exhausted. The Gospel will be preached, and the missionary sent to all nations, and converts be made in all lands, and the Word of Life and the Church and its ordinances be given to all people. Ancient prophecy and revealed promise and purpose of God shall have their complete fulfilment, when also the Spirit’s work shall be finished, and all that God’s plan of redemption can effect for human conversion and recovery to spiritual life, under the righteously applied power of the Holy Ghost, will have been secured; and then the last things must occur in the closing of human history. We do not need to trace the course of Christian ecclesiastical history in detail up to the present time, nor attempt to settle where in the process of prophetic fulfilment our age stands. We only need to know the Holy Ghost will preside over and guide the Church, and show the things of Christ to her members, and convince the world of Christ’s true Messiahship, “to the glory of the Father,” till His second coming. We may well believe, from the increased missionary zeal and prayer of the Church, and the Christian enterprise of the age, and the faith and expectation of Christians, that we are near to auspicious events and extensive changes for good to mankind. One widespread iniquity after another is attacked and abolished, and the hope and courage of good men, notwithstanding prevalent infidelity and abounding iniquity, were never so high and strong as now. The nations of the world are to become the one kingdom of the Redeemer, and in His own time He shall come and stretch His sceptre over them. Laurens P. Hickok.
30. And I will shew wonders in the heavens. The prophet, having foretold in the clearest terms the general effusion of the Holy Spirit which was to characterize the Gospel dispensation, concludes this chapter with a striking description of the destruction of Jerusalem which followed soon after, and punished the Jews for their obstinate rejection of the sacred influence; speaking in terms which, as well as those of our Saviour that resemble them, have a double aspect, and refer to a primary and a final dispensation. (Cf. Matt. 24 : 29.) Gray.—Very great slaughter and the burning of many towns, and even of a part of Jerusalem itself, preceded the destruction of the city and the Temple, and the total subversion of the Jewish polity by the Romans. Abp. Newcome.
32. In Rom. 10 Paul quotes what is said in Joel 2 : 32 : “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Referring to it, as the apostle does, for a formal proof of the position, that there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek in the matter of salvation, he must have considered the prophet as simply addressing the Church of God, without respect to the Jewish element, which at that time so largely entered into its composition. He must have understood the prophecy as uttered respecting the visible Church of God—no matter of what element composed, or how constituted. P. Fairbairn.
“The remnant whom the Lord shall call” is the Old Testament form of the doctrine of the election of grace (Rom. 9 : 27 ; 11 : 5) ; Mount Zion representing the Church of Christ, and the remnant representing the elect gathered within it. In the present passage the meaning is that salvation will be found among the dwellers in Zion and those of the exiles who have been brought back thither safe. Peter refers to these words of Joel in Acts 2 : 39, “For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call,” evidently in allusion to the LXX. rendering of Joel. It would seem from this that Peter understood by “the remnant” the restored exiles, whom he regards as types of the far-off Gentiles, who are to be brought home by the call of God. B. C.
Chap. 3. The chapter looks far beyond the case of those nations named, and teaches that the retribution which blighted them falls under the general law, serves to illustrate that law, and finds a place in this chapter for this reason, and not as being the leading theme. The relation of this chapter to the first and second should be noticed. The locust army, and its attendant drought and consequent famine and distress, gave occasion to prayer, fasting and penitence, and so opened the way for the signal extermination of that army, and for timely rains and superabundant harvests. These lesser gifts suggested the far greater gifts of the Spirit, the prediction of which constitutes the glory of the closing verses of the second chapter. But there remains yet another great lesson of moral truth, suggested by the extermination of the locust horde—a lesson hinted at (2 : 30, 31) in the allusion to “the great and terrible day of the Lord,” but laid over for its special presentation in the third chapter—viz., the fearful and exterminating retribution which God will bring on all those nations and powers which persistently array themselves in arms against His kingdom and people. Hence this is the great theme of the chapter before us. It naturally closes with the resulting peace, prosperity and purity of the rescued and saved people of God.
1,2. The first word, “For,” indicates the close connection of thought between this chapter and the preceding. The prophet had said there should be “a great and terrible day of the Lord,” so sweeping in the ruin it brings that none shall escape it but those who call upon the name of the Lord. Here, resuming this subject, he begins to give the reason, “For I will gather all nations”—i.e., for trial and retribution. “Behold” calls special attention as to truths of momentous import. The time when is indicated next—viz., when He shall interpose to redeem His people and bring them out of all their affliction. I adopt the ideal sense of “the valley of Jehoshaphat”—meaning any valley—any circumstances in which Jehovah judges guilty nations. The fact that He does judge them, and visit upon them retribution in time, is the thing taught;—the place where, and its surroundings, are only the ideal drapery of the scene, designed to make the fact more tangible to the imagination. H. C.
Joel is looking forward to a day on which the Spirit of God will be poured out on all flesh— to a day, therefore, which will be a day of judgment to all nations and all men, since, when the Spirit of God comes to them, they will either resist or yield to it, and according as they yield or resist will determine their fate. He wants to bring this day of the Spirit, this day of judgment, this conflict of the Spirit with the flesh, the good with the evil in man, home to the hearts of Jews—to the hearts of Jews who lived eight or nine centuries before Christ. How is he to do it? He does it, or attempts it, by using facts with which they are familiar, but by using them in a way so profound, so full of a mystical and spiritual wisdom, that, dimly at least, they did see the high meaning he put into them, and looked onward to the end of the world, the last judgment, the victory of good over evil. Cox.
4. “What are ye to Me, O Tyre?” What account do I make of you? As the context goes on to say, Will ye think to rise against My scourging hand and wreak your vengeance on Me, or on My people? Will ye retaliate on Me? If ye attempt it, very speedily and swiftly will I hurl back your retaliation upon your own heads. Of course, in this lofty strain, the Lord speaks after the manner of men, but as one conscious of infinite power to punish His foes, and fully purposed to visit on them most ample and righteous retribution. As already intimated in the introductory remarks upon this chapter, these nations—Tyre, Zidon and Philistia—are named here, not as being the only nations involved in this great judgment, but as present to the minds of the prophet and of his first readers, and as fitting illustrations, therefore, of the great truths he would impress.
9,10. Having finished the digression in respect to Tyre, etc., and the form of retribution destined for them, the prophet now, speaking in behalf of the Almighty, daringly challenges the Gentile hosts to muster for the mighty conflict. The first word of the challenge, rendered “prepare” war, carries with it the idea of proclaiming war in the most solemn manner with religious rites. It is the common word for “sanctify,” and means here—make this war a sacred thing; bind yourselves to it by solemn oaths, and invoke all your gods to your help. Beating ploughshares into swords reverses the long prayed for consummation when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares. The sense is—prepare for universal war. The implements on hand might suffice for any ordinary war, but not for this; now you must needs arm every man, and hence you must convert even the tools of agriculture into weapons of
war. Let the conscription be absolutely universal. Let no invalid plead exemption; “let even the weak say, I am strong.”