Joel 1

Joel 1:1-7

This chapter is a description of a lamentable devastation made in Judea by locusts and caterpillars: some think the prophet speaks of it as a thing to come, and gives warning of it beforehand, as usually the prophets did; others think it was new present, and his business is to affect the people with it, and awaken them by it to repentance. 1. It is spoken of as a judgment which had no precedent in former ages, vers. 1—7. 2. All sorts of people sharing in the calamity are called upon to lament it, vers. 8—13. 3. They are directed to look up to God in these lamentations, and to humble themselves before him, vers. 14—20.

1. THE word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. 2. Hear this, ye old men, and give ear all ye inhabitants of the land: hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? 3. Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. 4. That which the palmer-worm hath left, hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left, hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left, hath the caterpillar eaten. 5. Awake ye drunkards, and weep, and howl all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. 6. For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great lion. 7. He hath laid my vine waste, and barbed my fig-tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away, the branches thereof are made white.

The prophet opens his discourse,

1. With an address to all the inhabitants of Judea, old and young, whose attention he demands to the message he was about to deliver: a message of judgment, such as the oldest could not remember, nor the tradition of former ages produce, and which ought to be handed down to the latest posterity, v. 3. that, warned by the sufferings of their forefathers, they may avoid their sins.

2. The judgment itself is an invasion from a terrible enemy. And is by many applied to the Aflyrians, who ravaged and defolated the country; but may literally be better referred to the armies of locusts and other infects, which, in swarms succeeding each other, devoured all the fruits of the earth, and left the whole land barren as the scorched desert. Delipable as they might seem apart, their multitudes made them formidable: not the ravages of the lions from the forest could be more fatal: not only the vine-leaves are eaten up, but the very fig-trees are barked and destroyed by them. Now, God never wants instruments of vengeance: the most insignificant infect can in his hand be made the feverish courage; and a locust terrible as a lion.

3. The drunkards are admonished to lament the judgment, which their sins had provoked, and by which they would be particularly affected, because the new wine is cut off from their mouths. And justly doth God punish those who abused his favours, by depriving them of their good things, and leaving them in want and wretchedness to lament their bakeries.

4. Lament like a virgin girded with fackcloth for the husband of her youth. 9. The meat-offering, and the drink-offering, is cut off from the house of the LORD; the precise the LORD’s ministers mourn. 10. The field is wafted, the land mourneth; for the corn

corn

corn is wafted: the new wine is + dried up, the oil languifieth. 11. Be ye affamed, O ye hufbandmen, howl, O ye vine-dreffers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. 12. The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languifieth, the pomegranate-tret, the palm-tree alfo, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field are withered: because ‘joy is withered away from the sons of men. 13. Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye mindfters of the altar: come, lie all night in fackcloth, ye mindfters of my God: for the ‘meat-offering and the drink-offering is withhold from the houfe of your God.

Joel 1:8-13

The whole nation, deeply affected with the calamity, is called upon to mourn in fackcloth, as a virgin that is robbed of her betrothed spoof, on whom her warmest affections were fixed, and whose loss fills her heart with bitterest anguish. Note, They who are wedded to worldly comfort find it death to part from them.

The corn, wine, and oil, are perished; the trees stripped of leaves and fruit, and withered away; the very earth looks dark, and mourned over the defoliation; because joy is withered away from the sons of men; the songs of harvest and the shouting of the vintage are silent, and nothing is heard but howling and groans. Particularly.

1. The hufbandmen and vine-dreffers are called to beware the dreadful devalations: their labours are ruined, their hopes disappointed, themselves and families left to pine in want and perish by famine.

2. The priests of the sanctuary are commanded to join the general cry, and mourn over the deserted altars, where no sacrifice tions, no oblation was prevented. They are called mindfters of the altar, as bound to a constant attendance there; and mindfters of my God, this being their disfiguated honour, and the motive to their indefatigable labour. They would now be peculiar sufferers, and be destitute of that maintenance with which the altar used to supply them; but a nobler concern must fill their minds, and grief to see God’s worship neglected must swallow up every other concern that is merely their own. Note, A true minister of God hath his glory more at heart than every other consideration: compared with this, he counts not even his own life dear unto himself.

3. ¶ 5 Sanctify ye a fath, call ‘a + solemn assembly, gather the elders, and all the inhabitants of the land into the houfe of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD. 15. ¶ 6 Alas for the day! for ’the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. 16. Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, ‘joy and gladness from the houfe of our God? 17. The £ feed is eaten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered. 18. How do the beasts groan? the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pafture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. 19. ¶ 7 O LORD, to thee will I cry: for ’the fire hath devoured the £ paftures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burnt all the trees of the field. 20. The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the paftures of the wilderness.

Joel 1:14-20

To avert the heavy wrath upon thera, the prophet points out to them the prophets’ means to be purified. As their sufferings came from God’s displeasure, to remove this must be their full concern.

1. Let a solemn fall be proclaimed. A day of deep humiliation, for which the Lord is at hand, and a thrift, by a strict abstinence from meat and drink, they acknowledged themselves unworthy of every mercy, and, prostrate in the courts of the Lord’s house, confessed the justice of the judgments he had inflicted, they might with prayers and tears cry unto a pardoning God, that sin, the cause of their calamity, being forgiven, their sufferings, the due effects thereof, might be removed. Note, (1.) National judgments call for national humiliation. (2.) When we are found in God’s appointed ways, we may humbly hope be well meet us in mercy. (3.) Affliction then answers the end for which it was sent, when it brings us to our knees, and raise the cry of fervent importanate prayer.

2. Abundant reason there is for this humiliation.

[1.] What they suffered already was grievous. If they looked into their garners, they were empty; if to God’s house, no sacrifice or oblation was seen; if to the country, desolate it mourned, the feed under the clod is eaten, and the very beasts groan, perplexed for want of food, and pining away. Note, (1.) How terrible is famine: how thankful might we to be for the plenty we have so long enjoyed, and how should we fear to

provoke God, by our abide of his mercies, to withhold them! (2.) The very earth mourns, the very beasts groan under men’s sins, and shall we ourselves be the only infernible beings in the whole creation!

[2.] What they feared was yet more terrible: for the day of the Lord is at hand. What they felt was but the beginning of forrows, and a foretake of the greater evil approaching; as destruction from the Almighty is shall come; which may refer to the ruin of the nation at first by the Chaldeans, or afterwards by the Romans, sent of God to panish them for their iniquities, whose arm of omnipotence is irrefutable. And more generally this may be applied to every sinner, whose judgment advances, whose damnation flumbereth not, whose everlasting destruction is at the door: unless he repents without delay, he perishes eternally. Well may we therefore cry, Alas for the day!

3. The prophet urges them hereunto by the examples before them.

[1.] His own. O Lord, to thee will I cry: as deeply affected with their sins and their sufferings, he earnestly addresses his prayer to God; to him who wounds, and alone is able to heal; the fire of whose wrath, whatever instruments were employed, had consumed them; and he only, who had kindled, could quench it. Note, They who call others to baling and prayer, must themselves lead the way in the fervency of their own devotions.

[2.] Of the beasts. The beasts of the field cry unto thee also: with sounds inarticulate indeed, but which the Lord can hear and pity. They are parched with thrift and tumbled with hunger; for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the paftures of the wilderness, marched up with the excessive drought. Note, The very lowing of the oxen, yea the ravens cries, shall rise up in judgment to reproach the stupidity of the sinner who restrains prayer before God.