Joel lived about eight hundred years before Christ, probably in the early part of the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah. He was a southerner, a Judean, and all his prophecy is cast against the background of Judea. He was a countryman too, not a city-dweller, as is evidenced by the wealth of allusions to country life in the three chapters of his short prophecy. Vine-dressers and husbandmen pass across the stage; vines and fig trees, pomegranates, palms and orange trees stand erect in the background against a landscape of cornfields and pasture lands. This was the world that Joel knew, in this framework he set his prophecy and from it he took his allusions and symbols.

Joel was very nearly the first of the prophets. Amos and Jonah lived just a little later and Hosea perhaps, twenty years earlier. But Hosea was not one of the men who saw in vision the glory of the coming Kingdom; he was more concerned with the sins of Israel of his own day. So Joel was the first of that long line of seers, ending with Malachi, who saw in vision something of the glories to come and recorded what they saw in never-to-be-forgotten words. Malachi lived five hundred years later than Joel. During all that time the voice of prophecy was hardly ever silent. When at last, with the death of Malachi, the Holy Spirit ceased to speak with the authority that was the peculiar characteristic of these Hebrew prophets the foundation had been well and truly laid. All men in after times were to learn about God's good plans for the last conflict with evil and the setting up of His Kingdom on Earth.

Isaiah, who began his lifetime of prophecy and statesmanship something like sixty years after Joel, must have owed much to the earlier prophet. Isaiah's prophecy contains much that is found in embryo form in Joel. Isaiah's doctrine of the "remnant" that was carried forward into the New Testament and furnished the Apostle Paul with one of his greatest themes, has its origin in Joel. The restoration of the Earth in the "times of restitution of all things" so wonderfully described by Isaiah, is first hinted at in Joel. There are eloquent descriptions of Armageddon, the day of God's rising up to judge the evil things of the earth, and His establishment of a Kingdom of everlasting righteousness. The constant themes of prophetic Scripture from Isaiah to Revelation, have their commencement too in Joel. This obscure countryman, notable neither for wealth or rank or talent, unused to city ways and the society of the learned and cultured, a man of the people and a man of the soil, was the first to be blessed by the Most High with visions of the Last Days. And because this short prophecy is thus the fountain-head of all subsequent revelation concerning the Time of the End it is of surpassing interest to all who would discern the "shape of things to come"

Characteristically, we know nothing of Joel's antecedents, only that he was the son of Pethuel, and no one knows of whom came Pethuel, of what tribe he was, or where he lived. The message was all-important, and Joel's own identity of no importance. He just announces, briefly,"The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel" and then plunges into his message. None can doubt that it was a message from the heart; the words are burning, white-hot, given forth with urgency and fire. One has the impression of a youthful zealot like John the Baptist, crying his message with such intensity that the people were compelled in spite of themselves to stop and listen. "Hear this, you aged men" he cries "and give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days or in the days of your fathers?" An arresting opening to the message, that he had something to tell them that had not been known in past generations; a new thing in the land to which they must give earnest heed, a thing unheard of by the wise men of times gone past.

Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." Joel was a master of psychology. He has not yet broached the subject of his message, nor even given any hint as to its nature. Many of the prophets announced their God-given authority in their opening breath and plunged into their message with the next. Not so Joel; he means to get the interest of his hearers first. And how subtle the appeal to their knowledge of the Mosaic Law! It was an obligation in Israel that Divine Truth be passed on from generation to generation by the teaching of the young. Had not Moses commanded them, saying "Only take heed, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen,… make them known to your children and your children's children."(Deut. 4. 9). In much later times the people were taught to sing the noble strains of the 78th Psalm "he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments" What a wonderful conception of the eternal truth of God, handed down from generation to generation, preserving alive the healthful influence of a strong religious faith within the nation. What a condemnation upon our own times when this Divine injunction has been all but universally ignored, with the dire results manifest today on every hand among the young!

But now the listeners are waiting to hear what the prophet has to tell them. Is it a message only for them, or does its scope take in sweeps of time and space outside the limits of their own lives and homes, extending into all the Earth and even to the end of the world? From the first few words, tremendous though they may be, it would seem not, for they appear to relate to nothing more world-shaking than the imminence of a great plague of locusts in Judea, and that, although always a grievous calamity hardly needed the intervention of a prophet of God. ''That which the palmerworm has left, the locusts have eaten; and those which the locusts have left have the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm has left has the caterpillar eaten." The Hebrew words refer to four varieties of the many different species of locust, the gazam, the arbeth, the yelek and the chasil. The first is distinguished for its voracity, whence it was called the "biter", the second for its swarming multitudes, the third for its propensity for licking up and consuming all in its path, so it was called the "licker", and the fourth for plain unadulterated destructiveness. One might almost think that here is a covert reference to God's "four sore judgments". It is, surprising how often the number four is associated with Divine judgment in the Scriptures. Not only are there the well known four horsemen of Revelation, and the four winds of Revelation 7, but there are also the four horns of Zechariah 1.18 and the four beasts of Daniel 7. In these latter two instances, at least, the symbols describe agencies that are like Joel's locusts in that their mission is to execute judgment upon Israel. Yet like that dread visitation that appeared before Joel's eyes, it will one day be turned back and permit the favour of God to come upon a chastened people. That truth is brought forth very plainly in Ezekiel 14. 21-22. "Thus says the Lord God; How much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four sore acts of judgments, sword, famine, evil beast, and pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast! (RSV) Yet therein shall be left a remnant" (AV)

The opening verse of the prophecy, therefore, gives a picture of the utter desolation of the land by a great plague of locusts. It was a vivid picture and a very familiar one to the people of Joel's day. Many travellers in Eastern lands have written descriptions of the terrible havoc caused by the millions of flying insects; no better symbol of devastation and ruin could be selected. Chapter 1 verse 4 implies that the plague has come and gone and now the land is utterly ruined. The following verses describe the lament that goes up from all quarters, from the people and the priests, the merrymakers and the workers merging into a national cry of distress rising up to God; but there is as yet no evidence of repentance. Chapter 1 closes with a people bowed down in trouble but not as yet prepared to come to God in repentance that He might heal them.

It is difficult to decide whether in this first chapter, Joel is referring to a literal plague of locusts or to a great calamity that is about to fall upon his nation and of which the locusts are but a symbol. Probably the latter is the right interpretation. There would hardly seem to be necessity for employing a prophet of God to foretell a visitation which was a fairly common sight and occurred every few years anyway. It is more likely that this is the beginning of Joel's developing prophetic sense, that sense which by the time he reached his third chapter had stretched out into the far distant future and shown him Armageddon itself - "multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision". But there is no hint in this first chapter of his seeing so far; the visitation to which he refers here must be one that was already very near, to be fulfilled on his own people in consequence of their apostasy. It is a reasonable conclusion that under the figure of the locusts, Joel was seeing the series of invasions under Shalmaneser and Sennacherib. These resulted in the carrying away captive of the "Ten Tribes" and a goodly number also of the people of Judah. Later, under Nebuchadnezzar the devastation of the land was completed. It is significant that just as Joel saw four species of locusts, each eating up what its predecessors had left (v 4) until nothing remained; so the Scriptures speak of four great military conquerors who came, one after the other, into the land of Israel and Judah, and left nothing. Shalmaneser V of Assyria (2 Kings 18.9) came first, about sixty years after Joel prophesied. He was followed by Sargon II (Isa. 20.1) who actually captured Samaria. Next came the famous Sennacherib whose host was destroyed outside Jerusalem (Isa. 36 and 37) but who nevertheless did subdue the ten-tribe kingdom and take many captives. Finally, a century later, came Nebuchadnezzar, who took the remaining people of Judah away to Babylon. The four waves of locusts had done their work and this part of Joel's prophecy was thus fulfilled.

It is the consciousness, of this imminent catastrophe that gives the prophet's message its initial urgency. "Awake, you drunkards, and weep" he cries (vs. 5) "and wail all you drinkers of wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation is come up against my land, powerful and without number. Its teeth are lion's teeth …It has laid waste my vines and splintered my fig tree. . . ." His first call is to the pleasure-seeking multitude, the heedless ones that had forsaken their covenant with God and turned to the interests and distractions of the moment. In the midst of their revelry destruction had come. The ruthless Assyrian soldiers would break into their houses and bring to an end their pleasant feasts. Isaiah saw something of a very similar nature when he proclaimed "Woe… to the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of its glorious beauty… Behold the Lord has one who is a mighty and strong one (the Assyrians) like a storm of hail, a destroying tempest, like a storm of mighty overflowing waters, he will cast down the earth with violence." (Isa. 28. 1-2 RSV). There is an analogy with conditions in the world in our own day, when men are "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God" (2 Tim. 3. 4). Judgment inevitably must come, just as it did a century or so after the days of Joel. Is there not in our own times a repetition of the days immediately before Israel's final disaster? "The Lord God of their fathers sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling-place; but they kept mocking the messengers, despising his words, scoffing at his prophets, till the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, till there was no remedy."(2 Chron.36.15-16).

The completeness of the catastrophe is shown by the reference to vine and fig tree. The vine was a symbol of the people of Israel "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel" (Isa. 5. 7); "Yet I had planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed" (Jer. 2. 21). The fig tree too is a symbol of the same (Jer. 24); and they both alike are wasted. Small wonder that the prophet calls for a lament; the voice of the bridegroom and the bride has been stilled, the holy and glorious nation has been humbled to the dust, and even Joel has not as yet seen what is to be the outcome. He can do nought else but call to sorrow and mourning and to wait upon God to know what He will do. The Lamentations of Jeremiah, written to express the grief of the nation at the same calamity had its seed also in this prophecy of Joel, calling to mourning and lamentation nearly two hundred years before the event.

        (To be continued)

AOH

Next month's instalment treats the remainder of chapter 1. Joel still sees no further into the future, but he is led to take one great step forward. He raises the lamentation from a cry of hopeless self-pity to a cry to God. There is still no hint of repentance - that comes in chapter 2  - but his call to the nation to bring their troubles to God was itself a stage in the developing understanding of the Divine Plans which led him at last to see, and describe, the last great day when God will deliver all men from their thraldom to sin and death.