Joel 1:2-3

Introduction, characterizing the event which forms the occasion of Joel's prophecy: it is an unexampled one, of a kind which even the oldest of the prophet's contemporaries had neither witnessed themselves nor heard of from their fathers; its memory, therefore, deserves the more to be handed on to successive generations in the future.

Hear this viz., the question following, implying the unprecedented character of the calamity.

ye old men, &c. the whole people is addressed: not one among them, however long or varied his experience, has ever heard tell of such an occurrence.

of the land i.e. of Judah, with which alone Joel deals: Song of Solomon 1:14; Song of Solomon 2:1.

this i.e. the like of this.

or even simply or.