Joel 2:2-11

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 Joel 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. Joel 1:6); and suitable to locusts, because they advance not only in vast numbers, but also (comp. on Joel 2:5; Joel 2:7) with the order and directness of an organized host, against which all measures of defence are practically unavailing.

there hath not been, &c. cf. Exodus 10:14 b.