Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Joel 2 - Introduction
A fuller description of the signs of the approaching -Day of Jehovah," followed by a renewed and more emphatic exhortation to repentance.
This section of Joel's prophecy is an expansion of the thought of Joel 1:14-15. The signs of the approaching "Day of Jehovah" are more fully described (Joel 2:2-11); and the people are invited, more directly and earnestly than before (Joel 1:14), to repent, if perchance Jehovah may be induced thereby to stay the threatened judgement (Joel 2:12-17). The imagery, under which the approach of the "day" is depicted, is borrowed from the recent visitation of locusts. Whereas, however, in ch. 1 the stress lay upon the desolation which had been already wrought by the locusts in the land, in Joel 2:2-11 the prophet looks more to the future, and describes the attack of fresh and more formidable swarms, which he imagines as the immediate precursors of Jehovah's Day. The description, though founded upon correct observation of the habits of locusts, contains ideal traits; though it is not so idealized as that of the "apocalyptic" locusts of Revelation 9:3-11.