Joel 0:3

Subject and Occasion. The general subject of Joel is divine judgment, or the Day of Jehovah. This is depicted in 1- Joel 2:17 under the form of a locust plague, which undoubtedly was the occasion of the prophecy. So vivid is the description of the locusts, especially under the figure of an army (Joel 2:6), that some have supposed the language figurative and have taken the account as presaging a future invasion or experience of Israel after the analogy of that of the hosts of Gog and Magog described in Ezekiel 38, 39. But the prophet is rather speaking of literal locusts, addressing his contemporaries in view of present distress. His description of the advent of these insects as a Day of Jehovah and as a destruction from the Almighty (Joel 1:15) with terrifying natural phenomena (Joel 2:10) is none too strong to express the feeling awakened by the presence of real locusts. The fearfulness of their devastations has been attested again and again by travellers and scientific observers. Locusts darken the sky, their sound is like that of a rushing wind or falling water; nothing can break their ranks or turn them back; neither fire nor water as ordinarily applied stays their progress; they devour all vegetation; they penetrate into houses; and finally, when their work is accomplished, driven by the wind into the sea their dead bodies have been cast up in heaps to putrefy the atmosphere and produce disease. Thus the interpretation that finds literal locusts is justified, and yet, doubtless, in the prophet's mind the scourge itself was a figure of a great and final day of judgment, and that thought intensified his language and made it somewhat ideal.

After a two-fold description of this day of judgment through locusts, with calls for fasting and prayer (Joel 1:2 to Joel 2:17), it is said, 'Jehovah had pity on his people' (Joel 2:18 RV), implying that the people had fasted and prayed and that their intercession had availed. Then the promises are given of the removal of the locusts and the restoration of the fruitfulness of the land (Joel 2:19), and of the bestowal of the divine spirit of knowledge (Joel 2:28). In connexion with this latter promise a glimpse of the already suggested terrible day of final judgment is given (Joel 2:30), and this becomes the direct theme of the remainder of the book in two different forms: first, a judgment restricted to the immediate neighbours of Israel (Joel 3:1); and then, secondly, one embracing all nations (Joel 3:9).