Joel 2:31

And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. As Messiah's manifestation is full of joy to believers, so it has an aspect of wrath to unbelievers, which is represented here. Thus when the Jews received Him not in His coming of grace, He came in judgment on Jerusalem. Physical prodigies, massacres, and conflagrations preceded its destruction. The priests entering the temple for worship at night heard a mighty voice, Let us depart hence. Chariots and troops in the air were seen encircling the doomed city (Josephus, 'Bellum Judaicum'). To these the language here may allude; but the figures chiefly symbolize political revolutions, and changes in the ruling powers of the world, prognosticated by previous disasters (; ;...

We now see why the Prophet adds here this sad catalogue, and how well these things harmonize together, — that God would testify his paternal love by the manifestation of Christ, — and that he would exhibit tokens of his wrath, which would fill the whole world with anxiety and fear. What he says of blood and darkness is, no doubt, to be taken metaphorically for a disordered state of things; for we know that calamities are often compared to obscurity and darkness. It is the same as though he said, “So great will be the succession of evils, that the whole order of nature will seem to be subverted that the very elements will put on a new form; the sun, which illuminates the earth, will be turned into darkness, the moon into blood; the calamities which shall come will take away every token of God’s kindness. Then nothing will remain, but that men, sunk, as it were, in the deepest abyss of all...

28-32 The promise began to be fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out, and it was continued in the converting grace and miraculous gifts conferred on both Jews and Gentiles. The judgments of God upon a sinful world, only go before the judgment of the world in the last day. Calling on God supposes knowledge of him, faith in him, desire toward him, dependence on him, and, as evidence of the sincerity of all this, conscientious obedience to him. Those only shall be delivered in the great day, who are now effectually called from sin to God, from self to Christ, from things below to things above....

Verse Joel 2:31. _THE SUN SHALL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS_] The Jewish polity, civil and ecclesiastical, shall be entirely destroyed. _BEFORE THE GREAT AND THE TERRIBLE DAY OF THE LORD COME._] In the taking and sacking of Jerusalem, and burning of the temple, by the Romans, under _Titus_, the son of Vespasian. This was, perhaps, the _greatest_ and most _terrible day_ of God's vengeance ever shown to the world, or that ever will be shown, till the great day of the general judgment. For a full view of this subject, I wish to refer the reader to the notes on Matthew 24:1....

BEFORE THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE DAY OF THE LORD COME - o: “The days of our life are our days wherein we do what we please; that will be the “Day of the Lord,” when He, our Judge, shall require the account of all our doings. It will be “great,” because it is the horizon of time and eternity; the last day of time, the beginning of eternity. It will put an end to the world, guilt, deserts, good or evil. It will be “great,” because in it great things will be done. Christ with all His Angels will come down and sit on His Throne; all who have ever lived or shall live, shall be placed before Him to be judged; all thoughts, words, and deeds shall be weighed most exactly; on all a sentence will be passed, absolute, irrevocable throughout eternity; the saints shall be assigned to heaven, the ungodly to hell; a great gulf shall be placed between, which shall sever them forever, so that the ungodly sh...

EXPOSITION JOEL 2:1 These verses contain a further description of the calamity occasioned by the locusts and the appearance presented by them; the calling of a congregational meeting for penitence and prayer; the reason assigned in the coming of the day of the Lord. JOEL 2:1 BLOW YE THE TRUMPET (margin, cornet) in Zion, AND SOUND AN ALARM (or, cause it to sound) IN MY HOLY MOUNTAIN. The _shophar_, or far-sounding horn, and probably the _chatsoterah_,_ _the _hazar_ or silver trumpet, were called into requisition. The priests are urged with great vehemence, as _tiqu shophar _and _hariu _imply, to apprise the people that the day of Jehovah's terrible judgment was near

THE SUN SHALL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS, AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD,.... Not by eclipses, as Aben Ezra; but by the clouds of smoke arising from the burning of towns and cities, which would be so great as to obscure the sun, and through which the moon would look like blood: or all, this may be understood in a figurative sense of the change that should be made in the ecclesiastic and civil state of the Jewish nation, signified by the "heavens" and "earth"; and particularly that their king or kingdom should be in a low, mean, and distressed condition, designed by the sun; and the change of their priesthood is signified by the "moon": so Vitringa on Isaiah 24:23; interprets the "sun" here of King Agrippa, the last king of the Jews in obscurity; and the "moon" of Ananias junior, the high priest, slain by the zealots: BEFORE THE GREAT AND THE TERRIBLE DAY OF THE LORD COME; not the f

II. THE COMING DAY OF THE LORD: THE REPENTANCE AND RESTORATION OF ISRAEL CHAPTER 2 _ 1. The alarm sounded and the day at hand (Joel 2:1) _ 2. The invading army from the north (Joel 2:3) 3. The repentance of the people and cry for help (Joel 2:12) 4. “Then.” The great change (Joel 2:18) 5. Promises of restoration, and the early and latter rain (Joel 2:19) 6. The outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh (Joel 2:28) 7. Deliverance in Mount Zion

THE PORTENTS OF THE DAY OF YAHWEH. The deliverance from the locusts is but a harbinger of the time coming when Yahweh will impart His spirit to all Jews for to such the context evidently restricts all flesh so that without distinction of age, sex, or social position, they shall have the ecstatic vision and utterance which mark the prophetall Yahweh's people shall be prophets. The earth shall be filled with the bloodshed of war, and from burning cities shall columns of smoke ascend; the very luminaries shall be dark and lurid at the approach of the dread Day of Yahweh. But from its terrors all the worshippers of Yahweh shall escape. JOEL 2:28. SPIRIT: the divine life-energy. For the conception _cf._ Numbers 11:29....

THE TERRIBLE, &c. This is the time for the fulfilment of Joel's prophecy. Compare Joel 2:1; Joel 2:11; Malachi 4:5....