Welcome to Bible Fiber where we are encountering the textures and shades of the prophetic tapestry in a year-long study of the twelve minor prophets, one prophet each month. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel. Joel is our prophet for October.
A slim three-chapter book, you would think the book of Joel hardly makes it into a sermon. But in fact, the prophecies of Joel were critical to the teachings of the apostles, as they tried to make sense of their commission to spread the Good News to all the nations.
In Acts 2, Peter interpreted the unusual events of Pentecost as the fulfillment of Joel’s vision for the Day of the Lord. Paul went out into the world to preach the good news of the Gospel under the mantra of Joel 2:32: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” And when John the Apostle was banished to the island of Patmos, he described the apocalypse using Joel’s imagery of an enthroned Yahweh delivering judgement to the guilty nations like a sickle reaping a harvest (Rev. 14:15; Joel 3:13) or treading grapes in a winepress (Rev. 14:19; Joel 3:13).
For our reading challenge, I have been assigning chapters that complement the organization system of our modern Bibles. But as you know, these chapter divisions are arbitrary, especially with the prose of the prophets. Joel more naturally divides into two compositions: Joel 1:1 to 2:27 and Joel 2:28 to 3:21. While the first half speaks to the present wreckage left by a severe invasion of locusts. The second half transforms into eschatological prophecies about the future Day of the Lord. The two sections work as parallel poems.
In the first poem, Yahweh is the commander of an army of locusts set to destroy a disobedient Judah. Joel summons the people to Jerusalem to fast, pray, and repent of their sins. Yahweh is moved by the sincerity of their humbled hearts, and He reverses every curse that was visited upon them by the locust army. In the second poem, Yahweh is the judge of all the nations during a day of judgement that will far overshadow the trials of a locust plague. But the righteous of Judah will be saved, while Judah’s historic enemies will be punished.
Joel’s poetry fluidly goes from past to present to future. The locust plague is the judgement that got Judah’s attention. The Day of Yahweh will still use the forces of nature and cosmic disruptions to alert all the nations of Yahweh’s hand. Joel says that when the Day of the Lord nears, “the sun and the moon are darkened and the stars withdraw their shining” and “the heavens and the earth shake” (3:15).
The turning point in Joel from judgement to deliverance occurs in Joel 2:18. Yahweh heard the prayers of the people as they petitioned them with “their whole hearts” (2:12). The prayers moved Yahweh to compassion and He “became jealous for His land and had pity on His people.” The Hebrew in Joel suddenly makes effective use of the first-person possessive pronoun “My.” The people, the land, the silver and the gold are all Yahweh’s and He will reclaim what belongs to Him. He brought them out of slavery and gave them the land of Canaan. It is not the prerogative of the nations to undo the works of God.
