Chapter 1
Verse one says it is written by Joel. That's how we know.
There is a title before vs 2, "An Invasion of Locusts"
There has been a plague of locusts. Joel tells the elders of Israel to tell their children and their children's children about it. Nothing like it had ever occurred before. Then in vs 4 the work of the locusts is described. Reminds me of the documentaries I've seen, where there is a sudden hatching of locusts, but they can only walk. They move slowly - the cutting locusts perhaps. Then they mature, they metamorphose to the next step, and they get wings. The swarming locusts maybe. Then there are the hopping and the destroying...A progression of the locusts through their life cycle may be what is described here. Worth looking into a little better.
Next, Joel tells Israel to awake from the stupor of drinking and drunkenness:
5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. [Joe 1:5 ESV] An interesting way to say this. The drunks have not yet realized that their supply of good alcohol has been devastated by the locusts. The drunks are going to sober up now that the locusts have destroyed the wine. Alcoholics are going to face reality now. They can escape it no longer. As if they are unaware of how much devastation there's been. They are to look at the locusts as an uncountable enemy sent against them. They should note that the whole land - vines, figs, even the bark of the figs has been eaten by the locusts. These trees will die. There isn't enough left to make the required drink and grain offerings. Fields are destroyed. Wine dries up, oil languishes. This was truly a devastating event. One might expect to find something about it in the recorded history of the nations of that area and so date this book exactly. But since MSB doesn't know, maybe it isn't there. Maybe this was before the rise of the nations that recorded their own history, like Assyria and Babylon.
In vs 2, Hear, in vs 5, Awake, in vs 8, Lament, in vs 11, Be ashamed, in vs 13, put on sackcloth, in 14, fast. Then vs 15 tells why: Because the day of the Lord is near.
This verse sums up the extent of the devastation:
12 The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man. [Joe 1:12 ESV]
With the devastation to the crops, comfort and peace also disappear.
2022 - Vs 5, Much about alcohol. Had Judah become a nation of alcoholics? I've seen this before. How many places? This chapter describes a general state of affairs. Invaders are coming. Lion. Is that Assyria or Babylon? The general state is a bunch of drunks who don't even comprehend what is happening.
2023 - This is metaphor. There were, I'm sure, people who drank too much, but Joel is about those who are in a spiritual stupor so much so that they do not comprehend the communications of God all around them.
2023 - Through vs 12, we can see that the physical locusts are in view, though in 6 they are called a nation. They were an invasion sent by God to devastate the land and teach a lesson. To turn them back. We know that the locusts in this sense were an invitation to repent, because we go there in vs 13.
2024 - But...nation of locusts? Does that really work? Teeth like lions, fangs even. Seems a poor metaphor...but vs 7 leaves little doubt about that. Ellicott's commentary says this: "The surpassing strength of the nation is indicated by the extraordinary power of the locust’s teeth, compared to that of the lion’s jaws. The same comparison is made by St. John (Revelation 9:8): “Their teeth (the locusts) were as the teeth of lions.” " This connection sheds a whole new light on...which? The locusts in Joel or the locusts in Rev? They don't have to be the same, but surely they are connected.
2024 - Pasting in this whole informative paragraph from Barnes' Commentary: Strong and without number - The figure is still from the locust, whose numbers are wholly countless by man. Travelers sometimes use likenesses to express their number, as clouds darkening the sun (see the note at Joel 2:10) or discharging flakes of snow ; some grave writers give it up, as hopeless. : "Their multitude is incredible, whereby they cover the earth and fill the air; they take away the brightness of the sun. I say again, the thing is incredible to one who has not seen them." "It would not be a thing to be believed, if one had not seen it." "On another day, it was beyond belief: they occupied a space of eight leagues (about 24 English miles). I do not mention the multitude of those without wings, because it is incredible." : "When we were in the Seignory of Abrigima, in a place called Aquate, there came such a multitude of locusts, as cannot be said. They began to arrive one day about terce (nine) and until night they cease not to arrive; and when they arrived, they bestowed themselves. On the next day at the hour of prime they began to depart, and at mid-day there was not one, and there remained not a leaf on the trees. At this instant others began to come, and staved like the others to the next day at the same hour; and these left not a stick with its bark, nor a green herb, and thus did they five days one after another; and the people said that they were the sons, who went to seek their fathers, and they took the road toward the others which had no wings. After they were gone, we knew the breadth which they had occupied, and saw the destruction which they had made, it exceeded three leagues (nine miles) wherein there remained no bark on the trees." The word used for "nation" here is not like the words in Proverbs for conies and ants. Those were guided by God's wisdom. But these locusts are irrational, destructive, foreign, and invasive. The "darkening the sun thing gives me pause.
2024 - Joel is saying that this action by the locusts was God's punishment on Israel. They are wiped out. This is not to be seen as a "natural occurrence" but a curse from God.
Joel 1 generally -
2025 - If such things - which are arguably interpretable as natural disasters even though that is not what they are - are "corrections" from God, spankings causing pain with the intentions of punishing wrong behavior, then what would we think the next year when the locusts didn't come again? If they don't come, then we'd interpret last year's locust plague as a fluke, a natural disaster, the bad year in the cycle of locusts. How then do "spankings" work? Hmm. If we spank a child, and that child repeats the behavior next day, then we give them a more severe spanking. Or if, after some time, the spankings are no longer effective at all in changing behavior, then we search for a punishment - a deprivation or a physical punishment worse than spanking - that WILL change behavior. God is the same. If the locusts don't work, then he will try something else. But we ought to be able to recognize a pattern of continued correction. Continued but increasingly severe "natural disasters". Drought, pests, fire, flood, hail, tornadoes and so on. Earthquakes and tsunamis also come to mind as sort of the events on the extreme end of correction, before there is nothing left but wrath. At some time, the increasingly unruly people is "abandoned" by their God. The four things that signify that has happened are sword, famine, pestilence, beasts. These are no longer "correction", but out and out abandonment. No "good" is intended when we get to here. But but....Locusts bring famine...Had God already abandoned them here? Is their no recovery?
2025 - Looking through 1 again...some key phrases: "has anything like this (ever) happened? Tell your kids and grands, implying that this is a uniquely unusual disaster. We have wailing, mourning, offerings "cut off". Mourning comes after death. After it is over. This is very interesting. There is not one single call for repentance in this chapter. Vs. 15 tells them the "day of the Lord" is near, but offers them no avenue of prevention.
2026 - I have missed this before. I think today that it is quite important:
9 The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD. [Joe 1:9 ESV].
In Daniel, two books ago, there was a definite time given for how long the offering would be cut off, presumably by the MoL. So my assumption was that there is always a way to sacrifice, and that the daily Temple sacrifices would always take place, unless they were prohibited by some great power - like AEIV or MoL. But according to this passage in Joel, sometimes there just isn't anything to sacrifice. So rather than require that the MoL is going to cut off Temple sacrifice, we might allow for the possibility that the ongoing seal and trumpet judgments have wreaked worldwide havoc to the point where sacrificial offerings cannot be obtained...or cannot be spared due to desperate conditions.
2026 - It might be worth looking at this kind of chronology in Revelation. It might be worth interpreting the 1290 day cutoff as the period of time between conditions in the world - or at least at the Temple - become so dire that sacrifices must be discontinued and the time enough order is restored to resume them.
2026 - This drought, or this plague of locusts, seems very dire. Unprecedented. So why is there no corroborating historical reference that might tell us when this was?
I had ChatGPT do a search. There is no "certain" event in extra-biblical literature that we can be sure references the same event as Joel 1. However, there is a good indirect corroboration that locusts were a huge threat to agriculture in this part of the world. Follow this link to the ChatGPT info.
The next verse, 13, is titled "A Call to Repentance". I know from MSB that Joel is equating this devastation by locusts to God's chastening of Israel, or perhaps to God's justice for the sins of Israel. But I think it should be understood as an event to turn them back to God, as opposed to an outpouring of God's wrath that will end them.
(See 2025 note above. It says lament and wail. It does not say repent, nor do I believe it is implied. The implication is that it is already too late.)
2022 - Then, beginning in 13, a call to repent.
vs 13b - Who is withholding? The land? or the people who ignore the sacrificial requirements?
Verse 15 is the first use of "The Day of the Lord":
15 Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes. [Joe 1:15 ESV]
In context, Joel seems to be saying the plague of locusts constitute the day he is referring to.
2020-Is this saying that this particular "day of the Lord", this one among several, will come in the form of destruction, and the destruction of agriculture in particular. If we look at this verse as a lens focusing on what the locusts of Joel's time are about, they are God's wrath, taking the form of destruction, and what is destroyed will be their crops - their food, their drink, even their offerings. The country is being devastated. So I think here at least Joel is concerned with his own now, with his "now".
2022 - "The Day of the Lord". Worth following out all of the MSB refs for this phrase. Is destruction the same underlying word as wrath?
Natural devastation. No pasture, no wilderness, no trees, wildlife starving, thirsting.
But...don't we see some of this in the first four seals also?
More description of the extensive devastation. No food left for the cattle, the sheep too are starving. The granaries are empty, likely consumed because there is no harvest, and the stored seed is all that is left to eat. Wiping out the next crop too...Joel calls the devastation a fire, that has burned up the wilderness and dried up the brooks.
2024 - Vs 15 says "the day of the Lord is near". Common Biblical language that can mean anything really. He uses this phrase AFTER all the damage is done by the locusts. The implication is that "the day" is yet future, but not far in the future. Hard to say, but it does not seem like the locusts are "the day".
2024 - And then the locusts are described metaphorically as a fire that scorched the whole land. This is definitely past tense. He is giving "meaning" to the plague of locusts, but it is almost as if they are only the beginning. The land was devoured with lions teeth, then burned as with fire, and so now the day of the Lord is near. This would make the day refer to the consequences of the locusts, not to the locusts themselves. What's coming is lack of food, dying livestock, stench from the bodies everywhere, empty granaries, and seed for next year eaten to avoid starvation. There is an initiating event, and THEN comes the period of wrath and suffering called the day of the Lord.