Chapter 1
2023 - Looks like MSB intro is embedded.
(2022 - The chronological Bible puts this book after Isa 27, after 2Kgs 18 and 2Chron 29.  So this has moved way back from the time of Daniel, which immediately precedes it in the OT.)

Believed to be from the Northern Kingdom based on references he makes, but he is not mentioned except in this one book that he himself authored.  Prophesied from about 755-710 BC, during the reigns of the last six kings of Israel.  The times during his prophetic ministry are covered in 2K14-20 and 2Chron16-32.  All this per MSB.  Verse 1 says he prophesied during Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah in Judah - so contemporary with Isaiah, Amos, possibly Obadiah.  In the North, it was during the reign of Jereboam, son of Joash - so Jereboam II.  So even though only one Northern king is named, it must be there were actually six in the north coinciding with the 4 named in the south.

Hosea is told to marry a whore, and have children with her, because Israel has become a whore by forsaking God.  He marries Gomer.  Her first son was to be named Jezreel, because the house of Jehu was about to be punished and the promise in the valley of Jezreel undone.  Jehu had done some nasty things when he became king, personally killing his predecessor after he was told that he was the new King, I think he also killed the then current King of Judah, he asked/commanded the eunuchs to throw Jezebel from the tower, and he murdered all of his predecessor's sons and stacked their severed heads by the town gate.  However, because he killed so many Baal-worshipers, God told him his family would reign to the fourth generation.  That time is about to be over.  Only God understands how this works.

The phrase "Valley of Jezreel" is used here:
5 And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel." [Hos 1:5 ESV]  Here are two other places we have seen that phrase:
16 The people of Joseph said, "The hill country is not enough for us. Yet all the Canaanites who dwell in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Beth-shean and its villages and those in the Valley of Jezreel." [Jos 17:16 ESV]
33 Now all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East came together, and they crossed the Jordan and encamped in the Valley of Jezreel. [Jdg 6:33 ESV]
The name is worth remembering by its other name also.  This is the valley of Megiddo.  Armageddon will be fought here also.  Found this link to more information about it:
https://www.biblestudy.org/biblepic/megiddo.html

Hosea's wife also has a daughter named Lo-ruhama, which means "no mercy", because God was going to show Israel none.  But it says He would show mercy to Judah - but not by human action.  Remember that the Assyrian army lost 185,000 overnight at the siege of Jerusalem.  This is like the third prophet who has foretold that event.

2022 - These verses are long, but interesting:
"She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the LORD said to him, "Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all." [Hos 1:6 ESV]
"But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen."" [Hos 1:7 ESV]
God withdraws his mercy from Israel, but not from Judah.  He will save Judah by the Lord their God.  Remember that Jerusalem is besieged by Assyria also during Hezekiah's time, and that 80,000 Assyrians die overnight by the hand of an angel, and the Assyrians go home.  Here in Hosea, that supernatural event is prophesied.  

2022 - Wow.  Look at this:
"And the LORD said, "Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God."" [Hos 1:9 ESV]
This is a broken covenant.  It has fallen under its own terms.  Israel did not keep their side of it, so God cancels the covenant, and is not longer obliged to continue as their God.  
2023 -Since we saw 1:7, where the mercy is withdrawn from Israel but not Judah, this prophecy is directed toward the northern kingdom.  This would be some of the evidence that Hosea was in the north, since his prophecies seem directed exclusively at them.  

Then Gomer has a second son, named Lo-ammi, meaning "not my people".  vs 11 though:
11 And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. [Hos 1:11 ESV]
This is referring to some future time, the Millennial most likely, when Israel and Judah will be gathered back to Canaan, and Jesus shall rule over both.  Also seems to say that God is keeping up with where all the scattered and exiled of the ten lost tribes are located.  The Great day of Jezreel is likely the battle of Armageddon.  At this battle also, God will do the fighting, not men.

2023 - Wow...Doesn't Ez 37 and the dry bones coming to life speak of the north and south joining together?  And then there is Dan 12 where the Jewish nation is resurrected - doesn't that also talk about how north and south will be joined together again?  This prophecy in Hosea predates both of those by many many years, yet sees to be saying that very same thing.  The interesting thing here  is that it places the event ON the day of Jezreel - that is Megiddo - and just screams that all these things occur....wait wait...I decided that Dan 12 is about the GWT.  There is that post-Millennial last battle in Rev 20:7-10...it talks about a broad plain, which might be Megiddo...but it does not name it there.  But if we tie all these things together, then we make that battle at Megiddo also, we make these events all post-Millennial, including the resurrection of all Israel.  This part of it is really starting to gain some momentum.  
Checked and Daniel 12 does not have anything about Jewish union.  Ezekiel 37 does talk about reuniting but in the last part of the chapter, AFTER the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones is finished.  It surely does all seem to be connected though.

2023 - We might also make a case from this chapter that none will be saved among the 10 tribes until the very very end.  It is very clear that they are "out" until the final gathering - perhaps only after the 144,000 begin their crusade.

Chapter 2
This chapter now makes use of the idea of whoredom and begins by pleading with "mother" to turn from her whoring ways.  It says she's whoring for the gains and the needs of this world, and forgetting her husband.  But at some point, she will turn back, realizing that the days with her husband were better than the days of whoring.  God says it was Him all along who provided things for her, despite her crediting whoredom for them, and she even offered what came from God to Baal in thanksgiving.  But God is about to stop providing. This is really about Israel worshiping other gods, idols, and so forth.  They left the worship of the true God under Jereboam I, and have dedicated themselves to worshiping first the two calves, and then any and every other god they could find.  Any god but THE God.  But now...or sometime soon, in the face of the approaching Assyrians perhaps, Israel will try to return to God.  But their time for repentance has come and gone.  The whole country is to be laid waste, made desolate.  They are out of chances, just as each person eventually runs out of offers for salvation.  Sooner or later, there is a "last offer".

2023 - This verse:
6 Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. [Hos 2:6 ESV].  This most certainly looks like from that day to this, none of the 10 tribes will be able to find their way to salvation.  We will see in 21-23 that there will be reconciliation..."in that day".  The question is, then, when is "that day".
2023 - Oh my....were the 6 million that Hitler murdered all from the 10 tribes, and none from Judah???

Nevertheless, at some future time, God will attract the Jews back to Israel, and will give them peace, and will again be their God.  All this happens "in that day".  So perhaps this too is about the exile, the captivity that is about to come.  They will long for the days when they could worship God in their own land.

2022 - Look at this tie to Revelation:
""Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her." [Hos 2:14 ESV]
When Satan sends the flood after the Jews in Revelation, they flee into the desert, and there God protects them.  Preserves them really, against evil so powerful that were it not for the shortening, they would all be killed.  This is an amazing correlation.

2023 - This verse:
15 And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. [Hos 2:15 ESV].  For the significance of this reference to Achor, there are these verses:
24 And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons and daughters and his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they brought them up to the Valley of Achor. 25 And Joshua said, "Why did you bring trouble on us? The LORD brings trouble on you today." And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones. 26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his burning anger. Therefore, to this day the name of that place is called the Valley of Achor. [Jos 7:24-26 ESV].  This is very profound...Look at how dire were the consequences of sin toward Achan.  And God says the same sort of "wrath", though that particular word is not used, will be required for any of the 10 to return.  Stoning and fire.  End times martyrdom and persecution by the MoL such as has never been seen in all the earth.  Yet this "threat", this "retribution" must first occur, and is labeled "a door of hope".  Who would ever see this kind of suffering as a cause for home????

2022 - Ishi is "my husband" in Hebrew.  I once read a book about a sort of feral Indian out in California to whom they gave this name.  It can also mean just "man".

These verses:
19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD. [Hos 2:19-20 ESV]
If the church becomes the bride of Christ, how is there a betrothal to Judah and Israel?  This is the first verse I have noticed that makes a very strong case for the promises to Abraham being fulfilled in the church...Much of the language here from vs 16-20 seems to be about the Millennial...which is before the wedding feast.  But still, God does not break a betrothal.

Vss 21-23 are about a reconciliation of God with both Israel and Judah.  We see that they have been in apostasy for centuries, even millennia, but God has not forgotten them.  He knows each by name, He knows where they are, and He will bring them home.

2023 - Vss 16-23 seem to me to be about the Millennial, not about the GWT.  The reference to Jezreel seems more likely to be about Armageddon at Christ's return and not about that final battle.  That would mean this is before the Valley of Dry Bones.  This would mean the hope of Achor is about the trials and tribulations of tgt, the return of Israel - ALL Israel - to the land promised to Abraham.  And then during the Millennial, they will all live as in vs 23.  

Chapter 3
God tells Hosea to take a wife who is married to another, but is an adulteress.  Or...something like that.  That description doesn't really seem to work.  Ahh...per MSB Gomer had "separated" from Hosea, as might have been expected, and God is here telling him to go and buy her back.  She has fallen on hard times and is being auctioned off as a slave.  The picture is of God's love for Israel, despite how unfaithful she has been.  Hosea buys her back for a price, and tells her that she must be faithful to him for a time, as he will be to her.

2022 - This verse:
"For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods." [Hos 3:4 ESV]
No king, no priests, no temple.  That's what this verse says.  It has been so since 70 AD.  They had a priest between 586 BC and 70 AD, they had sacrifices.  After 70 AD until this day, they have been without.  Then this:
"Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days." [Hos 3:5 ESV]
This is the whole "returning to the land" idea that we see so very often.  This is proof that the 10 lost tribes are not lost at all, but God still preserves them and knows exactly where they are and intends to call them home, when Jesus is their King on earth.  When?  IN THE LATTER DAYS!

Chapter 4
God's list of grievances.  Note vss 3, 4:
2 there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. 3 Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away. [Hos 4:2-3 ESV]
Even though God is not sending fire and brimstone to destroy the land, even the land and the fish are being affected by the consequences to Israel for their continued sin.  God is punishing them, though they do not attribute these things to Him.  Surely the US is about to start "paying the piper" for our sins, our turning away from the God-fearing nation that we were, for the abortions we seem proud of, and for the recognition of mental illnesses as life choices.  And for recognizing LGBT as a legitimate group with special rights.  God is very patient, but we are getting there fast.  (Previous was written in 2019.  In 2020 we have to add transgender rights, Antifa, and BLM to the list of "adultery" against our God.  And the reasons are the same as for Israel.  These things we are doing - and their consequences - are following the same script that Israel followed.  Why would we expect different results???)

2023 - This verse:
6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. [Hos 4:6 ESV].  Remember in the wilderness when the people revolted because God had called them all priests, and so they wanted to depose Moses and do as they liked?  Here, officially, God revokes that title from the people of Israel.  I found the verse where they were all made priests:  6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel." [Exo 19:6 ESV], but I did not find the scriptures about the revolt based on this.  In any case, it is clear that Hos 4:6 is a reference to this long ago annointing as priests.

vs 8 has the phrase "...they are greedy for their iniquity."
vs 12,
12 My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore. [Hos 4:12 ESV]
We don't do this in the US.  We are so arrogant we don't look to God or gods.  We look to ourselves.  Our pride and self-sufficiency is our downfall.  We are not grateful to God for his blessings at all.  We think it is our own doing.  We are more like the pagans that invaded Israel than like them.  Maybe...We used to be a godly nation.  Most people used to say grace at meals.  Now almost no one does.  Godly, but not called, that's what we were.  And we first drifted away and then jogged away, and now we are running away.
I can't think of a nation in the history of Israel and Judah that we could be compared to really.  Maybe I will come upon one.  But for now, I don't even recognize a parallel to us in the Bible.
This spirit of whoredom may refer to a demon who's job was to deceive and undermine Israel.  If so, it was successful, and Satan surely rewarded it.  In teh US, one can also see a "spirit of whoredom" undermining all that is right and good and replacing it with evil.  All those verses about calling evil good and good evil...surely this is a "go to" strategy for Satan and the spirits that serve him.

2023 - Here is an interesting verse:
14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin. [Hos 4:14 ESV].  Because of their behavior, and because the are the "heads", God does not punish the women over these horrors.  Only the men.

Chapter 5
Continues God's grievances against Israel.
vs 4 is scary:
4 Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the LORD. [Hos 5:4 ESV]
There is a line that can be crossed, then never uncrossed:
Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God.  For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord. [Hos 5:4 ESV]
Here is that spirit again.  And the first phrase says they missed their last chance, and the door is now closed for them.

2024 - Here is the verse in KJV....a bit different:
4 They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God: for the spirit of whoredoms [is] in the midst of them, and they have not known the LORD. [Hos 5:4 KJV].
This gives a significantly different meaning than ESV - at least at first blush.  ESV seems to say that the ability to return to God has been removed.  KJV seems to say they won't do what is necessary to return to God, not that they cannot.  In the KJV, the fault is squarely on the people, but in ESV the implication is that God is acting to prevent their return.  Here is what Barnes says about it:
"They will not frame their doings ... - They were possessed by an evil spirit, impelling and driving them to sin; "the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them," i. e., in their very inward self, their center, so to speak; in their souls, where reside the will, the reason, the judgment; and so long as they did not, by the strength of God, dislodge him, they would and could not frame their acts, so as to repent and turn to God. For a mightier impulse mastered them and drove them into sin, as the evil spirit drove the swine into the deep.
...
For the spirit which possessed them hindered them from thought, from  memory, from conception of spiritual things. They did not turn to God,
(1)  because the evil spirit held them, and so long as they allowed his  hold, they were filled with carnal thoughts which kept them back from  God.
(2) they did not know God; so that, not knowing how good and  how great a good He is in Himself, and how good to us, they had not even  the desire to turn to Him, for love of Himself, yea even for love of  themselves. They saw not, that they lost a loving God. "
Through God, they could have overcome the spirit that possessed and hindered them, but they had to want to do so.  The spirit inside them prevented them in very great measure from remembering the blessings of God, such that it just never occurred to them to change.  This is a demonic thing.  I see no reason to believe such a spirit is not active in the world today.  Think of those videos whee someone pro-abortion zealot is just spitting and hissing mad that anyone would try and take away their "right" to kill children.  How do they get that way?  Perhaps they are possessed by a spirit such as Hosea here describes...even in the modern world.

2023 - Look at this strange verse:  7 They have dealt faithlessly with the LORD; for they have borne alien children. Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields. [Hos 5:7 ESV].  Is this about intermarriage with other nations?  Is it about leaving their boys uncircumcised?  The new moon devours?  What in the world does that mean?  MSB no help at all.  

2024 - But Barnes is!
"For they have begotten strange children - God had made it a ground of  the future blessing of Abraham, "I know him, that he will command his  children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the  Lord, to do justice and judgment" Genesis 18:19.  But these, contrariwise, themselves being idolaters and estranged from  God, had children, who fell away like themselves, strangers to God, and  looked upon as strangers by Him. The children too of the forbidden  marriages with the pagan were, by their birth, strange or foreign  children, even before they became so in act; and they became so the more  in act, because they were so by birth. The next generation then growing  up more estranged from God than themselves, what hope of amendment was  there?
Now shall a month devour - The word now denotes the  nearness and suddenness of God's judgments; the term "month," their  rapidity. A "month" is not only a brief time, but is almost visibly  passing away; the moon, which measures it, is never at one stay, waxing  until it is full, then waning until it disappears. Night by night bears  witness to the month's decay. The iniquity was full; the harvest was  ripe; "now," suddenly, rapidly, completely, the end should come."
((These references are from https://biblehub.com/commentaries/hosea/5-7.htm which is an excellent online resource for some of these passages that seem very difficult.))

Chapter 6
First verse.  A hope?  An exhortation?  Or a promise?
1 "Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. [Hos 6:1 ESV]

Here is a prophecy of Christ's resurrection in this little book:
2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. [Hos 6:2 ESV]  Jesus conquers death, that we may be released from the curse of sin, and raised up to new life in Christ - and in the presence of God.  
2024 - Probably best not to read to much into that 2nd day reviving, and third day raising.  In fact, this might not be about the resurrection at all.  Found this, again from the website above:
"n the third day—i.e., after a short time. This and the above expression are not identical in the designation of time. Some Christian interpreters (Jerome, Luther, Pusey) consider the passage has sole reference to the resurrection of Christ. But with Calvin, Henderson, Schmoller, &c., we consider this to be contradicted by the form of the expression. To bring in the resurrection of Christ with no authority from the New Testament is far-fetched over-refinement, and breaks the consistency of the passage."  I agree now that this is not about Christ.  If it were, many unnecessary difficulties would be introduced.

This next verse is a glimpse of God's own heart.  This is what He desires from us, this is what He wants.  He does not crave what we do, He craves our unmitigated love for Him.  As we would crave the love of a wife, the loyalty and faithfulness of a wife, the devotion of a wife, the peace of mind a wife can bring.  This is what the whole book is about.  The love between a man and a woman is our closest parallel to what God craves from us.  The church is called the bride of Christ.  Because this is the love he wants.  Wow.  Never saw it before.  This is why we were created with this emotion, and with this craving for companionship.  Think of this book as a contrast to Song of Solomon!  Finally that book makes sense!  It describes the right way to love, as Hosea describes the wrong.
6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. [Hos 6:6 ESV]

2022 - This verse:
"But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me." [Hos 6:7 ESV]
Without faith.  Unsaved.  Knowing rebellion, disdaining the consequences.  This is not how saved people behave.  Was Adam unsaved?  He was saved before the transgression, that is certain.  There was no sin before the fall.  Once he fell, there was need for repentance, for atonement, for sacrifice.  He would not have needed salvation until after sin was imputed to him.  Different with Israel.  That nation was Adam's seed, and each individual a sinner from birth.  Like Adam, the nation has decided to reject God, to knowingly worship elsewhere.  Saved people don't do this.  Saved people sin.  Saved people do not worship idols.  We know this from the frequent references to whoredom.  It is not only that they are not adhering to the Law.  They are devoting themselves to other gods.  They are not just married people living in the same house and ignoring each other.  They are out sleeping with other people while still married.  There has been no divorce.  But there also no ties - no vs 6 ties, the only ties that matter - back to God.

2020-I had forgotten this, but reading it again I think it is on the right track.  We are created in God's image.  It is natural, expected, that we would have love.  This may be part of the mystery of how two become one in marriage.  It is something of God that we have built into us that physics, biology, anthropology and paleontology are just not up to explaining.  Because love, devotion, faithfulness...these are "God things", built into our "code" at creation.  Inherent within us because we are created, not evolved.

Chapter 7
Israel compared to a heated oven that the baker has abandoned.  I am confused about the imagery in this chapter.  

2024 - Again, Barnes to the rescue:
They are all adulterers - The prophet continues to picture the corruption of all kinds and degrees of people. "All of them," king, princes, people; all were given to adultery, both spiritual, in departing from God, and actual, (for both sorts of sins went together,) in defiling themselves and others. "All of them" were, (so the word means,) habitual "adulterers." One only pause there was in their sin, the preparation to complete it. He likens their hearts, inflamed with lawless lusts, to the heat of "an oven" which "the baker" had already "heated." The unusual construction "burning from the baker" instead of "heated "by" the baker" may have been chosen, in order to express, how the fire continued to burn of itself, as it were, (although at first kindled by the baker,) and was ever-ready to burn whatever was brought to it, and even now was all red-hot, burning on continually; and Satan, who had stirred it, gave it just this respite, "from the time when he had kneaded the dough" , until the leaven, which he had put into it, had fully worked, and the whole was ready for the operation of the fire.
The  world is full of such people now, ever on fire, and pausing only from  sin, until the flatteries, whereby they seduce the unstable, have worked  and penetrated the whole mind, and victim after victim is gradually  leavened and prepared for sin.
When I read the bolded line above it made me stop and wonder at just how much the Bible can say to different people.  It made me wonder why I study and struggle to interpret the Bible when true scholars like Barnes have already studied it out in so much deeper detail than I have the time or the learning to do.  Why do I try to "do it myself" when such resources are so readily available?  Of course it is because God speaks to us all and individually through his word.  He communicates with each of us at our point of need, at our level of understanding.  It's great to read commentaries, but not "instead of" reading the Bible and listening for the Spirit to reveal.  We ought to read the comments of the great Bible scholars, but we ought to read the word ourselves even more, that we may know what God has for us in our own lives.

Many references to Ephraim.  It was NW of Jerusalem originally.  Perhaps just a reference to Samaria.  It says that Ephraim appeals to both Assyria and to Egypt.  God continues to proclaim that His vengeance on them is imminent, that they are about to fall.  The language gets pretty intense.  The theme seems to be that God would really like to help them, to forgive them.  Yet they continue to accuse God, to tell lies about him, to rebel against him.  Even in their want and their distress they do not turn to God.  They devise evil against God.  God says they will fall by the sword, and Egypt will deride them for their insolence.

So far, this book has been a constant stream of unmitigated, non-PC, hard core indictment of Israel.  It reeks of God's impending wrath.  Like judgment is past, like leniency in sentencing is past, hope for renewal is past.  You can just tell that God is beyond angry.  This book is harsher in its language than other prophetic books I've read so far this time through.  It leaves no doubt.

Chapter 8
God's grievances against Israel are continued in this chapter.  Interesting language in vs 1:
1 Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law. [Hos 8:1 ESV]
Like a vulture.  Surviving on the dead?  Living off the meat sacrificed to God?  Not sure if it is to be this specific, but it surely indicates that the religious elite are not a good example!  2020- No.  MSB says this is a symbol for the eagle that represented Assyria.  I guess it is kind of sarcastic by implying that the great conquering eagle that symbolizes the Assyrian nation is in fact just a carrion eater, surviving on the demise of other nations.  That makes it pretty picturesque.  I think this is at least the second time an eagle/vulture has been mentioned.  I looked for the Assyrian eagle before and didn't find it...but apparently I was on the right track, it is a real thing.

God says they appointed their own Kings on their own, they have made their own idols.  He talks about the calf that they worship.  He says it will be broken in pieces.
This verse is the result of the choices they are making.
7 For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no flour; if it were to yield, strangers would devour it. [Hos 8:7 ESV]
This sounds a lot like the US.  Sowing the wind = eliminating law enforcement.  Believing that over reacting to bad things will result in good things.  Who could ever think that?  So many idealists who think they can find their way through.  They aren't thinking things through, they nothing about a functioning government.  They are trying to turn us into survival of the fittest/strongest/best armed.  A nation ruled by the most powerful, not by the elected representatives.  What will happen to the whole world when the restraint the US has always demanded of despots is no longer present?  The whole world will become more chaotic, less just, more abusive of the powerless.  And the ones bringing it all to pass are the very ones that will be powerless.

In this chapter, it is Israel that is losing her future, her peace, her prosperity.  Israel is already, by this time, considered a small nation, a vassal state.  They try to hire allies but to no useful end.  And soon the tribute they are paying will become unbearable, unsustainable to them. (vs 10 - they will writhe because of the tribute...)

God is no longer accepting their sacrifices, and would not, even if they were to try and get it right.  Doing right in worship has become an awkward, strange, and unfamiliar thing to them. (vs 12).
2022 - This seems similar to those in our day, under the New Covenant, who do not have the Holy Spirit within them to translate God's words and leadings to them.  There are things that become understandable only through the Holy Spirit.  Otherwise they are mysterious, incomprehensible and I think laughable to the lost.  Surely what is described here in vs 12 is the Old Covenant's equivalent of that.  Here is that whole verse:
"Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing." [Hos 8:12 ESV]

This verse:
13 As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the LORD does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt. [Hos 8:13 ESV]
I would suppose this is only figurative language.  It is Assyria to the north that is going to conquer them, not Egypt  In a real sense, I suspect those who could ran the other direction, away from the invaders, and resettled in Egypt.  Maybe that is why in the end times it won't just be the highway from Assyrian that is crowded but they will also be coming from the south.  But the implication here seems less a resettlement and more a return to slavery - or at least they will be sojourners in a foreign land.  Maybe that is the right phrase.

2022 - This verse:
"For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds." [Hos 8:14 ESV]
The nation, with whom God made the covenant, has forgotten.  The nation is somehow unsaved.  God has judged that a line has been crossed, and he will now keep his side of the covenant, as promised, and destroy them as a nation.  It is hard for us to comprehend God's criteria for this.  The nation is made of people.   It is individuals who are abandoning God and worshiping other Gods.  Yet this is a national condemnation, that has individual results.  If Israel falls, it people - individuals - will be killed, murdered, and carried off into slavery.  What happens to these when they die, these individuals?  Surely we don't believe that any significant number of them goes to heaven?  The whole nation is condemned, how many good and righteous people could be there?

The last verse condemns both Israel and Judah.  These prophets were seeing 150 years into the future.

Chapter 9
God pronounces his plan for Israel.  They will be removed from the land.  They will return to Egypt, and eat "unclean food" in Assyria.  (vs 3)  There is this reference to the state of things:
9 They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins. [Hos 9:9 ESV]
Another reference to Gibeah, Saul's home town, and the place where the traveler's concubine was abused, almost resulting in the annihilation of the tribe of Benjamin.  An awful and evil place.  All Israel has become like this.  Sort of a miniature of "the days of Noah".

This verse, which could be applied to many nations down through history:
7 The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad, because of your great iniquity and great hatred. [Hos 9:7 ESV]
This says that when those who proclaim God, His power, and preach His commandments are equated with crazy people, and denigrated as fools - because only fools would believe what they are saying - that is a sign of the end.  That is a sign that "the days of recompense have come".  You know, here again, this prophecy is about the nation of Israel in 700 BC, and is NOT about the US in 2020.  It just isn't.  So the question that must be answered is whether or not this progression that we are seeing in Israel - from God's chosen entering Canaan, to the splitting of the kingdom under Jereboam I, to turning more and more to idols instead of God, the increasing corruption of its leaders and increasingly the corruption of all who live there such that life becomes a struggle not just for survival, but against the next door neighbors and so on who are more than willing to cheat and steal from you to increase their own resources, and ultimately beyond the rejection of God to the ridicule of God and those who still believe in him.  I saw a news article this week about some demonstration that changed "xxxx Jesus" over and over.  They don't realize that every single time they said it they turned up the eternal temperature they will experience in hell by 10 degrees.  I believe they will know, they will understand that they are suffering more than some others in hell BECAUSE of what they said.  Anything else would not be justice.  It boggles my mind how anyone could chant such a thing.

2024 - This verse:  11 Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird-- no birth, no pregnancy, no conception! [Hos 9:11 ESV].  Note the reverse order of the departing glory...There'll be no children born...miscarriage.  See vs 14.    No pregnancy at all...infertility.  No conception...because their masters will forbid it when they are slaves.  Even in this they'll not make their own choices.  This is pretty dire.

15 Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels. [Hos 9:15 ESV]
What happened in Gilgal?  MSB just says it was a center of idol worship.  But it seems like there should be more to it...but then, John MacArthur would surely recall it...

2024 - This verse:  9 And the LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you." And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day. [Jos 5:9 ESV].  This is where they set up the 12 stones when they crossed the Jordan on dry land into Canaan.  Why would God begin hating them there?  Joshua and the people were deceived at Gilgal by the men of Gibeon.  These were the first of those that should have been destroyed with the rest but got out of it...though they became slaves of Israel.  
2024 - Perhaps it is this...At the end of Judges 1 there is a long list of all the places where Israel failed to drive out the previous inhabitants of Canaan, instead entering into peace agreements with them...and eventual adopting their ways and their gods.  So...these verses:
1 Now the angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, "I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, 'I will never break my covenant with you, 2 and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.' But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? 3 So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you." [Jdg 2:1-3 ESV]
The beginning of God's reproach of Israel.  This was the start of it.

There are some very devastating prophecies in this chapter, some horrible things to contemplate.  God is not mincing words at all with them.  I expect the warnings were less severe to start with, and have grown progressively more direct, and now there is no doubt.  For instance:
16 Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up; they shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will put their beloved children to death. 17 My God will reject them because they have not listened to him; they shall be wanderers among the nations. [Hos 9:16-17 ESV]
Prophecy of dead children should be taken seriously.  Wanderers among the nations...It's not just that times are going to get hard, it is that there will be no home to return to.  No hope of eventual return.  There will no longer be an Israel.
2024 - Will we see a promise of eventual return, after the "wanderers among the nations" reference in vs. 17?  Is Israel still under this curse from so very long ago?  It certainly got worse when Assyria finally came, and then Judah also fell.  The came back, but only stayed until 70 AD, and then there was 136 AD.  The curse surely reached its peak about there.  But the Jews did begin drifting back, and in 1948 Israel was re-established as a nation.  But they still wander in nations all over the world.

2022 - Note also, quite unmistakably in vs 17, that wrath is against them "because they have not listened".  These are not his children, these are not saved people.  


https://crossroadsbible.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Forest-of-Ephraim-ESV-Bible-Atlas2.png

From this map, we see that the prophecies of Hosea in this chapter are about Israel.  Ephraim was in Israel, as was Manasseh.  Note that Judah has no border with Ephraim.  



Chapter 10
God was blessing Israel, and the more blessed they were the more altars they built, and further prosperity led to improved altars.  They never recognized that the God who was blessing them was different than the one they worshiped.  How stubbornly blind would you have to be???  How arrogant?

2022 - This verse:
"Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars and destroy their pillars." [Hos 10:2 ESV]
These are not saved people being punished.  Saved people do not have false hearts.

This verse:
3 For now they will say: "We have no king, for we do not fear the LORD; and a king--what could he do for us?" [Hos 10:3 ESV]
MSB notes says that Israel's last five kings have been usurpers, corrupt, and so inept they couldn't even maintain law and order.  They neither had nor deserved the respect of the populace.  So the nation of Israel no longer sees the government as authority.  These kings have denigrated the office of king.  And when government is no longer to be feared - because it is inept and unworthy of respect - the worst of the people revolt, and do as they will, and have no fear of reprisal.  We are right here.
This is a FB post that I don't really want to post.

The calf idols will be taken to Assyria as tribute to its King.  Israel will be dismayed that their "gods" are gone.  They will tremble.  Ultimately, because their idols do not protect them, they will be ashamed of those idols.

vs 8 has some interesting language.  This is the first time on this pass that I recall seeing this phrase, which is repeated many times in many places in the Bible:
8 The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, "Cover us," and to the hills, "Fall on us." [Hos 10:8 ESV]
Cover us, fall on us.  One would have to be pretty afraid, pretty hopeless to wish this on themselves.
2024 - Here are the other verses:
30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Cover us.' [Luk 23:30 ESV].  These words were spoken by Jesus on his way to Golgotha.  He spoke them to the women crying for him.  So...was Hosea's prophecy fulfilled when Assyria came to take Samaria away?  The King himself was captured and taken to Samaria, and foreigners were sent to settle that land.  Was it then they wanted to be killed by nature rather than by the invaders?  Or is this yet unfulfilled, and Jesus makes it very clear that it is still to come.  Then this next verse:
16 calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, [Rev 6:16 ESV].  This verse is the aftermath of the opening of the Sixth Seal.  I believe this is right after the rapture, and not a saved soul will remain on earth.  The signs that accompany this seal will be unmistakably supernatural.  The lost will try to hide from the God in whom they can no longer disbelieve.
Hosea said it was coming.  Jesus said it wasn't here yet - it is still going to get worse.  John tells us when exactly it will occur.

This verse:
9 From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel; there they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah? [Hos 10:9 ESV]
That horror story back in Judges about the raped concubine, cut in pieces, and mailed to each of Israel's tribes.  That was the beginning of this.  No...that was the indication that these people were already beyond salvage.  How many generations were there between the second generation from Egypt actually entering the land of Canaan, and the atrocity of Gibeah?  How long did that really take?  Was it just that the worst of them congregated together in Gibeah, and none were held accountable?  Perhaps they competed to be the worst of the worst?  They were God-fearing people when they crossed the Jordan - though there were bad people among them.  How did it change?  What went wrong?  Who were the slackers?  Once Joshua died, they had not central, God-appointed leader.  They were each left to themselves.  Most of them went straight to hell.  How hard was it to find David?  One man in the whole country who truly followed God and was capable of leading them, of keeping evil at bay...and look at even David's great failure!

Any nation that abandons God, and is left to itself - to make its own rules, to go its own way, to make its own declarations about good and evil or right and wrong exclusive of God's teaching - will turn into this kind of place.  Bad people, injustice, horror.  

Oh my...2020...I spotted this verse.  I believe this is the first time I have seen the phrase used - and by first I mean in this chronological reading.  This:
10 When I please, I will discipline them, and nations shall be gathered against them when they are bound up for their double iniquity. [Hos 10:10 ESV]

These next verses are "agricultural", sort of.  About plowing, breaking up the fallow ground, sowing righteousness.  Perhaps Hosea is speaking in terms he is familiar with?

vs 12, quoted the first time through, is a bit different in ESV:
12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you. [Hos 10:12 ESV]
I think I like NKJV better.

Chapter 11
This verse, a prophecy applied to Jesus returning from Egypt with his family after going there to escape Herod's murder of young boys, would be hard to recognize except in hindsight.  It seems more to fit into the context of the chapter, and to pick it out as a near/far would still be a little difficult.  However, I think it is specifically referred to as a prophecy of Jesus in the NT, in Mt 2:15.  MSB calls it an analogical reference.  Meaning comparable as I read it.  But the language Matthew uses makes it sound more like a direct prophecy.  I like analogical better, it makes more sense to me.  After all, God is referring to Israel as a child, whom He loves greatly, and He brought that loved child, that "son", out of Egyptian captivity.  Verse 2 certainly has nothing to do with Jesus return from Egypt with his family.

5 They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. [Hos 11:5 ESV]
This is really getting specific about the fate that awaits Israel.  Goes on to say that once this all starts, and they begin to cry out to God - to the real God - it will be too late.  God will not hear them at that point.  He is a God for all time, not just a God for crisis.
Good verse for FB would be:
7 My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all. [Hos 11:7 ESV]

2024 - Vs 5 above shows that Hosea is speaking about the nearer term.  The hills may not be begged for relief until the Sixth Seal, but the conquest in view in these verses is Assyria itself, specifically named.  It was pronounced Assur in the Hebrew, according to the text.  Egypt is Misrayim.  These words place us squarely in Hosea's time.  It was still future, but it was not Millennia away.  

Then vs 9 shows up, and seems to contradict what has been said to this point:
9 I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. [Hos 11:9 ESV]
MSB says that primarily this prophecy- this book-is about the destruction that would come from Tiglath-Pilesar.  But this promise refers to the time when God will bring all his people home - the Millennial perhaps - and never destroy them again.  Never disperse them again.  This is pretty well confirmed as the rest of the chapter unfolds (vss 10-12).
Note also that at this time, in vs 12, God still considers Judah to be faithful to Him.
Also, here is another place that addresses the error of Mormonism directly.  God is not a man, nor was He ever a man.

20222 - Here is vs 12:
" Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit, but Judah still walks with God and is faithful to the Holy One." [Hos 11:12 ESV]
We know that even at this time, Judah was pretty corrupt.  We also know that since the time of Manassah, Judah's fate was sealed.  And yet here in this verse, God tells us why he still waits.  God is able to weigh whole nations and know whether that nation "still walks with God".  There is some tipping point, that only God Himself can determine, where whole nations become unfaithful.  It must also be remembered, that this was about God's covenant with Israel, and is a very different thing than how he deals with men under the New Covenant.

Chapter 12
vs 2 uses the word "indictment" against Judah and Jacob.

2024 - So...we have turned from looking at Ephraim, as representative of the northern 10 tribes, of Samaria, of worshiping golden calves and condemned for a current outpouring of God's wrath, over to what is going on in Judah.  Remember that in 11:12b, God had just pronounced Judah as still faithful.

Not really sure about this chapter...what exactly it is trying to say.  He talks about Jacob wrestling with the angel, and about God speaking to him at Bethel.
vs. 14 may be the key...but I don't really understand it either.  Maybe this is how God thinks about things, and so impossible for me to unravel:
14 Ephraim has given bitter provocation; so his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him and will repay him for his disgraceful deeds. [Hos 12:14 ESV]
The guilt seems all-encompassing, all the way back to wrestling with the angel.  This is what gives me problems.  I can't "see" all that as one thing.
In 2020 I believe the preceding two sentences are on the right track.  God's current anger against Israel is not a sudden, one time, rash thing.  God does not knee jerk.  God looks at Israel and at Israel's behavior, going all the way back to the womb when Jacob grabbed Esau's foot presumptuously.  Jacob reached for what was not his.  Jacob did not wait for God's direction.  Jacob had many, many faults before he finally humbled himself before God.   But his original problems have been passed to the nation that bears his name.  Their sins have multiplied and stacked and heaped up on the sins of Jacob himself, that started in the womb.  God's final pronouncement - the justice that will be delayed no longer - is because of the accumulated sin of the nation, and not because of just one current thing.  As in the US, the blood of the innocent continues to accumulate since RvW, and we STILL don't over throw it.  Many rabidly defend murdering children.  Do we truly believe God will overlook this?  He never has before!

2024 - The paragraph above is on the right track I think, but not quite precise enough.  We need to remember that Jacob was father of all 12 tribes.  The things recalled about his life in these verses are all about what happened while he was Jacob - not Israel.  I think we need to look at the contents of 2-14 as widening the rebuke of Ephraim to all Israel, all Judah, all descendants of Jacob.

2022 - This verse:
"I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast." [Hos 12:9 ESV]
Compare with this verse in Revelation:
"But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time." [Rev 12:14 ESV]
What kind of a place do you live in when you are in the desert in survival mode?  Maybe this is a prophecy going beyond Assyria and Babylon, all the way out to the end.  
The first five verses are clearly a recounting of historical events.  Vs 6 seems to be the "sermon", that Jacob needs to once again meet God, and perhaps wrestle with him again.  But in 7,8, Ephraim is so good at cheating that he believes himself invincible - or above the law might be a better way to put it.  He has perfected dishonesty and now relies on it, and on worldly goods.  And perhaps that is the story of Israel down to the present day...until t/gt, when we get vs 9.

2024 - I still read this as looking far into the future for all of Jacob's descendants.  I think this is about tgt.  But it does appear to have switched back to Ephraim in vs 10.  Prophets were sent to the north.  Gilead and Gilgal are mentioned.  Gilgal was Joshua's base of operations in the conquest of Canaan.  In Hosea's day, it is also where one of the two golden calves is worshiped.  Gilead is where Laban caught up with Jacob as he fled with Rachel and Leah.  In Num 32, Reuben, Gad, and half-Manasseh want the land on the east side of the Jordan - that land was called Gilead.  That's all I'm finding about it.  Gilead and Jabesh-Gilead appear to be the same place...or Gilead is the "state" and J-G is a city within it.  Jephthah was fro Gilead.  

Still don't understand what 10-14 are about.
2024 - Nope.  Still not really following.

Chapter 13
"Those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves".  This was being said of Israel.  They were doing some horrible things up there.  This is another item for which God will destroy them.

Israel has forgotten God, they do not consider him a threat.  He is an unseen threat.  A great danger that they don't worry about any more.  The language used in Hosea is interesting:
7 So I am to them like a lion; like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. [Hos 13:7 ESV]
Though He has been there all along, though He has repeatedly warned and pleaded and chastised and punished, when He acts - when He does what He has been telling them He was going to do - they will be as shocked as if a lion jumped on them from hiding, that they never "knew" was there.  What an awesome way to put it.  This ought to go on FB too!

13 The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the right time he does not present himself at the opening of the womb. [Hos 13:13 ESV]
I don't understand this.  I looked at other translations.  Still don't understand this verse.  MSB says that the picture is of a child about to be born, but who refuses to come down the birth canal and be born, risking death by his delay.  The analogy is to Israel delaying repentance, to the point of risking God's judgement, and the death of that nation.  Wow.  These last two images - the lion/leopard by the road, and now the child in the canal, are just...
How did this not get their attention???  FB.

This verse, often partially quoted and wrongly at that:
14 I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from Death. O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes. [Hos 13:14 ESV]
MSB says this is also quoted in the NT, so maybe the way you usually here it is from there.  But here is the original.  God is saying that despite all that is about to come upon Israel, He will ultimately gather them back, ultimately bring them to honor and glory.  Not because of their doing, but to honor Himself by keeping His promises.

Ends with just how horrible their immediate future will be.  This last verse of 13:
16  Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. [Hos 13:16 ESV]  Being held guilty in the present, as horrible as these images are, is still nothing at all when compared to eternity in hell.  Even so, it is far better to avoid present guilt, and to serve the Lord!

Chapter 14
This chapter implies that the final decision is not made.  It implies that God can still, and is still willing to, turn away this judgement that looms over them.  That there is STILL some time, even at this late late stage and despite the level of iniquity and rebellion against God that prevails in Israel.  Still He waits.  This is an example for us, when others do wrong to us.  An example of 70x7.  An example of patience beyond human understanding.  Only God could love the rebellious enough to give them this many chances.  Verse 4 puts it in so many words:
4 I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. [Hos 14:4 ESV]
What an example of forgiveness, ready and waiting, if we only repent.
FB.

This can also be viewed - and should be - as a prophecy of the Millennial, when God's anger will not only be turned from Israel, but they will behave as His people, chosen, and loving and worshiping Him entirely, as it was always meant to be.

And finally, the end of this book, and the summary verse is this:
9 Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the LORD are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them. [Hos 14:9 ESV]
Today, 2020, this seems to say that if you want to know what is happening around you, in the US, then read your Bible, because it is all there, and all you have to do is pay attention.  Wouldn't this in some way dampen the anxiety of watching the rule of law disintegrate around us, of watching our country pull itself apart?  Surely there is some peace in knowing what the cure for our situation truly is - even if we cannot bring it about - and in seeing and understanding the continuity and the ultimate victory of the Lord our God!?  We must put ourselves in His hands, and His only.
Good FB post on the right day....

I think that so far, the books of Micah and now of Hosea have been such eye-openers for me.  So thought-provoking.  I had no idea.

MSB intro to the book says there are no dates, but for reasons best known to people smarter than me, he thinks late 9th century BC during the reign of Joash makes good sense.  In that case, it is well out of it's proper position in the Chronological Bible I am reading, since this Bible puts it after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, the early 6th century BC.  However, MSB says the date doesn't matter, it would be relevant in any century.
MSB says the theme of Joel is "The Day of the Lord".  Final judgment, I believe is what is meant by that phrase.  The phrase is used 19 times by 8 different OT authors.  MSB also says it is the Lord's wrath and judgement rather than a specific date.  Goes on to say it does not always refer to an eschatological event, because it does not in Eze. 13:5.  There, it is about the Babylonian conquest.  

The Day of the Lord is often associated with seismic disturbances, violent weather, clouds and thick darkness, cosmic upheaval, and as a "great and very awesome" day.  References to each of these terms is given in the MSB intro, almost all found in the book of Joel.  Here is where it is foretold that old men will dream dreams, and also the coming of Elijah is foretold.  

Hmm...this is what MSB says:  Not quoting, paraphrasing.  It says that Peter's quoting from Joel on the day of Pentecost is thought by many to be the actual fulfillment of the prophecies in Joel, culminating in 70 AD with the fall of Jerusalem.  They think all Joel's prophecies were over and done with there.  MSB thinks it refers to the final and terrible end times Day of the Lord, and that only.  MSB says the pouring out at Pentecost was not a fulfillment of this at all, but a preview and sample of the Spirit's power and work to be released fully and finally in the Messiah's kingdom after the Day of the Lord.  I always thought it was a near/far prophecy, and that Pentecost happened because the Kingdom was being offered, but since the Jews rejected this offer yet again, the dreaming and miracles died away.  But they will have a resurgence as the end grows near.  But John MacArthur says no.  I don't like saying Pentecost was just a preview...because then what else was a preview?  Needs more study.

2024 - So...setting aside the argument for what Joel is speaking of specifically, we ought to note that there could have been, and still could be, many "Day of the Lord" events, in various places, before we get to the book of Revelation.  I think Revelation most certainly qualifies as Day of the Lord.  I also think that we must see the Day of the Lord as a period of time, not a moment of time.  I may be heralded with signs in the heavens and wonders on the earth, but there is more to it than that.  Again, Revelation is a fine example.

2023 - I am always tired when I get to this book, and all three chapters are covered in a day in my current reading plan.  Rev 5 is also on this day.  I have been covering it first, and so I am pretty used up by the time I get to Joel.  But it seems to me that there is a TON of information here.  Next year, in 2024, I am going to read Joel first, and will also note that on the Rev page!  (And that is exactly what I did.  Joel first in 2024, and I listened to it read aloud a couple days ago during exercise time.)

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.

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.

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.

Chapter 2
This chapter is titled "The Day of the Lord"
The wording of this verse may signal a transition from the current devastation to the final Day of the Lord during the end times:
1 Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; it is near, [Joe 2:1 ESV]  2020-I think the trumpet blowing signals a different prophecy than chapter 1.  We are talking about something different than the current plague of locusts.  
The wording of 2:2 is a lot like that of 1:6.  A powerful foe, beyond number, never before seen, never to come again.  In Chapter 1 this was about locusts.  The indication that 2 is about something different is the use of words more often - in fact always as far as I know - used to describe the final "great and terrible" Day of the Lord.  This verse:
2 a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never been before, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations. [Joe 2:2 ESV]
2020-I think this is key to the prophecy of Chapter 2.  We are talking about an invading army - a real army now, as contrasted with the present and very real locusts that were present at the time Joel is writing.  This prophecy is of Joel's future.  To figure out when he is talking about now, we need to find the place where an invading army - from a people greater than any before or after, will be present.  It could be that in my chronological reading, Joel is misplaced.  It could be that MSB is correct and we have to go back to the time of Joash.  If so, this army could be the besieging army of the Chaldeans.   Has there never again been such a people?  Maybe up to that time there had never been anything like them.  What about 70 AD though?  Has the world ever seen anything like Rome again?  Maybe it is referring to that.  Or, it could be referring to the battle that ends Great Trib and begins the Millennial.  That army is pretty huge also.  It is described this way.  17 Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, "Come, gather for the great supper of God, 18 to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great." 19 And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. [Rev 19:17-19 ESV]  Is this army of the beast the greatest ever before seen and never to rise again?  Or is it this one, at the end of the Millennial:  7 And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. 9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, 10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. [Rev 20:7-10 ESV]  Neither gives us a direct "hook" to Joel's description.
2023 - But that Gog and Magog description is still pretty close.  That one is the last battle ever on this earth.  He mentions generations though...there won't be any generations after that.  Time is about to end.  
2023 - The Pre-Millennial battle is in Megiddo.  Why blow a trumpet all the way down in Jerusalem?  But in the post-Millennial, the description indicates that Zion will be surrounded by an invader intent on destruction.  So in that sense, we have to see this as Gog and Magog.
2023 - But I come back to vs 12, where repentance is possible.  That is not so after Gog and Magog.  Perhaps we are not talking about a physical battle, but a spiritual.  Perhaps this is the disposition of forces that immediately precede the rapture.  Many of these signs occur at that point.  Following the rapture, the 144,000 will preach repentance to all Israel.  The battle is for the raptured, making their way to heaven, to be in the army that will return with him at the end of tgt.  Maybe that's what this is about.

2022 - 2:4-11, Those creatures in Revelation that sting.  Do they match up?  Do we get the signs in vs 10b before they arrive in Rev?  Are the descriptions similar?

Earthquakes are missing, as are darkened sun and moon and stars falling.  These three also show up most of the time when it is the end of the age that is spoken of.  So this looks like end times...but so far is not completely nailed down to that time as I would interpret it.
vs 4, 5 sound like locusts.  BUT, there are these two verses:
3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. ... 7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, [Rev 9:3, 7 ESV]
8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. [Rev 9:8-9 ESV]
These sound a lot like Joel 2:2.  Many of the same words are used.
Very descriptive language in Joel about how these "locusts" move, whatever they are.  I note particularly these phrases:
"like soldiers they scale the wall",
"they do not swerve",
"They do not jostle one another",
"they burst through the weapons",
"they enter through the windows like a thief".
So...maybe we see this as Joel connecting an extant plague of locusts, though of uniquely massive proportions, with the same vision John had of the locusts-like creatures in Revelation. 2020- I think this might be the best connection.  The army is like horses, but they are locusts, and the things they do to inflict their pain are like the way locusts invade.  There is no safe place, nowhere to run, and if you stay in your house with the door bolted they crawl up the wall and enter through the window.  So neither the pre- or post-millennial battle.  An army of locusts the size of horses and with tails like scorpions.  The like of this has certainly never been seen, not before, and never again after.  This is what it most likely is about.
Rev 8 ends this way:  12 The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. 13 Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!" [Rev 8:12-13 ESV]  So we get the heavenly portents indicating God's wrath.  Three great woes are about to begin.  Then as 9 starts the locusts are released:  3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. ... 6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. [Rev 9:3-4, 6 ESV]

2024 - So.  Revelation 9 is about the 5th trumpet.  The church will be long gone.  In 9:2 the bottomless pit is opened, and black smoke bellows out.  From the smoke comes these locusts - demons confined in the pit for a very long time.  From the time of Lucifer's rebellion possibly, and others confined there during and after Jesus' time on earth.  Remember that the demons in the pigs didn't want to be sent to the abyss.  They knew about it.  The locusts in revelation are "foreign invaders", from another nation, that bottomless pit.  They come out livid and bent on inflicting maximum pain.  Is Joel talking about Rev 9?  
2024 - If we go with the 5th Trumpet, then the day of the Lord in chapter 1 is a different, current time as contrasted with the day of the Lord in 2:2, in Revelation 9.  I have a hard time saying that Joel 2 and Rev 9 are about different creatures.  The locusts of Joel's time were real, and Joel seizes on the analogy - both of the locusts and the following suffering - because it is so appropriate to the events of Rev 0.  Yep.  Going with that!  Rev 8:12-13 also match up with Joel 2:10.  Darkened, not gone completely out.

Joel describes the portents this way, for comparison:
10 The earth quakes before them; the heavens tremble. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. [Joe 2:10 ESV]
For me, all the references needed are now present.  Joel has turned from the "object lesson of the current invasion of locusts" to the Last Days, and the wrath of God on the whole earth.

Verse 12 starts a call to repentance.  It starts with "Yet even now,"  So is this addressed to those in Joel's time, or those in Revelation?  Surely even in that day, there are still those who will be saved.  There is a point though, in those last days, beyond which no more will be saved.  Those who remain unrepentant at that time will all be killed by the outpouring of God's great wrath.  I think it more likely that Joel's appeal for repentance is to those in his own time.  Perhaps to forestall the locusts of Revelation in addition to those of his own time.  As it reads, the Lord does in fact relent, and the total devastation and starvation that seems imminent never happens.  The invaders - the northerners who flew down from the north, as in perhaps the locust plague came from north of Israel...yes, this seems to make good sense in context, now that we are talking about the locusts going away.  The locusts were perhaps blown on south, into the Negev where they spread out from the Med to the Dead Sea.  The locusts died of starvation and stunk up the whole area.  Yes...I think in 2020 that this is what Joel is talking about now.
2024 - There will be a chance to repent during the 5th trumpet, and well after that.  The final door does not close until...somewhere.  There is a verse in Revelation after which I don't believe anyone CAN be saved.  The offer is withdrawn....but I can't find it this morning.  So Joel's call for repentance applies equally to those in his own time and those enduring God's wrath after the Sixth Seal.  

In 2:1, a trumpet is blown, as an alarm, a warning that the Day of the Lord is near.  In 2:15, a trumpet is blown as a call to repentance and prayer for God to relent.

Beginning in 18, God does relent, restores the land, vanquishes Israel's enemies.  In vs 20, He will remove the northerner.  In 586 BC, that northerner was Babylon.  In Revelation, where is it that the pre- and post-Millennial attackers come from to attack Jerusalem?  There is Armageddon, which is 70 miles to the north.  Surely an invading army from the south would not be in Megiddo...
2023 - These verses seem to be about the Millennial.  So you have a trumpet for the rapture, then a trumpet for the Millennial gathering into Zion...Is there another trumpet?

(I did not note before that from 1:2 until 2:29, we are in verse format.  From 2:30 to 3:8 we are not, and then 3:9 to the end of the book in 3:21, we are back in verse.  I surely do wish I knew how that is determined.  Is it written that way in the text used for the translation into ESV and NKJV?  Is the format different in all translations?)

This verse:
23 "Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication; he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the latter rain, as before. [Joe 2:23 ESV]
Going backwards a little based on vs 25...This verse speaks of God's forgiveness in the past tense.  That would seem to be about the days of Joel, not the end times.  Yet in the end times, Israel will return, and Jesus will rule from Jerusalem, and they will multiply like livestock, and the land will bloom.  We have seen these things prophesied in previous books:
11 And I will multiply on you man and beast, and they shall multiply and be fruitful. And I will cause you to be inhabited as in your former times, and will do more good to you than ever before. Then you will know that I am the LORD. [Eze 36:11 ESV]
2020-I am mixing this wrong.  Eze 11 is about Millennial, but Joel 2:23 is about Joel's own time and that only.  That is why it is past tense.

This verse:
25 I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. [Joe 2:25 ESV]
Saw this one used to say that even if we stray, far off the straight and narrow, as I most certainly did in my life, even then, if we return, what was lost will be restored.  If that's proper interpretation in this context of God telling Israel through Joel what they need to do.  It isn't as though they have just lost blessings and they are gone forever, forfeited by their rebellion.  All that was lost can and will be restored by God.  
2020-This seems, in light of the vs 12 interpretation above, to mean that God sent rain and sun and shade and temperatures perfect for agricultural production over the next several years, such that all the extractions from grain and wine  and oil stores was replaced, and more.  This is the restoration in view here.
Then the next two verses present some problems:
vs 26 goes back to future tense.  Blessing that will occur, unlike any ever before, but still future to Joel.  Says Israel will never be put to shame again.  But this was before 70 AD.  So the restoration now in view has to be after that.  I think now we are firmly in the Millennial.
2023 - 26b says "never again", which I think confirms that we are in the Millennial here.  

These verses come next:
28 "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29 Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit. [Joe 2:28-29 ESV]
So look where these verses fall...we were seeing God's blessings, God's forgiveness described in past tense.  A restoration from this locust plague of extraordinary proportions.  Then we switched in 26 to future tense, and now we get the verses about something also yet future.  "It shall come to pass..."  Afterward is also a clue, perhaps referring back now to the locusts as big as horses.  It will be after that when Israel is finally restored, never to be put to shame again.  Seeing visions, dreaming dreams, and salvation through calling is about the Millennial.  People will still need to be saved in the Millennial because the survivors of Trib, Great Trib, and war will still be flesh and blood, and they are going to produce abundantly during that thousand years.  Acts 2 was not a fulfillment of Joel 2.

(2020-This paragraph is, I think, no longer necessary.  The paragraph above is explanatory.)  This prophesy is universal.  This will happen not just to the Jews, but to servants, and by extension to Gentiles.  All flesh.  Same question...is this referring to the Age of the Gentiles, which started in 586 BC, to the time after Jesus' resurrection when the good news was preached to all the world, to the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, or to the Tribulation period as the Jews return to Israel with hearts turned to God as never before, and as prophesied first (maybe first, I think first) in these verses:
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. [Eze 36:26-27 ESV]
(Actually, I think it is spoken of earlier...Just don't remember where...Maybe it didn't use these exact words.)

2022 - Vss 18-20,
the invaders are turned back.  Past tense used.  Joel is speaking of historical events.  When is this about?  I don't believe it is after Manassah...but maybe.  Is it about the defeat of Satan at the end of t/gt, and establishment of the Millennial kingdom?  Past tense just rhetorical?  "I will no more make you a reproach among the nations: sounds like Millennial.  That army of locusts like the pre-Millennial battle.  The foul stench that takes months to clean up also seems to be about that battle.  Can I pull out all those references and see them in one place?
vs 25b seems to say the locusts were God's army.
26b - Millennial.  Also 27b.
28 - Millenial gifts?
30 - Does this go backward?  Or are these things Christ will do from Zion as part of ruling with an iron rod?  No...we can tie these signs to t/gt.  Those loyal to Christ will be saved through it all.  The survivors enter the Millennial - when God calls them sheep, not goats.

Cannot move on without also inserting these last two verses of Chapter 2, which follow right after those above:
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come. 32 And it shall come to pass, [that] whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call. [Joe 2:30-32 KJV]
This pushes me into agreement with MSB that the prophesying, dreaming and visions are looking at the end times only, not at Acts.  But surely the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, and the gifts given to those receiving the Spirit included prophecy, visions, and so on.  But at Pentecost we did not have what I consider to be the telltale signs of an end times prophesy - and these are in vs 30, as immediately following, or at least as subsequent to the pouring out of the Spirit.  Wonders in the heavens, sun darkened, moon turned to blood.  All this to happen before that final wrath comes.  (2020-Yes.  Looks like I finished in the right place last year, and confirmed it this year.)

2022 - This section inserted subsequent to a pretty in-depth look at Mark 13, which necessitated looking at Matt 24 and Luke 21 also.  I am pasting this into Isa 13 and Joel 2...because they are about the same thing:
2022 - We still have to deal with Isa 13 also.  I had not found it when I made the notes above.  Isa 13 is about the destruction of Babylon, in one sense, but also must be about the time in Revelation when Babylon is destroyed.  That is in Rev 18,19.  IF, as I think right now, the verses above about the signs in heaven portend the rapture, and NOT the final battle after Christ's return, then the verses below need to be explained in that context:
"9 Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.
This does not sound like the joyous day of the rapture.  This phrase "the day of the Lord" has to be pinned down.  I think it refers to the second  coming and the final battle.  I think it is a particular, specific, identifiable day.  I don't think the day of the Lord is the day of the rapture, so vs 9 is not about the rapture, not about Rev. 6.

10 For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.
But THIS is the very next verse.  This matches Joel, the three gospels, and Rev 6.  So...does this tie all that is being said in Isaiah to Rev 6 and so to the rapture - as I understand its timing - or is can I "explain this away"?  Look at the next verse:

"11 I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless." [Isa 13:11 ESV].  Does this sound like the rapture?  No, I don't think it does.  So we have the signs in the heavens, the very familiar signs from Mark 13, Matt 24, and Lk 21, bracketed by descriptions of what seems necessarily to be Armageddon.  And just look at the next verse:

12 I will make people more rare than fine gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir. 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the LORD of hosts in the day of his fierce anger." [Isa 13:9-10, 12-13 ESV]
This description goes right along with Jesus saying these things:
"28 Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather." [Mat 24:28 ESV]
"37 And they said to him, "Where, Lord?" He said to them, "Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather."" [Luk 17:37 ESV]
At that battle, when Jesus comes, a very huge portion of the people who have managed to stay alive to that point will be fighting on the side of the Antichrist.  They will ALL be killed.  Revelation is very clear.  The language about the number of dead from that battle leaves little doubt that most of mankind -  other than the converted Jews - will be wiped out.

Looking again at the passages in Matt, Mk, and Lk, that phrase "after that time of tribulation" precedes the signs in heaven.  Revelation only mentions these signs at the 6th seal, NOT at the second coming in Rev. 19.  BUT, is it ok to say that according to Isaiah, those same signs will appear again just before the day of the Lord?  To make the case that I am making, at this point, that is what I am forced to say.  I think those vss in Isaiah 13 end as to the day of the Lord at vs 13:13.  In vs 14 we return to the prophecy of the fall of old Babylon to the Medes.

Isa 13:1-10 seem to correspond to Joel 2:1-11.  The pictures painted, the very words seem certainly to be talking about the same day.  The day of the Lord is in view.  I think both of these are about Rev 19, the second coming.  
Here are some interesting verses for direct comparison:
"6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come!" [Isa 13:6 ESV]
"1 Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; it is near," [Joe 2:1 ESV]

"7 Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt. 8 They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces will be aflame." [Isa 13:7-8 ESV]
"6 Before them peoples are in anguish; all faces grow pale." [Joe 2:6 ESV]

"10 For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light." [Isa 13:10 ESV]
"10 The earth quakes before them; the heavens tremble. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining." [Joe 2:10 ESV]

So.  As clear as it is that these signs will appear in Rev 6, and as it is very clear that Rev 6 is NOT about the second coming, and all this destruction and desolation and fire and armies of the Lord DO NOT appear in Rev 6 or following, it is equally clear that these signs will precede the appearance of Christ in Rev 19, when he does come to destroy his enemies and assume the rule of the planet.  These signs precede the appearance of Christ - at both the rapture and at the second coming.  Why would they not?  I don't know why these things are not mentioned in Rev 19, perhaps because they don't need to be.  Both Isaiah and Joel - two witnesses to the events of the Day of the Lord - make it clear that they will appear then.  Isaiah and Joel didn't know about the church age - or the rapture that ends it, so they wouldn't talk about it.  Jesus discourse, recorded in Matt 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, was about the church age, and since the end of that had not been previously described with the signs in heaven, is described in some detail there.  We must not mix the events of the rapture with the events of the second advent.  They are truly different.  AND, it may be that the best way to reconcile all this is to apply the parable of the tares being gathered and burned first, and then the wheat gathered in, to the second coming.  The burning is about that Satanic army.  They will first be destroyed, burned, and then the faithful Jews will be gathered for the Millennial Reign.  Perhaps this is why that parable about wheat and tares is found only in Matt 13:24-30, and nowhere near Matt 24.  Because they are about different times.  

2023 - Vss 28, 29, quoted by Peter after Pentecost, are about the things that will be going on during the Millennial.  

Here is the tie to Joel, chapter 3, not chapter 2:  "13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great. 14 Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision." [Joe 3:13-14 ESV].  Joel 3 is about Armageddon.  And this comes right after:  "15 The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining." [Joe 3:15 ESV].  Joel tells us twice that these signs in heaven will precede the second coming.  

2024 - Vss 21-30 are about the Millennial.  The restoration in view did NOT happen in Joel's time, nor has it happened at any time since then.  The "wonders" of vs 30 have not happened, but will at the end.  The Spirit poured out happens in the Millennial.  So I think, today, that Joel chapter two is about the time FROM the Sixth Seal to the Beginning of the Millennial.  Leaving it there.

Chapter 3
Just reading straight through in 2020...spent way more time than intended in 1 and 2...but I think I have them now, and I also think the below is on target.
Another sort of a time stamp starts this chapter:
1 For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, [Joe 3:1 KJV]...
Hmm...This quote is from the KJV.  Below is the same verse from TCR ESV:
1 "For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, [Joe 3:1 ESV]
These are pretty opposite.  These are nothing alike.  Surely, in context, this was referring back to the end of Chapter 2, where Israel was forgiven and restored...Not to some future captivity.  If we go with the KJV, God judges the nations in the Valley of Jehoshaphat WHILE Israel is captive.  Does not seem to fit.  NKJV is like ESV.  

2023 Note that the Valley of Jehoshaphat is just outside and to the SW of Jerusalem.  Might be synonymous with the Kidron Valley.

Also, in NKJV, the first three verses of Chapter 3 are in verse, then 4-8 are regular format, then back to verse for the rest of the chapter.  In ESV, 3:1-8 are regular, and then from 9 on to the end are in verse.  Where do these formats come from!!!!?????

Much about slavery in these first 8 verses.  God is angry with the Philistines, Tyre, and Sidon, for selling Jews into slavery in Greece, and sending them far away.  God says this will come back on them, and they themselves will be sold as slaves to the Sabeans.  It seems like an aside...or an insert.

2024 - Later.  As I was reading Micah 4, I noticed the following:
"He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore;" [Mic 4:3 ESV]
This is the Millennial.  Christ reigning on the earth, over all the earth.  1000 years of peace.  No need for war, no war allowed is maybe a better phrase.
2024 - A little more context here:
4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. [Isa 2:4 ESV].  If we look at vss 2-4 here, it is quite certain that we are talking about the Millennial Reign.  This is a time when there will be no war in Israel.  They just won't have any need for weapons.  I think we can be quite certain that this time is still in the future.
10 Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, "I am a warrior." [Joe 3:10 ESV].  Also this:  14 Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. 15 The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. [Joe 3:14-15 ESV].  Joel seems to be talking about an earlier time, as Israel arms itself for battle.  We can almost see 1948 in this description.  But I think it is about a still future time.  We can tie vs 15 to Revelation 6.   I think these signs accompany the rapture- shortly before or shortly after.  So...In Joel the plowshares are turned to swords at the beginning of the last 3 1/2 years, and in Micah, the swords are turned BACK into plowshares in anticipation of a thousand years of peace.  Copying this to Joel 3...
In Joel we see all the nations gathered together against Israel.  They are focused in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.  

https://alchetron.com/cdn/valley-of-josaphat-f107bdf6-f6eb-4fc7-a9d7-1aeaf1589cc-resize-750.jpeg

2024 - Still - Oh my...We know that there will be battles in the Plain of Megiddo, and we know there is this battle right here where Jerusalem is pretty much surrounded. We seem to see also that there will be a judgment immediately after this battle around Jerusalem.  We see that there will be fighting.  BUT, I think it is OTHER nations that will be making swords.  So...when is this battle?  
Is this verse relevant: 31 On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. [Luk 17:31 ESV]?  
Then this:
15 "So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. [Mat 24:15-18 ESV].
Surely these two verses are about the very same time.  And I think these two verses are about things that happen during the period between the recognition of the MoL by the church, and the time they are raptured out.  Hmm....good!!!  These verses have nothing to do with the Valley of Jehoshaphat.  If I have these verses placed correctly, they are about the Church Age - pre-rapture.  Therefore, Joel would not have "seen" them.  Joel is talking about events AFTER all those signs in the heavens
Further, Joel is talking about a completely different time than Isaiah and Micah.  But how much different...Could just be that once this battle is over - once the swords have been put to use - then they can immediately be converted back to farm implements.  So do both this scene AND Megiddo occur simultaneously?  Imagine an army outside Jerusalem, keeping the Jews inside, waiting to slaughter them when Satan arrives from his "victory" in Megiddo.  But that is not how it goes.  Satan falls at Megiddo and is locked up for a thousand years.  King Jesus comes to Jerusalem and passes judgement on these outside the walls for all their deeds.  Captives are taken and sold to the highest bidder - slavery of the lost during the Millennial is what we'd be talking about - those who helped the Jews...
No...I am mixing scenes together.  
16 And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. [Rev 16:16 ESV].  Armageddon is pre-Millennial.  It is pre-7th bowl.  Or at least things are leading up to it.  So it works that both the Valley of Jehoshaphat and Armageddon are concurrent, and both pre-millennial, and both prior to the judgment seat of Christ on earth.  At this point in the last 3 1/2, the planet will be pretty much devastated.  There won't really be any "technology" left.  War will be reduced to ancient technology - swords.  
But...this, at the END of the Millennial:
7 And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison ... 9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, [Rev 20:7, 9 ESV].  Both the camp at Armageddon and Jerusalem are surrounded at this time.  But.  No weapons are needed.  There are no bodies because the fire from heaven consumes them.  There is no mention of Megiddo.  Can't use Granville Sharp though.  There are two definite articles here.  The camp and the city are not one and the same.
I will save further work on this for another time.  What I do believe I have learned is that the Pre-Milliennial battle is not confined to the plain of Megiddo, but there is also a contingent that surrounds Jerusalem.  
YIKES - Reading this again on 2/14/24 in connection with Nahum 3:4, I seem to have read this COMPLETELY wrong.  Vs 7 clearly says this is at the END of the Millennial, that BOTH the camp and the city are joined in battle.  What it does not say is Armageddon.  This requires a complete re-examination - and what I ought to do is just rewrite these notes as they ought to be rather than confuse things by leaving my initial misunderstanding here.
And one more important item.  This verse:
15 The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. [Joe 3:15 ESV].  If this is the pre-millennial battle at the end of the seventieth week, then these signs in the heavens are the SECOND manifestation of such.  The first time as inside the Sixth Seal, and this is a second time.  THAT means that we have these signs BOTH at the rapture of the church in the sixth seal when Jesus comes in the clouds, and AGAIN at the end of the Millennial when Jesus arrives on earth riding a white horse.  THE SIGNS ACCOMPANY BOTH appearances if we put things together this way, and a lot of things that were previously confusing finally make sense. (So...these signs appear at the rapture, and at the end of the Millennium.  At the end of the church age at the rapture when the Church Age dispensation ends, and then at the end of the 1000 years, when the promises to Israel are fulfilled.  That makes a whole lot of sense also!
I have had two really good mornings in 2024!!!
And a third in 2/17 that forces a re-evaluation of the first two.  As of today, Armageddon occurs before the Millennial begins.  Jesus sits on his throne and judges the survivors of that battle.  Jesus judges the living.  AFTER the thousand years. Satan raises another army, and comes against two places.  One is NE of the Holy City, in the VoJ.  The other is the camp of the saints.  That could be Armageddon, but might be elsewhere.  Jesus ends this post millennial battle all by himself, no plowshares needed.  After this, we have the GWT.  The giant gaping hole in this is the selling of losers as slaves.  How can that be resolved with end of the Millennial?  That has to be pre-Millennial!
So on another good day, I will come back and puzzle this out.

Then, in verse format, there is a call to all the nations to make ready for war, and come to the Valley of Jehoshaphat where God will judge them.  This verse:
13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great. [Joe 3:13 ESV]
Very much like this:
15 And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, "Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe." [Rev 14:15 ESV]
20 And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse's bridle, for 1,600 stadia. [Rev 14:20 ESV]

In Revelation, this refers to the pre-Millennial battle.  I think.

For a timestamp of this battle, these verses:
14 Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. 15 The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. [Joe 3:14-15 ESV]

So much here that has connections to other parts of the Bible.  This book is like a hinge that many other prophecies turn on...

2022 - East Texas notes:
About a judgment.  All nations in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.  Judgment on behalf of Israel.  If S&G, these are living survivors of t/gt.  (Now that I am home I think this is the bema seat judgment immediately after the rapture.  But not sure, and have not yet studied it in detail.)  "because they have scattered".  So the ones in view are NOT the bad Jews.  Both Jew and Gentile will be judged here.  (Judged for rewards maybe?  If for sin, this is not the rapture.)  So I need to revise that.  Is this gathering from all nations about everyone there, or just some, leaving unsaved Gentiles still out there?  I still have a problem with all those multitudes at the last battle being born in the last 1000 years...and being ungrateful for the prosperity that gave rise to that.  How?  But if not, who is NOT gathered here in Joel?  (Must add this all to the judgment study!)  The end of Joel 2 has sun darkened and moon turned to blood.  We know when that is.  Yeah...but it looks like this judgment in Joel looks forward to the pre-Millennial judgment, after that great battle.  A lot of people will be judged.  Looking forward to that study!
Look at vss 14, 15!  This is crucial to any study of Judgment, and I  didn't even realize it was here!  Signs in heaven again!  Through vs 18 - Shows us this is S&G.  Pre-Millennial.  Does vs 21 tell us who is judged?


The end of this verse:vv
17 "...And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall never again pass through it. [Joe 3:17 ESV]
Ezekiel's Temple is forbidden to Gentiles, at least in part.  

This:
18 "And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the stream beds of Judah shall flow with water; and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the LORD and water the Valley of Shittim. [Joe 3:18 ESV]
Israel will be restored to abundance, as in this verse again:
11 And I will multiply on you man and beast, and they shall multiply and be fruitful. And I will cause you to be inhabited as in your former times, and will do more good to you than ever before. Then you will know that I am the LORD. [Eze 36:11 ESV]

And this fountain from the house of the Lord?:
2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side. 3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. 4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. 5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. [Eze 47:2-5 ESV]

This is the stream that will freshen the Dead Sea and make it productive!  

I am having to change my mind once again...This reference is almost certainly to the Millennial, to the Golden Millennia of Israel.  And that fountain from Ezekiel's Temple will water the Land of the Jews.  That Temple, those sacrifices, those priests, MUST BE REAL.  It is not a Temple offered but refused.  It is a Temple that will exist.  So...whether I like it or not, those sacrifices will be re-instituted.  And I feel much better about all that anyway after the add'l notes from last night that were in the MSB.  Not all the feasts, nor all the sacrifices, are re-instituted.  And there is more to be learned by what is missing than by what is still there.
Back to the timelines.  The original, proposed, covenant relationship between God and Israel WILL COME TO PASS in the Millennial.  Sacrifices and all.  That MUST happen, because God's word never returns empty.  He said He would be their God, and they would be His people, and that is going to happen.

And now I know why my Chronological Bible puts Joel after Ezekiel.  They are hand and glove almost, and reach out also to Revelation.

2024 - This verse:
21 I will avenge their blood, blood I have not avenged, for the LORD dwells in Zion." [Joe 3:21 ESV].  How can we not wonder, with a verse like this, why Germany is not really mentioned in the Bible?  Either they have already suffered God's vengeance for what they did to the Jews, or vengeance is still to come.  I haven't read all this, but found a link.  Implies that perhaps Germany is one of the ten horns at the end.  I suppose that is possible.  This article throws in a Bible verse now and then, but it does not seem like the Bible is a "primary" source for the article.  So beware.

What better way to close this book than with these words:
21 ...for the LORD dwells in Zion." [Joe 3:21 ESV]