Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethuel.
Hear this, you elders;
    listen, all who live in the land.
Has anything like this ever happened in your days
    or in the days of your ancestors?
Tell it to your children,
    and let your children tell it to their children,
    and their children to the next generation.
What the locust swarm has left
    the great locusts have eaten;
what the great locusts have left
    the young locusts have eaten;
what the young locusts have left
    other locusts have eaten.
Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
    Wail, all you drinkers of wine;
wail because of the new wine,
    for it has been snatched from your lips.
A nation has invaded my land,
    a mighty army without number;
it has the teeth of a lion,
    the fangs of a lioness.
It has laid waste my vines
    and ruined my fig trees.
It has stripped off their bark
    and thrown it away,
    leaving their branches white.
Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth
    grieving for the betrothed of her youth.
Grain offerings and drink offerings
    are cut off from the house of the Lord.
The priests are in mourning,
    those who minister before the Lord.
The fields are ruined,
    the ground is dried up;
the grain is destroyed,
    the new wine is dried up,
    the olive oil fails.
Despair, you farmers,
    wail, you vine growers;
grieve for the wheat and the barley,
    because the harvest of the field is destroyed.
The vine is dried up
    and the fig tree is withered;
the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—
    all the trees of the field—are dried up.
Surely the people’s joy
    is withered away.
Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn;
    wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
    you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings
    are withheld from the house of your God.
Declare a holy fast;
    call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders
    and all who live in the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
    and cry out to the Lord.
Alas for that day!
    For the day of the Lord is near;
    it will come like destruction from the Almighty.
Has not the food been cut off
    before our very eyes—
joy and gladness
    from the house of our God?
The seeds are shriveled
    beneath the clods.
The storehouses are in ruins,
    the granaries have been broken down,
    for the grain has dried up.
How the cattle moan!
    The herds mill about
because they have no pasture;
    even the flocks of sheep are suffering.
To you, Lord, I call,
    for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness
    and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.
Even the wild animals pant for you;
    the streams of water have dried up
    and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness.

• Joel 1:1-20

Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments

Joel 1:1 ‘Joel was called’: “Joel begins his prophecy by authenticating his prophetic office: The word of the LORD that came to Joel. The words that follow, then, have their source in God. Joel didn’t seek this message. He was called by God-not vice versa. The King came to a servant and commanded the servant to comply.”

• Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Joel 1:2-2:17 ‘The Day of the Lord’: “This first major segment of the book of Joel shows that ‘the day of the Lord’ (1:15) will be a time of invasion. There are two sub-divisions, of which the first, 1:2-14, deals with the historical invasion of locusts. It is this invasion that gave rise to the prophecy as a whole, as Joel prophesies of future invasions. Since this locust invasion was historical, we will turn our attention to the prophecy in the next section.
‘The second subdivision, 1:15-2:17, describes the devastation that is going to occur during the Day of the Lord, the Great Tribulation. Having described the devastation caused by the locusts and pointing out that this was the worst that had ever occurred until that day, Joel now points out that a day is coming when things will get even worse. During the Day of the Lord, the Great Tribulation, there will be an invasion that will prove to be even more devastating than the locust invasion that has just occurred.
“Joel introduces his new theme in 1:15-20. In verse 15, Joel announces the coming Day of the Lord, a time of destruction from the Almighty. It is God’s judgment upon this earth. When that day comes, it will result in a massive devastation even worse than that which occurred from the recent locust invasion. The crops will be destroyed (verses 16-17), and as a result, there will be no sustenance for the temple (verse 16) or the people (verse 17). Livestock will be affected too, for they will have nothing to eat (verses 18-20).
“In 2:1-11, Joel begins to detail the account of the invasion. He begins by sounding the alarm in 2:1: ‘Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near.’ In the ancient world, an alarm was sounded to announce an approaching army (Numbers 10:9). Here an alarm will sound from the holy mountain, Mount Zion, upon which the temple stands. When this alarm sounds, it will point out that the Day of the Lord has arrived with full force. In verse 2, Joel says this day will be a time of darkness, gloominess, and clouds. These are typical descriptions of the Day of the Lord or the Great Tribulation (Isaiah 8:22; 60:2; Amos 5:18-20; Zephaniah 1:14-16). Joel concludes his description with the words, ‘as the dawn is spread over the mountains.’  In other words, just as dawn is sudden and widespread, so will be the Day of the Lord. It will come not only upon the land of Israel (though that is Joel’s particular focal point), but extend to all parts of the world.”

• Tim LaHaye and Ed Hindson, Exploring Bible Prophecy

Joel 1:2-3 ‘Joel called on the elders’: “Joel calls on the elders and inhabitants of the land to listen: Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? (1:2). Nothing arrests one’s attention quicker than an intriguing question, so Joel is drawing his audience in. By saying, Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children, and their children the next generation (1:3), Joel builds the tension further to make the reader ask, “Well, what is it?””

• Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Joel 1:2-3 ‘Joel calls for people to hear’: ”Whenever I read those verses, I’m reminded of my days in the navy. Whenever the navy made an important announcement, it always began, ‘Now hear this.’ And that’s the way Joel begins: ‘Hear this …’ His announcement concerns an event of immense importance-the great day of the Lord.
“Back in World War II we talked about the coming of D-Day, and then V-J Day. We looked forward to the end of the war, to the day when the struggle would cease and the horrors of war would end. Here in Joel we see that God has a day circled on the cosmic calendar, the day of the Lord. Joel was entrusted with the task of describing that great day to the people.
“It’s important to understand that, in a broad sense, what the Bible calls the day of the Lord is not just one event in human history. We will find in this prophecy that the day of the Lord is any event in which God moves in judgment that has been building up, cycle by cycle, toward the final and terrible day. The day of the Lord is the culmination of all judgment that Joel describes in chapters 2 and 3.“

• Ray C. Stedman, Adventuring Through the Bible

Joel 1:2 ‘plague of locusts’: “Apparently Israel was in the midst of a great locust plague at this time. Locust plagues were rather commonplace in that land, but Joel calls to the old men and says, ‘Did anything like this ever happen in your day? Did it happen in the day of your fathers? Have you ever heard anything like this locust plague?’ Of course, they had to say, ‘No, this is the worst we’ve ever had.’ The trouble with most of us as we begin to get older is that we have grandiose ideas about the past. If some young person comes and says to us, ‘Say, we just had a wonderful meeting at our church,’ we like to say, ‘That’s wonderful, that was a great meeting, but we had a meeting that was twice as good back in my hometown when I was young.’ Joel said, ‘You old men have never heard of anything like this’—and the old men had to agree that they had not.”

• J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi

Joel 1:3-4 ‘teach your children well’: “Some events arc so epic, their stories are passed along from generation to generation. My parents told me about their life as children during the Great Depression and World War 2. I told my children about watching the first landing on the moon. They will tell their children about the attacks of September 11 and the coronavirus pandemic.
“Of course, in ancient times, storytelling was the primary method for recording significant occurrences. Long before print, broadcast, and digital communication, these tales were preserved through this means of oral tradition.
A cartoon showed a kangaroo with a baby kangaroo peeking out of the pouch. The caption read: His mother determines his point of view. This image reminds parents of their responsibility to teach the epic lessons they already learned to their children.”

• Jay McCluskey, A Long Walk with the Minor Prophets

Joel 1:3 ‘tell … children … another generation’: “The pedagogical importance of reciting the LORD’s mighty acts to subsequent generations is heavily underscored by the 3-fold injunction (cf. Ex. 10:1–6; Deut. 4:9; 6:6, 7; 11:19; 32:7; Pss. 78:5–7; 145:4–7; Prov. 4:1ff.).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Joel 1:4-7 ‘complete destruction’: “What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten; and what the young locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten (1:4). In other words, massive locust swarms had stripped the land bare. Their destruction of the crops had reached epic proportions; the pestilence was historic. Joel even compares the locusts to a nation that had invaded the land (1:6). Indeed, a foreign army couldn’t have left the country more devastated. The grapevine and the fig tree-two principle producers of food for the land-were left barren (1:7).”

• Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Joel 1:4 ‘Plants and Animals’: “The precise meanings of Joel’s four kinds of locusts are unclear (Joel 1:4). Locusts are grasshoppers whose form and behavior change when they migrate in large numbers and swarm together. An adult locust has a wingspan of 5 inches and can fly 100 miles in a day. A locust swarm may number billions of locusts and eat several tons of leaves in a day.”

• Timothy B. Cargal, et al., The Chronological Study Bible

Joel 1:5 ‘drunkenness’: “Notice drunkenness was the only specific sin associated by Joel with the locust plaque. Perhaps drunkards represented the careless people in the land. Most likely, Joel simply featured the vast extend of their agricultural loss.”

• Jay McCluskey, A Long Walk with the Minor Prophets

Joel 1:6 ‘human locusts’: “Far worse than the scourge of locusts were the Assyrian (8th century BC) and Babylonian (6th century BC) invasions that came upon Israel and Judah. The plague was judgment in the present and warning for the future. Prosperity had lulled the people into complacency and moral decadence.”

• Dorothy Kelley Patterson, General Editor, NIV Woman’s Study Bible (Karen H. Jobes, Minor Prophets contributor)

Joel 1:7 ‘fig tree and vine’: “The fig tree and vine are references to ancient Israel (see Isa 5:1–7; Mt 21:18–19).”

• Dorothy Kelley Patterson, General Editor, NIV Woman’s Study Bible (Karen H. Jobes, Minor Prophets contributor)

Joel 1:8 ‘inconsolable grief’: “The Jewish nation is described as a virgin throughout Scripture (see Jer 14:17). Sackcloth (usually woven of black goat’s hair) was worn during times of mourning. Joel described the inconsolable grief of a virgin at the death of her betrothed prior to consummation of the marriage. Her opportunities for marriage would be almost nonexistent. Israel’s grief would be likewise inconsolable.”

• Dorothy Kelley Patterson, General Editor, NIV Woman’s Study Bible (Karen H. Jobes, Minor Prophets contributor)

Joel 1:9-10 ‘loss of relationship’: “The priests and the farmers were to mourn, not only for their livelihood, which had been destroyed, but also because the sacrifices and feasts of the Lord had been reduced or canceled by the devastation. Grain, wine and oil were essential elements of sacrifice, and the locust plague destroyed them. The sacrifices were prerequisite for God to meet with his people. For Israel, suspension of the daily sacrifices implied a break in their fellowship with God.”

• Dorothy Kelley Patterson, General Editor, NIV Woman’s Study Bible (Karen H. Jobes, Minor Prophets contributor)

Joel 1:9 ‘grain offering … drink offering have been cut off.’: “To cut off these offerings, sacrificed each morning and evening (Ex. 29:38–42; Lev. 23:13), was to cut off the people from the covenant. The gravity of the situation was deepened by the fact that it threatened the livelihood of the priests, who were given a portion of most sacrifices.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Joel 1:10 ‘no olives, no grapes, no grain’: “There was no olive oil and no grapes and no grain. The three staple crops which they had were now destroyed. Even the land is to mourn. You see, the land and the people were very closely intertwined. The Mosaic Law was not only given to a people, it was given to a land.
“Joel has spoken to the drunkards, he has spoken to the priests, and now he will speak to the farmers:”

• J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi

Joel 1:11-12 ‘a future of starvation’: “The nation faced starvation, for the grains (wheat and barley) and fruits (dates, apples, grapes, figs and pomegranates) had been destroyed. Since abundant crops and food were signs of God’s blessing, the destruction of the harvest was a severe indictment.”

• Dorothy Kelley Patterson, General Editor, NIV Woman’s Study Bible (Karen H. Jobes, Minor Prophets contributor)

Joel 1:11 ‘lack of harvest’: “Just within the previous few weeks of this writing, various corners of our world were struck by widespread fires, earthquakes, and floods. In such times, residents face the loss of so much of their lives and livelihoods. Judah’s loss included the grains of wheat and barley as well as the grape harvest that produced wine.”

• Jay McCluskey, A Long Walk with the Minor Prophets

Joel 1:13 ‘gird yourselves and lament’: “’Gird yourselves,’ … ‘and lament, priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar.’ The priests could not perform their function because there was nothing for them to use for the offerings. They were to lie all night girded with sackcloth and ashes because there was no meat offering and no drink offering. The economy of the land was wrecked, and there was not even enough to make an offering to God. However, God makes it clear that it was not the ritual that was important but the hearts of the people.
“In these verses God is asking the people to something that He had not asked before. When God gave the Mosaic Law, He gave seven feast days to these people, and He made it clear that He did not want them to come before Him with a long face. He wanted them to come to His house rejoicing and with joy in their hearts.
“Have you noticed today that when Christians meet together in church it is generally not a very joyful occasion? I am even rebuked for telling funny stories. Sometimes I see a lot of saints who just sit there and do not even crack a smile. I wish they would—I think it would do them good. There is no joy today, and there was no joy in Joel’s day.
“Why is God for the first time telling His people, ‘I want you to lament. I want you in sackcloth and ashes. I want you to mourn’? Before He had told them, ‘I want you to come before Me with joy.’ The reason is because of sin in the nation. That is the same reason there is such a lack of joy today. The world is surely working hard today. The music has to be loud and fast, and the jokes have to be dirty to even get a laugh. Even in our churches it is considered almost sinful to laugh out loud. Oh, my friend, where is our joy today? It is gone because of sin. God won’t let us have joy. He said to these people, ‘Come before Me now with your mourning. I do not like it, but you are sinful and I want to see your repentance.’”

• J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi

Joel 1:14 ‘repent, fast, and cry out to God’: “This key verse instructs all to repent, to fast and to cry out to the Lord. God never leaves his people without recourse.”

• Dorothy Kelley Patterson, General Editor, NIV Woman’s Study Bible (Karen H. Jobes, Minor Prophets contributor)

Joel 1:15 ‘The Day of Judgment’: “Among the Old Testament prophets the phrase ‘day of the Lord’ (or “day of Yahweh”) meant disaster and destruction for Judah and Israel. The prophet Joel could only announce, ‘Alas for the day!’ (Joel 1:15). In the ancient Near East, the ‘day’ of a deity meant a time of celebration in which that particular deity was honored as the most powerful god of the pantheon. In the liturgical calendars of Egypt and Mesopotamia there were holy days set aside all through the year for the worship of the various deities.
“In the cultures of both Egypt and Mesopotamia, banquets and celebrations marked each god’s day. In Egyptian festivals, the image of the god was brought from the temple and carried through the streets. In Mesopotamia, the statues of many gods might be brought in procession to the temple of the god whose day it was to join the celebration. As supreme ruler for that day, the deity was asked to bring justice to the world. Loyal worshipers were expected to be rewarded and the wicked punished.
“The people of Judah similarly considered the day of Yahweh to be one of festivals and good times. Prophets like Joel (Joel 1:15) and Amos (Amos 5:18), however, proclaimed a contrasting view. They agreed that Yahweh would indeed bring judgment and true justice on that day. But, since the people had not lived by the rules of God, the judgment that would come would result in their own destruction. The Judeans did not understand that their request for justice was a call for their own condemnation.”

• Timothy B. Cargal, et al., The Chronological Study Bible

Joel 1:16 ‘the Joy was gone’: “Joel continues talking about this plague of locusts. There was no more joy and gladness in the house of God. I have had the privilege in the past few years of my ministry of speaking in the great pulpits of this country and at many of the great Bible conferences. I have noted that there is a sadness in congregations as they come together today. In many places I have found that at the first service there is an air of expectancy. You can feel it, the air is charged with it, but there is no note of gladness. At some meetings in Florida, a man with the FBI said to me, ‘I’ve been watching your method. I’ve noted that you get up before a congregation, and you slide very quietly and slowly into a funny story to get the people into a good humor.’ I said, ‘You’ve noticed that?’ And he said, ‘Yes, and I think I know why you do it. I think you’re doing it because there is a low level of joy among the people today.’ I told the man that he was right. The joy was gone in Israel, and today, even when we have everything, there is no joy in our services.”

• J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi

Joel 1:17 ‘desolation down to the root’: “’The seed is rotten under their clods.’ The grain couldn’t even come up, because the locusts had just gnawed off the shoots even with the ground. ‘The garners are laid desolate’—they could not fill up the granary.”

• J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi

Joel 1:19 ‘to You I cry out’: “As the first to call to repentance, the prophet had to be the first to heed the warning. He had to lead by example and motivate the people to respond. In the midst of proclaiming judgment, God’s prophets often led in intercessory prayer for mercy and forgiveness (cf. Ex. 32:11–14; Jer. 42:1–4; Dan. 9:1–19; Amos 7:1–6).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Joel 1:20 ‘The plague affected everyone, even the wild animals and livestock’: “This was a very terrible, treacherous time. Even the animal world—both the animals in the barnyard and the wild animals out yonder in the forest—were being affected by this plague. It was a judgment that touched all life in that land in that day, and it becomes a picture of the Day of the Lord that is coming.”

• J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi

My Thoughts

We know practically nothing about the prophet Joel.  The message could have been delivered over a wide range of time.  Extrabiblical texts point to possibly Joel being from the tribe of Reuben in Gilead.

But the reason for the lack of information on timing is that it is a timeless message.  The Day of the Lord is coming, and we need to be prepared.  We need to have our ducks in a row.   Sure, there was an immediate concern in Israel with a literal swarm of locusts and the figurative swarm of the Assyrians.  But the warnings are still true for us.  It’s kind of like the old Dragnet television show, the names are changed to protect the innocent.  But in this case, were there that many innocent people?

I like Ray Stedman’s comment about the announcements aboard ship in the navy starting with “Now hear this.”

This reminds me of a job that I had forty-five years ago.  Someone from security would test the alarm system every day.  There was a set script.  And once you heard the test begin for the hundredth time, you knew to ignore it.  As part of the script said, “This is a test.”

One day, and for about a couple of weeks, this guy with a thick Southern Accent, a.k.a. Gomer Pyle, got on the microphone and slurred through all the tests.  The hundreds of people within the hearing of the tests stopped what they were doing.  They laughed, but they intently listened.  They wanted to know how he would mispronounce some of the words, for example, instead of Chlorine, it would be Klo … Reeeeen!  As I said, this lasted about two weeks until the big brass stopped the guard from ever doing that again.

My thought was that he was not minimizing safety or poking fun at the system.  He had devised a way to get everyone to pay attention to the alarms.  In his comical way, he improved our safety readiness.

Joel wanted the people to hear what the Lord had told him.  If they repented, God might relent.  He spoke to the elders, telling them to pass it on to the younger generations.  After all, the younger generations would suffer due to what the elders had done themselves.

This may be the reason God shows great mercy in these times when an entire nation must be taught a stern lesson.  The children will suffer largely for doing what their parents had done and their grandparents.

Locusts of all shapes and sizes will come to devour everything.  All the crops will be destroyed.

But then in the same breath, a great nation will rise up and destroy everything left by the locusts.  We know this nation to be Assyria.

While a virgin is often used as a metaphor for the children of Israel, the metaphor here is of a grieving virgin, grieving the betrothed of her youth.  As the commentaries say, the woman whose betrothed husband has died, possibly in battle when the nation rises up against them, but this woman will probably never marry.

The priests will mourn due to the lack of a harvest.  Whether the people gave an offering of the firstfruits, having no harvest at all means that the priests will starve along with everyone else.

God, through Joel, tells them to mourn, put on sackcloth and wail.  They must repent.  They must fast.

But does fasting lose meaning when the seed pods are ruined?  There is no hope for food when the storehouse of seed for the next Spring planting is gone.

This reminds me of a story that my great-grandfather put in his memoires.  When the war of the 1860s in the USA was over, carpet baggers came from the North and settled in every town in the South.  They controlled who got seed for planting.  Since there had been no crops the year before, due to the war and the scorched earth policy, there was no seed in the storehouse.

My ancestors had a family gathering.  Six young men from the different branches of the family were given what little money that they had.  They were to travel west until they got to west Texas, where they heard people were not controlled by the carpet baggers.  One was killed in a gunfight in the streets of Natchez, MS, before they ever crossed the river into Louisiana.  They travelled in secret, but another was killed when carpet baggers discovered them.  Two more were killed by Native Americans travelling across the wild west.  Only two returned with enough seed to bring in a crop for all the branches of the family.

What could the people of Israel do when they were a conquered nation with no seed to plant?

And to make matters worse, there is a wildfire.  Even the wild animals have nothing for sustenance.

Some Serendipitous Reflections

Joel 1:1-12 An Invasion of Locusts 1. How would your local TV or newspaper have covered these events? Pointing fingers at whom? Suggesting what remedies?
“2. Do you respond to personal calamity as Joel’s original hearers did? How? Describe your response to one current or recent experience.
“3. The joy of this nation was linked to external circumstances. On a scale of 1-10, how often is that true of you: Never (=1)? Half the time (=5)? Always (=10)? Other:   ?
“4. When your joy withers, what (or who) has God used to renew it?
Joel 1:13-20 A Call to Repentance 1. Do you know of any community or church gathering to cry out to God when resources have dried up? What purposes do such gatherings fulfill?
“2. When have you felt like your resources (spiritual, financial, physical) were drying up or burned out? Did you or could you cry out to God? Why or why not? What happened?”

• Lyman Coleman, et al, The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups

Joel 1 has two sets of questions as noted.

With the first question, it depends on what media you are allowed to see on your computer media feed.  How would this plague be treated?  We know every politician would have to suggest a solution, but would any talk about repentance?

Substitute whatever group for any reference to a small group or ask who could come to your aid.

If you like these Thursday morning Bible studies, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Thursday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.