Volume III
The Book of the Prophet Joel
With John Brown’s marginal references, notes and reflections · Vol. III, p. 1428
Whether Joel prophesied in Judea before Hosea and Amos prophesied in Israel, and foretells the plagues of locusts and drought which Amos laments, ch. vii., or after the Israelites were carried captive into Assyria, we cannot determine. His prophecy contains (1) A representation of Judea, as terribly plagued by swarms of locusts and other insects, and great drought, intermixed with calls to solemn repentance and promises of deliverance, ch. i. ii. 1-17. (2) Predictions of the glorious blessings to the gospel church in the apostolic and millennial periods, and of ruin to her and the Jews' enemies, ch. ii. 28-32; iii.
[The date of Joel's prophecy is uncertain; but its continued recognition in the Hebrew canon is unquestioned, while the references to it and the quotations from it in the New Testament afford all that can be necessary to commend it as the Word of the Lord (see Mat. 24. 29; Ac. 2. 16-21; Ro. 10. 13-16; Re. 21. 27; 22. 1). The occasion of the prophecy appears to have been a dreadful famine caused by the ravages of locusts and other destructive insects (for whose powers of destruction, see Kirby and Spence's Entomology), upon which calamity the prophet founds an exhortation to priests and people to repent with prayer and fasting, and earnestly intercedes with God on their behalf. But, in the foresight of their impenitence, he foretells still greater judgments by an army of locusts, and exhorts them again to fasting, prayer, and repentance; on which, not as meritorious purchases of deliverance, but as witnesses of their renewal by grace, and acknowledgments and vindications of the being and providence of God, he promises, not only deliverance from their calamities, but increase of temporal and spiritual blessings. But foreseeing still the hardened impenitence of his people, he predicts the ruin of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation, while he intersperses promises of safety to the believing remnant of 'the election of grace.' He then predicts the divine judgments upon the enemies of God's people, with the peace, prosperity, and purity of Israel, when again grafted into the tree from which, as a barren branch, it had in judgment been broken.
His remarkable prediction of the effusion of the Holy Spirit in tongues, and prophecies, and visions, formed one of the original evidences of Christianity; and still affords the only means of accounting for the rapid propagation of the gospel through so many nations during the first century of the Christian era. C.
The date of this prophecy, though not directly stated, may be approximately inferred from one or two facts. Amos commences his book with a passage from Joel 3. 16. He embodies too the same promises in ch. 9. 13 which we find in Joel 3. 18. Isaiah likewise appears to have been acquainted with the writings of Joel (comp. Is. 13. 6; Joel 1. 15). We therefore infer that Joel prophesied before Amos and Isaiah; and it seems highly probable that when Hosea in his early years prophesied in Israel, Joel was God's commissioned messenger in Jerusalem. P.]