Today’s Passage: An Overview of the Whole Book
You are about to walk through one of the shortest books among the prophets, only three chapters long, and yet it holds some of the largest promises in the whole Old Testament. Joel the son of Pethuel begins with a disaster so ordinary that a farmer could see it with his own eyes, a plague of locusts that came in wave upon wave and stripped the fields until nothing green was left. But Joel is a prophet, and a prophet is a man who learns to read the ordinary world as a page in God’s book. Where his neighbors saw only ruined crops and empty barns, Joel saw a warning written across the sky, a herald and a rehearsal of something far greater that was coming, the Day of the LORD. And so this little book moves in one steady motion from a swarm of insects to the throne of God, from a call to weep over a barren land to a promise that God will pour out His own Spirit on all people, and that everyone who calls on His name will be saved.
As you read, hold this: Out of a land stripped bare by locusts the LORD sounds the alarm of His great Day and calls His people to return to Him with all their heart, for He is gracious and compassionate, and He will yet pour out His Spirit on all people and be a refuge for all who call on His name.
The name and what it means
The prophet’s name in Hebrew is יוֹאֵל (yo’el), pronounced yoh-ALE (Strong’s H3100). It is one of the plainest and grandest names a Hebrew child could carry, for it is made of two of the holiest words in the language joined into one. The first part comes from Yah, the shortened form of the covenant name of God, and the second is El, the ancient word for God the Mighty One. Put together, the name is a whole confession in a single breath: “The LORD is God.” It is the very cry the people of Israel would one day raise on Mount Carmel when the fire fell, “The LORD, He is God! The LORD, He is God!” A prophet who bears such a name is himself a small sermon walking through the streets, for everything he came to say can be gathered up into those four words. When the locusts have eaten everything and the Day of the LORD draws near, the one truth that still stands, the truth that decides whether that Day is terror or refuge, is simply this: the LORD is God, and there is no other.
The world of the book
We know very little about Joel apart from his father’s name, and the book itself gives us no king’s reign to date it by, so faithful readers have placed it in different centuries and have done so honestly, for Scripture does not tell us for certain. What we do not need to guess at is his setting and his burden. Joel speaks to the people of Judah and to the city of Jerusalem, and he speaks in the shadow of the temple, calling on the priests to mourn and the whole congregation to gather for a sacred fast. His world is an agricultural one, a world of grain and new wine and oil, of threshing floors and vineyards and the autumn and spring rains on which every family’s bread depended. When that world was torn apart by the locusts, it was not merely an inconvenience. It was a famine, and the very offerings for the house of God were cut off, and the joy of the harvest withered before the eyes of the sons of men.
Yet Joel will not let his people stop at the surface of their trouble. The locust plague, real and terrible as it was, becomes in his hands a window onto a far greater and more searching reality. Again and again he lifts his eyes from the ravaged fields to a day he calls the Day of the LORD, a day of reckoning when God Himself draws near, when heaven and earth tremble, and when every heart is laid bare before Him. That Day is the drumbeat that sounds through all three chapters, sometimes near and sometimes far, sometimes dark with judgment and sometimes bright with salvation. And into the middle of it Joel sets the tenderest of invitations, that a people who have wandered far might still turn and come home, because the God whose Day is coming is also the God who is slow to anger and abounding in loving devotion.
The shape of the book
- The plague and the call to mourn (chapter 1). Wave after wave of locusts strips the land bare, and Joel summons everyone, the drunkard and the farmer, the priest and the whole assembly, to wake up, to weep, and to cry out to God, for the day of the LORD is near and the joy of harvest has failed.
- The alarm, the return, and the outpoured Spirit (chapter 2). A trumpet sounds in Zion as an army like no other advances, and the Day of the LORD looms great and very dreadful. Yet in the heart of the darkness God calls, “return to Me with all your heart,” and He answers His people with mercy, restoring the years the locusts had eaten and promising, in the highest reach of the whole book, to pour out His Spirit on all people, so that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.
- The nations judged and Zion secured (chapter 3). The LORD gathers all the nations to the Valley of Decision to answer for what they have done to His people, and He roars from Zion; but for those who are His, that same voice is not terror but shelter, for the LORD becomes a refuge and a stronghold, dwelling in the midst of His people, and blessing flows out from His house like streams of water.
The one thread to carry
If you carry one thing through these three short chapters, carry this: the Day of the LORD is coming for every soul, and the God who is bringing it is calling you home before it arrives. Joel’s whole message can be gathered around a single, pleading invitation, an invitation that reaches past torn garments to the torn and honest heart, and rests everything on the character of the God who gives it.
Joel 2:13 (BSB) — “So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. And He relents from sending disaster.”
And to a people who would return, God makes a promise so large that it could not be kept in Joel’s own day, or in one nation, or in one age. He promises to pour out His very Spirit, not on a chosen few but on all sorts of people, young and old, men and women alike. Long centuries later, on the morning of Pentecost, the apostle Peter stood up before a bewildered crowd, pointed to the wind and fire of the Spirit falling on ordinary men and women, and declared that this, at last, was the very thing Joel had seen from far off.
Joel 2:28 (BSB) — “And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”
And so the Day that dawns dark for those who will not turn dawns as pure shelter for all who call on the name of the LORD. When at last the LORD roars from Zion and the heavens and the earth shake, His own people will not run from the sound; they will run toward it, for the voice that terrifies the proud is the same voice that has become their hiding place.
Joel 3:16 (BSB) — “The LORD will roar from Zion and raise His voice from Jerusalem; heaven and earth will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for His people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.”
Read this book, then, as a trumpet and a promise held together in one hand. The locusts are a mercy if they wake us, the alarm is a mercy if we heed it, and the great and dreadful Day is, for all who call on His name, the day their refuge finally comes to stay. Learn the Word, return with all your heart, and give thanks.