Joel 1-3
What the cutting locust left,
Joel 1:4
the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten.
Locusts. An enormous swarm of voracious grasshoppers darkens the sky above and devours every plant below. Before this vast army, the land is green and beautiful. Behind, the land is stripped bare and lifeless. (Joel 2:3) It is truly a “disaster of biblical proportions”. In all likelihood this is a very real catastrophe playing out in the land of Judah right in front of Joel, and the LORD inspires Joel to use this event as a metaphor for the coming Day of the LORD and thus as a wake-up call for the people to return to the LORD:
“Yet even now,” declares the LORD,
Joel 2:12-13
“return to Me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the LORD your God,
for He is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and He relents over disaster.
In response to repentance, the LORD promises mercy and restoration, but He goes beyond what we might imagine and declares that He will pour out [His] Spirit on all flesh (Joel 3:28) and that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. (Joel 3:32) Saint Peter quotes this passage to explain the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. (Acts 2:16-21) So what seems at first to be a message of doom and gloom becomes a radical message of hope and deliverance.
Although I cannot recall any recent news bulletins concerning a plague of locusts, we get a steady stream of reports of other natural disasters: wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods… Each such report should serve as a warning of the coming judgment, the coming Day of the LORD, with a corresponding recognition of the mercy available. Yet we never hear that in the news. Instead, each disaster comes with a cacophony of voices leveling blame and demanding change of one form or another, from charges of poor construction quality or inferior building codes, to holding power companies liable for wildfires, to calls for the radical reduction of carbon emissions to hold off climate change. But few, if any, voices call for repentance and a return to the LORD.
Why, do you suppose, is that?
Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears… (Joel 3:10a) The absolute opposite of this verse is found in both Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3: 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. Isaiah and Micah were both writing in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Because of allusions to the Temple, our Chronological Study Bible authors suggest that Joel wrote either around the 8th century (“Solomon’s” Temple) or the 5th or 6th century BC (the “post-exile” Temple), but they lean toward the latter time period. So the question of who is “opposite quoting” whom. If Joel wrote during the time before the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 586 BC, then Isaiah and Micah could have been referencing him – in an opposite sense. If Joel wrote later, then he could be “quoting” one of the other two, but it’s your guess as to which – is it Isaiah quoting Micah or Micah quoting Isaiah? An interesting set of verses…