Theopedia

Book of Joel

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.”

— Joel 2:28 (KJV)

Overview

Joel is a short Old Testament prophetic book, second among the twelve Minor Prophets in the Hebrew and English canon.1 It moves from a locust plague and drought already ravaging the land to a call for national repentance, then to the promise of the Spirit’s outpouring and the final triumph of God’s people over their enemies on the Day of the LORD.2 Peter cites the book’s central prophecy of the Spirit’s outpouring in his sermon at Pentecost, identifying its fulfillment with the events of that day (Acts 2:16-21).3

Author and Date

The book identifies its author only as “Joel the son of Pethuel” (Joel 1:1), giving no place or date.2 The internal evidence points to Jerusalem and its temple, priesthood, and assemblies as the setting of his ministry.2 Joel’s date is not stated in the book and remains debated; on one influential argument, close verbal parallels between Joel and Amos, especially Joel 3:16 with Amos 1:2 and Joel 3:18 with Amos 9:13, suggest a borrowing relationship, and since Joel’s closing words are the ones Amos appears to echo at the opening of his own prophecy, Joel is judged to be the earlier of the two, placing him as early as the reign of Joash or Uzziah, kings of Judah in the ninth and eighth centuries BC.2 On this reading, Joel would be among the earliest of the writing prophets, older than Isaiah.2 Other proposals for Joel’s date exist as well; the book’s silence about its own occasion outside the locust plague leaves the question open rather than settled.

Historical and Literary Context

Joel’s prophecy is occasioned by a plague of locusts and an accompanying drought that had already struck Judah, described in successive waves in chapter 1.2 The prophet’s Hebrew is noted for its purity and for imagery of unusual vividness and power.2 Some commentators have read the locusts as a figure for invading armies; the more probable reading treats the locust plague as a real, devastating event that the prophet then uses as a type of the still greater, final judgment of the Day of the LORD.2 On the strength of this present calamity, Joel summons the people, priests included, to fasting, weeping, and turning back to the LORD (Joel 2:12-17).

Structure

  • The locust plague and drought as present judgment (1:1-2:11)
  • A call to repentance and God’s promise of restoration (2:12-27)
  • The promise of the Spirit poured out on all flesh (2:28-32)
  • Judgment on the nations and the final blessing of Judah (3:1-21)

Major Themes

The Day of the LORD. Joel’s prophecy turns on this recurring Old Testament theme: the time when God comes in power to judge his enemies and vindicate his people, described in Scripture as a great turning point between one age and the next rather than a literal day.4 Joel treats the locust plague and drought already devastating the land as a foretaste of that greater, final Day (Joel 1:15; 2:1-2, 11, 31), which will fall on the nations that have scattered and wronged God’s people (Joel 3:1-2, 14).

National repentance. Joel calls the whole community, including its priests, to turn to God with fasting and mourning: “Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God” (Joel 2:13). Calvin draws on this verse to argue that repentance is fundamentally an inward matter of the heart, and that outward exercises of grief such as fasting and sackcloth are only its accompaniments, not its substance.5 Joel makes the LORD’s response to genuine repentance explicit: he answers his people’s turning by restoring what the locusts had consumed (Joel 2:18-27).

The outpouring of the Spirit and its fulfillment at Pentecost. Joel promises that God will “pour out my spirit upon all flesh,” extending prophetic gifts beyond a select few to sons and daughters, young and old, and even to servants (Joel 2:28-29). Bavinck lists this promise alongside similar prophecies in Isaiah and Ezekiel as part of the Old Testament’s anticipation of the Spirit’s outpouring, a work he identifies, together with creation and the incarnation, as one of the three great works of God in the world.6 The Puritan theologian Thomas Goodwin traces the same promise through to its fulfillment, observing that Peter, addressing the crowd at Pentecost, applies Joel’s words directly to the Spirit’s visible coming on the apostles that day: “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:16-17, quoting Joel 2:28).7 Peter’s sermon marks this outpouring, together with the sending of the Son, as one of the two great gifts God the Father had to give his people.7

Related Doctrines

References

  1. E. P. Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), chap. 23, “The Twelve Minor Prophets,” 332-334. ↩

  2. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 334-336. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  3. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 336. ↩

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 25, “The Consummation”: “In Old Testament times the day of the Lord was the time in which God, in a marvelously glorious way, would come to his people as king to redeem them from all their enemies.” ↩

  5. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), bk. 3, chap. 3, sec. 16. ↩

  6. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 17, “The Order of Salvation”: “The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, promised by Old Testament prophets (Isa. 44:3; Ezek. 39:29; Joel 2:28ff.), is the third great work of God after the creation and the incarnation.” ↩

  7. Thomas Goodwin, The Work of the Holy Ghost in Our Salvation, in The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863), 9. ↩ ↩2