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Joel 1: 19. Also perhaps, Joel had in mind the words of Asaph in Psa. 50: 15:
"Call upon Me in the day of trouble:
I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me."
This exhortation was to those who:
"Offer unto God thanksgiving:
And pay thy vows unto the Most High" (Psa. 50: 14).
Later Joel is to call the people to turn to their God but in 1: 19 he is again concerned
with the plight of the animals because "fire has devoured the open pastures" (N.I.V.).
"Open pastures" is better than "wilderness" (A.V.) for the latter tends to conjure up in our
minds poor and somewhat barren land. No! This was the "common pasture" and it had
been devoured together with the trees. To see the vegetation ravaged by locusts is bad
enough but to see what remains destroyed by fire is totally despairing.
Some commentators think that the fire of verse 19 is another description of the plague.
Some locusts are a reddish brown and when the swarm moves over the land it moves just
like a fire and what remains is bare and barkless--just as if there had been a fire.
Joel 1: 20. Joel again reminds the people of the animals and draws attention to the
fact that the rivers of water had dried up. These `rivers of water', aphikim, were the
`water courses' (Moffatt) constructed from rocks and pipes and channels and used
throughout the land. Aphikim occurs some 15 times in the O.T. and is translated by
various words such as channels, brooks, rivers. In mentioning the drying up of these
courses Joel may have had in mind Psa. 107: 33, 34:
"He turneth rivers into a wilderness,
And the watersprings into dry ground:
A fruitful land into barrenness,
For the wickedness of them that dwell therein."
We have mentioned before that if Joel was written just prior to the Babylonian exile
then such words as the last line above are easily appreciated. Many kings did that which
was evil in the sight of the Lord and the implication of Joel's writing is that the calamity
which has come upon them is because of the sinfulness of this people and there is now
the need to repent.
Joel 2: 1. This chapter opens with a call to blow the trumpet in Zion which is another
name for Jerusalem, the city of David (II Sam. 5: 6, 7). It is accompanied with an order
to "sound an alarm in My holy mountain". Again note the "My", and the "holy
mountain" is another name for this same city (Joel 3: 17; Psa. 48: 1-2). Don't
misunderstand this word holy, kodesh. It means something or someone separated for or
set apart for God. It does not necessarily mean that that which is holy is sinless or
perfect. In Exod. 3: 5 Moses stood on "holy ground" and it may well have contained
thistles and thorns but it was "holy" because it had been "set apart" for God.