Joel 1:15

15 What a day! Doomsday! God's Judgment Day has come. The Strong God has arrived. This is serious business!

Joel 1:15 Meaning and Commentary

Joel 1:15

Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord [is] at hand
A time of severer and heavier judgments than these of the locusts, caterpillars which were a presage and emblem of greater ones, even of the total destruction of their city, temple, and nation, either by the Chaldeans, or by the Romans, or both: and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come;
unawares, suddenly, and irresistibly: there is in the Hebrew text an elegant play on words, which may be rendered, as "wasting from the waster", or "destruction from the destroyer, shall it come" F24; even from the almighty God, who is able to save and destroy, and none can deliver out of his hands; see ( Isaiah 13:6 ) ; the word signifies one powerful and victorious, as Aben Ezra observes; and so it does in the Arabic language.


FOOTNOTES:

F24 (ydvm dvk) "uti vastitas a Deo vastatore", Drusius.

Joel 1:15 In-Context

13 And also you priests, put on your robes and join the outcry. You who lead people in worship, lead them in lament. Spend the night dressed in gunnysacks, you servants of my God. Nothing's going on in the place of worship, no offerings, no prayers - nothing.
14 Declare a holy fast, call a special meeting, get the leaders together, Round up everyone in the country. Get them into God's Sanctuary for serious prayer to God.
15 What a day! Doomsday! God's Judgment Day has come. The Strong God has arrived. This is serious business!
16 Food is just a memory at our tables, as are joy and singing from God's Sanctuary.
17 The seeds in the field are dead, barns deserted, Grain silos abandoned. Who needs them? The crops have failed!
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.