Joel 1:14

14 Consecrate a fast; proclaim a solemn assembly! Gather the elders and all the residents of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.

Joel 1:14 Meaning and Commentary

Joel 1:14

Sanctify yea a fast
This is spoken to the priests, whose business it was to appoint a fast, as the Targum renders it; or to set apart a time for such religious service, as the word signifies; and to keep it holy themselves, and see that it was so kept by others: Kimchi interprets it, prepare the people for a fast; give them notice of it, that they may be prepared for it: call a solemn assembly;
of all the people of the land later mentioned: or, "proclaim a restraint" ^F23; a time of ceasing, as a fast day should be from all servile work, that attendance may be given to the duties of it, prayer and humiliation: gather the elders:
meaning not those in age, but in office: [and] all the inhabitants of the land;
not the magistrates only, though first and principally, as examples, who had been deeply concerned in guilt; but the common people also, even all of them: [into] the house of the Lord your God;
the temple, the court of the Israelites, where they were to go and supplicate the Lord, when such a calamity as this of locusts and caterpillars were upon them; and where they might hope the Lord would hear them, and remove his judgments from them, ( 1 Kings 8:37 ) ; and cry unto the Lord;
in prayer, with vehemence and earnestness of soul.

---

FOOTNOTES:

F23 (hrue warq) "vocate retentionem", Montanus; "proclamate diem interdicti", Junius & Tremellius, Heb. "interdictum", Piscator; "edicite coetum cum cessatione", Cocceius.

Joel 1:14 In-Context

12 The grapevine is dried up, and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, palm, and apple— all the trees of the orchard—are withered. Surely the joy of mankind has dried up.

13 Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.

14 Consecrate a fast; proclaim a solemn assembly! Gather the elders and all the residents of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.

15 Alas for the day! For the Day of the LORD is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

16 Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes— joy and gladness from the house of our God?