Joel 2 Footnotes

2:1 Pronouncements about the day of the Lord often speak of its imminence—it will come soon, it is impending. Three times Joel declared that the day of the Lord was “near” (v. 1; 1:15; 3:14), and most of the other prophets who referred to the day of the Lord also spoke of it as “near” (Is 13:6; Ezk 30:3; Ob 15; Zph 1:7,14). Zephaniah added that the day was “rapidly approaching” (Zph 1:14). Since well more than two millennia have passed since these prophets wrote, it may seem strange that they used such an expression for an event that is yet to occur.

Christian interpreters who have pondered this biblical phenomenon have arrived at different explanations for it. One consideration is that, because the prophets who spoke of the imminence of the day were themselves widely separated in time (spanning a period of 350 years or more), they did not mean that it would have to arrive within a few years. Their unified witness to the coming of the day speaks not of its timing but of its certainty and of the foreboding associated with it. The devastating judgment could come at any time; this urgency was what they sought to convey.

The tension between the imminence and delay of the day of the Lord is a question taken up in the NT. Peter pointed out that God’s timing may differ from human expectations and that a delay in his timetable for judgment is due to his grace. He wants to afford every possible opportunity for people to repent before bringing the judgment (2Pt 3:8-10).

2:18-27 The Lord responded to the people’s repentance, spared the land, and promised a new era of prosperity. After speaking of the “great army” of destruction that the Lord had sent against Judah (v. 25), Joel turned to his promise of restoration (see 3:1). Many of the Minor Prophets stress that the Lord personally brings disaster for the purpose of punishment or judgment (2:25; Hs 5:14; Am 1:4; Mic 1:12; Nah 1:2; Zph 1:17; Hg 2:17; Zch 8:10). In the prophetic worldview, God is ultimately behind everything that takes place, orchestrating the course of history even when injustice is seemingly allowed to prevail.

As objectionable as such a view of history may appear to people with a modern Western worldview, the Bible clearly presents it. But lest that understanding of history be thought to attribute injustice to God, the Bible also recognizes more immediate causes for things that happen. Such immediate causes could be the natural operating conditions of global life (severe weather, earth tremors, the cycles of living creatures such as locusts) with which God would not interfere without disrupting the stability of his creation. Or they might be the cultural effects of human disregard of God’s directives for conduct and worship (e.g., social disintegration and inequality, violence, crime, international conflict). For Joel, both of these immediate causes combined to present a foretaste of divine judgment, which only God’s gracious purpose in the ultimate establishment of his kingdom can override.