Joel 2 Footnotes

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.