Joel 1:15

The Day of the Lord

15 Woe because of that day! For the Day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty.^[a]

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.

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FOOTNOTES:

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

Joel 1:15 In-Context

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

14 Announce a sacred fast; proclaim an assembly! Gather the elders and all the residents of the land at the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

15 Woe because of that day! For the Day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty.

16 Hasn't the food been cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

17 The seeds lie shriveled in their casings. The storehouses are in ruin, and the granaries are broken down, because the grain has withered away.

Footnotes

• [a]. Jl 2:1-2,11,31; Isa 13:6,9; Ezk 30:2-3