Albert Barnes Commentary Joel 1:8

"Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth." — Joel 1:8 (ASV)

Lament like a virgin - The prophet addresses the congregation of Israel, as one betrothed to God: “‘Lament you,’ daughter of Zion,” or the like. He commands her to lament, with the bitterest of sorrows, as one who, in her virgin years, was just united with the husband of her youth, and then at once was, by God’s judgment, on the very day of her betrothal, before she yet ceased to be a virgin, separated by death. The mourning which God commands is not one of conventional or becoming mourning, but that of one who has put away all joy from her, and takes the rough garment of penitence, girding the haircloth upon herself, enveloping and embracing her, and with it, afflicting her whole body. The haircloth was a coarse, rough, formless garment, girded close around the waist, painful to the flesh, while it expressed the sorrow of the soul.

God regarded as a virgin the people whom He had made holy to Himself (Jeremiah 2:2).

He so regards the soul that He has regenerated and sanctified. The people, by their idolatry, lost Him who was a Husband to them; the soul, by inordinate affections, is separated from its God. “God Almighty was the Husband of the synagogue, having betrothed it to Himself in the patriarchs and at the giving of the law. As long as she did not, through idolatry and other heavy sins, depart from God, she was a spouse in the integrity of mind, in knowledge, in love and worship of the true God.” “The Church is a Virgin; Christ her Husband.

By prevailing sins, the order, condition, splendor, worship of the Church, are, through negligence, concupiscence, avarice, irreverence, worsened, deformed, obscured.” “The soul is a virgin by its creation in nature; a virgin by privilege of grace; a virgin also by hope of glory. Inordinate desire makes the soul a harlot; manly penitence restores to her chastity; wise innocence, virginity. For the soul recovers a sort of chastity when, through a thirst for righteousness, she undertakes the pain and fear of penitence. Still, she is not yet raised to the eminence of innocence.

In the first state she is exposed to concupiscence; in the second, she does works of repentance; in the third, bewailing her Husband, she is filled with the longing for righteousness; in the fourth, she is gladdened by virgin embraces and the kiss of Wisdom. For Christ is the Husband of her youth, the Betrother of her virginity. But since she parted from Him to evil concupiscence, she is admonished to return to Him by sorrow and the works and garb of repentance.” “So should every Christian weep who has lost Baptismal grace, or has fallen back after repentance, and, deprived of the pure embrace of the heavenly Bridegroom, embraced instead these earthly things which are as dunghills (Lamentations 4:5), having been brought up in scarlet, and being in honor, had no understanding (Psalms 49:12, Psalms 49:20). Therefore it is written, “Let tears run down like a river day and night; give yourself no rest” (Lamentations 2:18). Such was he who said, “Rivers of waters run down my eyes, because they do not keep Your law” (Psalms 119:136).