Albert Barnes Commentary Joel 2

Blow you the trumpet - The trumpet was accustomed to sound in Zion only for religious uses: to call together the congregations for holy meetings, and to usher in the beginnings of their months and their solemn days with festival gladness. Now in Zion itself—the stronghold of the kingdom, the Holy City, the place where God chose to put His Name, which He had promised to establish—the trumpet was to be used only for sounds of alarm and fear. Alarm could not penetrate there without having pervaded the whole land. With it, the whole human hope of Judah was gone.

Sound an alarm in My holy mountain - He repeats the warning in varied expressions, in order to impress people’s hearts more and to stir them to repentance. Even “the holy mountain” of God was to echo with alarms; the holiness, once bestowed upon it, was to be no security against the judgments of God. Indeed, it was there that those judgments were to begin. So Peter says, “The time is come, that judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17). The alarm being blown in Zion, terror was to spread to all the inhabitants of the land, who, in fear, were to repent. The Church of Christ is foretold in prophecy under the names of “Zion” and of the holy “mountain.” It is the “stone cut out without hands, which became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:34–35).

Of it, it is said, “Come you and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob!” (Isaiah 2:3). And Paul says, “You are come unto Mount Zion and unto the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:22). The words then are a rule for all times. The judgments predicted by Joel represent all judgments until the end; the conduct, prescribed on their approach, is a pattern to the Church at all times.

As one commentator notes: “In this mountain we must wail, considering the failure of the faithful, in which, “iniquity abounding, charity waxeth cold.” For now (1450 A.D.) the state of the Church is so sunken, and you may see so great misery in her from the most evil conduct of many, that one who burns with zeal for God, and truly loves his brothers, must say with Jeremiah, “Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach” (Jeremiah 14:17).

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble - Another comments: “We should be troubled when we hear the words of God rebuking, threatening, and avenging, as Jeremiah says, ‘My heart within me is broken, all my bones shake... because of the Lord, and because of the words of His holiness’ (Jeremiah 23:9). Good is the trouble by which people, weighing their sins, are shaken with fear and trembling, and repent.”

For the Day of the Lord is at hand - “The Day of the Lord” is any day in which He avenges sin, any day of Judgment, in the course of His Providence or at the end: the day of Jerusalem from the Chaldees or Romans, the day of antichrist, the day of general or particular judgment, of which James says, “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Behold the Judge standeth before the door” (James 5:8–9). Another writer says: “Well is that called ‘the day of the Lord,’ in that, by the divine appointment, it avenges the wrongs done to the Lord through the disobedience of His people.”

A day of darkness and of gloominess: “A day full of miseries, for which reason he accumulates so many names of terrors. There was inner darkness in the heart, and the darkness of tribulation without. They hid themselves in dark places. There was the cloud between God and them, so that they were not protected nor heard by Him, of which Jeremiah says, Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud, that our prayers should not pass through (Lamentations 3:44). There was the whirlwind of tempest within and without, taking away all rest, tranquility, and peace.

Therefore Jeremiah has, A whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth injury, it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord shall not return, until He have executed it (Jeremiah 23:19). The Day of the Lord too shall come as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2). Clouds and darkness are round about Him (Psalms 97:2).

A day of clouds and of thick darkness. The locusts are but the faint shadow of the coming evils, yet as the first harbingers of God’s successive judgments, the imagery, even in this picture, is probably taken from them. At least there is nothing in which writers, of every character, are so agreed, as in speaking of locusts as clouds darkening the sun:

“These creatures do not come in legions, but in whole clouds, 5 or 6 leagues in length and 2 or 3 in breadth. All the air is full and darkened when they fly. Though the sun shine ever so bright, it is no brighter than when most clouded.”

“In Senegal we have seen a vast multitude of locusts shadowing the air, for they come almost every three years, and darken the sky.”

“About 8 o’clock there arose above us a thick cloud, which darkened the air, depriving us of the rays of the sun. Everyone was astonished at so sudden a change in the air, which is so seldom clouded at this season; but we soon saw that it was owing to a cloud of locusts. It was about 20 or 30 toises from the ground (120-180 feet) and covered several leagues of the country, when it discharged a shower of locusts, who fed there while they rested, and then resumed their flight. This cloud was brought by a pretty strong wind; it was all the morning passing the neighborhood, and the same wind, it was thought, precipitated it into the sea.”

“They take off from the place the light of day, and a sort of eclipse is formed.”

“In the middle of April their numbers were so vastly increased, that in the heat of the day they formed themselves into large bodies, appeared like a succession of clouds, and darkened the sun.”

“On looking up we perceived an immense cloud, here and there semi-transparent, in other parts quite black, that spread itself all over the sky, and at intervals shadowed the sun.”

The most unimaginative writers have said the same:

“When they first appear, a thick dark cloud is seen very high in the air, which, as it passes, obscures the sun. Their swarms were so astonishing in all the steppes over which we passed in this part of our journey (the Crimea), that the whole face of nature might have been described as concealed by a living veil.”

“When these clouds of locusts take their flight to surmount some obstacle, or traverse more rapidly a desert soil, one may say, to the letter, that the heaven is darkened by them.”

As the morning spread upon the mountains. Some have thought this also to allude to the appearance which the inhabitants of Abyssinia knew too well, as preceding the coming of the locusts (see the note at Joel 2:6). A somber yellow light is cast on the ground, from the reflection, it was thought, of their yellow wings. But that appearance itself seems to be unique to that country, or perhaps to certain flights of locusts. The image naturally describes the suddenness, universality of the darkness, when people looked for light.

As the mountain-tops first catch the gladdening rays of the sun, before it rises on the plains, and the light spreads from height to height, until the whole earth is arrayed in light, so wide and universal shall the outspreading be, but it shall be of darkness, not of light; the light itself shall be turned into darkness.

A great people and a strong. The imagery throughout these verses is taken from the flight and inroad of locusts. The allegory is so complete that the prophet compares them to those things which are, in part, intended under them: warriors, horses, and instruments of war. And this, all the more so, because neither locusts nor armies are exclusively intended. The object of the allegory is to describe the order and course of the divine judgments: how they are terrific, irresistible, universal, overwhelming, penetrating everywhere, overspreading all things, excluded by nothing.

The locusts are the more striking symbol of this, through their minuteness and their number. They are little miniatures of a well-ordered army, unhindered by what would be physical obstacles to larger creatures, moving in an order inimitable even by man, and, from their number, desolating to the uttermost. “What more countless or mightier than the locusts,” asks Jerome, who had seen their inroads, “which human industry cannot resist?” “It is a thing invincible,” says Cyril, “their invasion is altogether irresistible, and suffices utterly to destroy all in the fields.” Yet each of these creatures is small, so that they would be powerless and contemptible, except in the Hands of Him who brings them in numbers which can be wielded only by the Creator. Wonderful image of the judgments of God, who marshals and combines in one, and causes each element—unavailing in itself but working together—to achieve the full completion of His inscrutable Will.

There has not ever been the like. The courses of sin and of punishment are ever recommencing anew in some part of the world and of the Church. The whole order of each, sin and punishment, will culminate once only, in the Day of Judgment. Then only will these words have their complete fulfillment. The Day of Judgment alone is that Day of terror and of woe, such as never has been before, and shall never be again. For there will be no new day or time of terror.

Eternal punishment will only be the continuation of the sentence adjudged then. But, in time and in the course of God’s Providential government, the sins of each soul or people or Church draw down visitations, which are God’s final judgments there. Such to the Jewish people, before the captivity, was the destruction of the temple, the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and that captivity itself. The Jewish polity was never again restored as before.

Such, to the new polity after the captivity, was the destruction by the Romans. Eighteen hundred years have seen nothing like it. The Vandals and then the Muslims swept over the Churches of North Africa, each destructive in its own way. Twelve centuries have witnessed one unbroken desolation of the Church in Africa. In Constantinople, and Asia Minor, Palestine, Persia, Churches of the Redeemer became the mosques of the false prophet. Centuries have flowed by, yet we see not our signs, neither is there any among us, that knoweth how long (Psalms 74:9).

Wealthy, busy, restless, intellectual, degraded, London, sender forth of missionaries, but, save in China, the largest pagan city in the world; converter of the isles of the sea, but yourself unconverted; fullest of riches and of misery, of civilization and of savage life, of refinements and debasement; heart, whose pulses are felt in every continent, but yourself diseased and feeble, will you, in this your day, anticipate by your conversion the Day of the Lord, or will It come upon you, as hath never been the like, nor shall be, for the years of many generations? Shall you win your lost ones to Christ, or be yourself the birthplace or abode of antichrist? O Lord God, Thou knowest.

Yet the words have fulfillments short of the end. Even of successive chastisements upon the same people, each may have some aggravation unique to itself, so that of each, in turn, it may be said, in that respect, that no former visitation had been like it, none afterward should resemble it. Thus the Chaldeans were chief in fierceness, Antiochus Epiphanes in his madness against God, the Romans in the completeness of the desolation. The fourth beast which Daniel saw was dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it (Daniel 7:7–19). The persecutions of the Roman Emperors were in extent and cruelty far beyond any before them. They shall be as nothing in comparison to the deceivableness and oppression of antichrist.

The prophet, however, does not say that there should be absolutely none like it, but only not for the years of many generations. The words unto generation and generation elsewhere mean “forever;” here the word “years” may limit them to length of time. God, after some signal visitation, leaves a soul or a people to the silent workings of His grace or of His Providence. The marked interpositions of His Providence are like His extraordinary miracles, rare; else, like the ordinary miracles of His daily operations, they would cease to be interpositions.

A fire devours before them... Travelers of different nations and characters, and in different lands, some unacquainted with the Bible's words, have agreed in describing the ravages of locusts under this image.

One account states, “They scorch many things with their touch.” Another says, “Whatever herb or leaf they gnaw is, as it were, scorched by fire.” A third observes, “Wherever they come, the ground seems burned, as if with fire.” And yet another, “Wherever they pass, they burn and spoil everything, and that irremediably.”

An observer noted, “I have myself observed that the places where they had browsed were as scorched, as if the fire had passed there.” Another description reads: “They covered a square mile so completely, that it appeared, at a little distance, to have been burned and strewn over with brown ashes. Not a shrub, nor a blade of grass was visible.” Similarly, “A few months afterward, a much larger army alighted and gave the whole country the appearance of having been burned.” And, “Wherever they settled, it looks as if fire had devoured and burnt up everything.”

The descriptions of their ravages in Italy, Ethiopia, the Levant, India, and South Africa include statements like, “It is better to have to do with the Tartars, than with these little destructive animals; you would think that fire follows their track.” The locust, itself an image of God’s judgments, is described as an enemy invading, as they say, “with fire and sword,” “breathing fire,” wasting all as it advances, and leaving behind it the blackness of ashes and burning villages. As one source puts it: “Whatever it seizes on, it will consume as a devouring flame and will leave nothing whole behind it.”

The land is as the garden of Eden before them. In outward beauty the land was like that Paradise of God, where He placed our first parents; as were Sodom and Gomorrah, before God overthrew them (Genesis 13:10). It was like a garden enclosed and protected from all intrusion of evil. They sinned, and like our first parents, forfeited its bliss. “A fruitful land God maketh barren, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein” (Psalms 107:34). Ezekiel foretells the removal of the punishment, in connection with the Gospel promise of “a new heart and a new spirit. They shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden” (Ezekiel 36:26, Ezekiel 36:35).

And behind them a desolate wilderness. The desolation caused by the locust is even more inconceivable to us than their numbers. We have seen fields blighted; we have known of crops, most crucial for human sustenance, devoured; and in one year we heard of terrific famine as its result. We do not readily picture in our minds a whole tract, covering an area of several of our counties, in which not just one or another crop was destroyed, but every green thing was gone. Yet such was the scourge of locusts, the image of other and worse scourges in the treasure-house of God’s displeasure.

A Syrian writer relates, “In 1004 AD, a large swarm of locusts appeared in the land of Mosul and Baghdad, and it was very severe in Shiraz. It left no herb nor even leaf on the trees, and even gnawed the pieces of linen which the fullers were bleaching; of each piece the fuller gave a scrap to its owner: and a famine ensued, and a cor (about two quarters) of wheat was sold in Baghdad for 120 gold dinars (about 54 British pounds).”

The same writer continues, “When it (the locust of 784 AD) had consumed the whole tract of Edessa and Sarug, it passed to the west, and for three years after this heavy chastisement there was a famine in the land.”

Another account describes: “We traveled five days through lands utterly despoiled. As for the stalks of maize, as large as the largest canes used to prop vines, it is impossible to describe how they were broken and trampled, as if donkeys had trampled them; and all this was from the locusts. The wheat, barley, and tafos were as if they had never been sown; the trees were without a single leaf; the tender wood was all eaten; there was no trace of any kind of plant.”

“If we had not been advised to take mules laden with barley and provisions for ourselves, we and our mules would have perished of hunger. This land was all covered with locusts without wings, and they said that these were the offspring of those that had all departed, which had destroyed the land.”

Another observer writes: “Everywhere their legions march, greenery disappears from the country like a curtain that is folded up; trees and plants, stripped of leaves and reduced to their branches and stalks, substitute in the twinkling of an eye the dreary spectacle of winter for the rich scenes of spring.” It is also noted, “Fortunately, this plague is not very often repeated, for there is none that so surely brings famine and the diseases that follow it.”

Further accounts state: “Desolation and famine mark their progress; all the expectations of the farmer vanish. His fields, which the rising sun saw covered with luxuriance, are before evening a desert. The produce of his garden and orchard are likewise destroyed, for where these destructive swarms alight, not a leaf is left upon the trees, a blade of grass in the pastures, nor an ear of corn in the field.”

For example, “In 1654 a great multitude of locusts came from the northwest to the Islands Tayyovvan and Formosa, which consumed all that grew in the fields, so that above eight thousand men perished by famine.” And, “They come sometimes in such prodigious swarms that they darken the sky as they pass by and devour all in those parts where they settle, so that the inhabitants are often obliged to change their habitations for want of sustenance, as has happened frequently in China and the Isle of Tajowak.”

One report details: “The lands, ravaged throughout the west, produced no harvest. The year 1780 was still more miserable. A dry winter produced a new race of locusts which ravaged what had escaped the harshness of the season.”

“The farmer did not reap what he had sown and was reduced to having neither nourishment, seed, nor cattle. The people experienced all the horrors of famine. People could be seen wandering over the country to devour roots; and, seeking in the depths of the earth for means to prolong their lives, perhaps they instead shortened them. A countless number died of misery and malnutrition. I have seen people on the roads and in the streets dead of starvation, whom others were laying across donkeys to be buried. Fathers sold their children. A husband, in agreement with his wife, would arrange for her to marry someone in another province as if she were his sister, intending to redeem her when his circumstances improved. I have seen women and children run after camels, search in their dung for some grain of undigested barley, and devour it eagerly.”

Yes, and nothing will escape them. Or (which the words also include) “none will escape him,” literally, “and also there will be no escaping concerning him or from him.” The word, being used elsewhere of the persons who escape, suggests in itself that we should not linger only on the symbol of the locusts, but think of enemies more terrible, who destroy not only harvests, but also people—bodies or souls. Yet the picture of devastation is complete.

No creature of God so completely destroys the whole face of nature as does the locust. A traveler in the Crimea unconsciously uses the words of the prophet: “On whatever spot they fall, the whole vegetable produce disappears. Nothing escapes them, from the leaves of the forest to the herbs on the plain. Fields, vineyards, gardens, pastures, everything is laid waste; and sometimes the only appearance left is a disgusting surface layer caused by their putrefying bodies, the stench of which is sufficient to cause a plague.”

Another in South Africa says, “When they make their appearance, not a single field of grain remains unconsumed by them. This year the whole of the Sneuwberg will not, I suppose, produce a single bushel.”

A further account states: “They had (for a space 80 or 90 miles in length) devoured every green herb and every blade of grass; and if it had not been for the reeds on which our cattle entirely subsisted while we traveled along the banks of the river, the journey must have been discontinued, at least along the proposed route.” Another simply notes, “Not a shrub nor blade of grass was visible.” The rapidity with which they complete the destruction is also observed: “In two hours, they destroyed all the herbs around Rama.”

All this, which is a strong but true image of the locusts, is a shadow of God’s other judgments. It is often said of God, “A fire goeth before Him and burneth up His enemies on every side” (Psalms 97:3). “The Lord will come with fire; by fire will the Lord plead with all flesh” (Isaiah 66:15–16). This is said of the Judgment Day, as in Paul: “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 1:7–8).

That awful, lurid stream of fire will burn up “the earth and all the works that are therein” (2 Peter 3:10). This entire circuit of the globe will be enveloped in one burning deluge of fire; all gold and jewels, gardens, fields, pictures, books, “the cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces, shall dissolve, and leave not a rack behind.” The good will be removed beyond its reach, for “they shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

But all that is in the earth and those who are of the earth will be swept away by it. It will go before the army of the Lord, the Angels whom “the Son of man shall send forth, to gather out of His kingdom all things that shall offend and them that do iniquity. It shall burn after them” (Matthew 13:41). For it will burn on during the Day of Judgment until it has consumed all for which it is sent.

“The land will be a garden of Eden before it.” For, as our Lord says, they will be “eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, marrying and giving in marriage” (Luke 17:27–28, Luke 17:30); the world will be “glorifying itself and living deliciously,” full of riches and delights, when it “shall be utterly burned with fire,” and “in one hour so great riches shall come to nought” (Revelation 18:7–8, Revelation 18:17).

“And after it a desolate wilderness,” for there will be none left. “And none shall escape.” For our Lord says, “they shall gather all things that offend; the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire” (Matthew 13:41, Matthew 13:49–50).

The appearance of them, is as the appearance of horses. — “If you carefully consider the head of the locust,” says Theodoret, a Bishop in Syria, “you will find it exceedingly like that of a horse.”

This is why the Arabs, of old and to this day, say: “In the locust, slight as it is, is the nature of ten of the larger animals: the face of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns of a deer, the chest of a lion, the belly of a scorpion, the wings of an eagle, the thighs of a camel, the feet of an ostrich, the tail of a serpent.”

Like the noise of chariots on the tops of the mountains shall they leap - The amazing noise of the flight of locusts is compared by those who have heard them to all sorts of deep, sharp, rushing sounds.

One says, “Their noise may be heard six miles away.” Others state, “Within a hundred paces I heard the rushing noise caused by the flight of so many millions of insects. When I was in the midst of them, it was as loud as the dashing of the waters caused by a mill wheel”; further descriptions note: “While passing over our heads, their sound was like a great cataract”; “We heard a noise like the rushing of a great wind at a distance”; “In flying they make a rushing, rustling noise, like when a strong wind blows through trees”; and “They cause a noise like the rushing of a torrent.”

To add another vivid description: “When a swarm is advancing, it seems as though brown clouds are rising from the horizon, which, as they approach, spread more and more. They cast a veil over the sun and a shadow on the earth. Soon you see little dots, and observe a whizzing and life. Nearer yet, the sun is darkened; you hear a roaring and rushing like gushing water. Suddenly you find yourself surrounded with locusts.”

Like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble - The sharp noise caused by these myriads of insects while feeding has also been noticed.

For instance: “You hear from afar the noise they make browsing on the herbs and trees, like an army foraging without restraint”; “When they alight on the ground to feed, the plains are all covered, and they make a murmuring noise as they eat, devouring everything close to the ground in two hours”; “The noise they make in devouring always announces their approach from some distance”; and “They say that their descent on the fields is not effected without a noise, and that there is a certain sharp sound as they chew the grain, like when the wind strongly fans a flame.”

Their noise, Joel says, is like the “noise of chariots.” Thus John says (Revelation 9:9), the sound of their wings was as the sound of many horses rushing to battle. Their sound is to be like the sound of war-chariots, hounding in their speed; but their inroad will be where chariots could not go and man’s foot could rarely reach, on the tops of the mountains.

A mountain range is, next to the sea, the strongest natural protection. Mountains have been a limit to the mightiest powers. The Caucasus formerly restrained the Persian power; on one side, all was enslaved, on the other, all was fearlessly free. More recently, it enabled a few mountaineers to hold at bay the power of Russia. The pass of Thermopylae, until betrayed, enabled a handful of men to check the invasion of nearly two million.

The mountain ridges of Spain were, from before the time of our Lord, the last home and rallying place of the conquered or the birthplace of deliverance. God had assigned to His people a spot, central later for the conversion of the world, yet where, meanwhile, they lay enveloped and sheltered amid the mountains which His Right Hand purchased (Psalms 78:54).

The Syrians acknowledged that their God was the God of the hills (1 Kings 20:23); and the people confessed, as the hills are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people (Psalms 125:2). Their protection was a symbol of His.

But His protection withdrawn, nothing would be a hindrance to those whom He would send as a scourge. The prophet deliberately combines incompatible things: the terrible, heavy bounding of the scythed chariot, and the light speed with which these countless hosts would in their flight bound over the tops of the mountains, where God had made no path for man.

Countless in number, boundless in might, are the instruments of God. The strongest national defenses give no security. Where then is safety, except in fleeing from God displeased to God appeased?