Albert Barnes Commentary Joel 3:19

"Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for the violence done to the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land." — Joel 3:19 (ASV)

Egypt shall be a desolation – "Egypt" and "Edom" each represent a different class of enemies of the people of God, and both together exhibit the fate of all. Egypt was the powerful oppressor who kept Israel in hard bondage for a long time and tried, by the murder of their male children, to exterminate them. Edom was, by birth, most closely allied to them, but from the time of their approach to the promised land, had been hostile to them and showed a malicious joy in all their calamities (Obadiah 1:10–14; Ezekiel 25:12; Ezekiel 35:15; Ezekiel 36:5; Lamentations 4:22; Psalms 137:7; see the note at Amos 1:11). "Their land," in which Egypt and Edom shed the "innocent blood of the children of Judah," may be either Edom, Egypt, or Judea. If the land was Judea, the sin is aggravated by its being God’s land, the possession of which they were disputing with God.

If it was Egypt and Edom, then it was probably the blood of those who took refuge there, or, concerning Edom, of prisoners delivered up to them (see the note at Amos 1:9).

This is the first prophecy of the humiliation of Egypt. Hosea had threatened that Egypt would be the grave of those of Israel who would flee there (Hosea 9:6). He speaks of it as the vain trust, and a real evil to Israel (Hosea 7:11–12, Hosea 7:16; Hosea 8:13; Hosea 9:3; Hosea 11:5); of its own future he says nothing. Brief as Joel’s words are, they distinctly express an abiding condition of Egypt. They are expanded by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 29:9–12, Ezekiel 29:15); particular chastisements are foretold by Isaiah (Isaiah 19), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 46), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 29-32), and Zechariah (Zechariah 10:11). But the three words of Joel, Egypt shall become desolation, are more comprehensive than any prophecy, except those by Ezekiel. They foretell that abiding condition, not only by the force of the words, but by the contrast with an abiding condition of bliss.

The words say, not only “it shall be desolated,” as by a passing scourge sweeping over it, but “it shall itself ‘pass over into’ that state;” it shall become what it had not been; and this, in contrast with the abiding condition of God’s people. The contrast is like that of the Psalmist: He turneth a fruitful land into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into water-springs (Psalms 107:33–35). Judah would overflow with blessing, and the streams of God’s grace would pass beyond its bounds and carry fruitfulness to what was then dry and barren. But whatever rejects His grace will itself be rejected.

Yet when Joel so threatened Egypt, there were no human symptoms of its decay. The instruments of its successive overthrows were still wild hordes (like the Chaldees, Persians, and Macedonians) to be consolidated later into powerful empires, or (like Rome) had not yet begun to exist.

The "continuous monumental history of Egypt" went back seven centuries before this, to about 1520 B.C. They had a line of conquerors among their kings who subdued much of Asia and disputed with Assyria the country that lay between them. Even after the time of Joel, they had great conquerors, like Tirhakah; Psammetichus won Ashdod back from Assyria; Neco was probably successful against Assyria, as well as against Syria and King Josiah, for he took Cadytis on his return from his expedition against Carchemish (2 Kings 23:29). Pharaoh Hophra, or Apries, until he fell by his pride (Ezekiel 29:3), renewed for a time the prosperity of Psammetichus. The reign of Amasis, even after Nebuchadnezzar's conquest, was said to be “the most prosperous time which Egypt ever saw.” It was still a period of foreign conquest, and its cities could be counted as 20,000.

The Persian invasion was drawn upon it by an alliance with Lydia, where Amasis sent 120,000 men. Its, at times, successful struggles against the gigantic armies of its Persian conquerors indicated great inherent strength; yet it sank forever, a perpetual desolation. “Rent, twenty-three centuries ago, from her natural proprietors,” says an unbelieving writer, “she has seen Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Georgians, and finally, the race of Tartars, distinguished by the name of Ottoman Turks, establish themselves within her borders.”

“The system of oppression is methodical;” “a universal air of misery is manifest in all that the traveler meets.” “Mud-walled cottages are now the only habitations where the ruins of temples and palaces abound. The desert covers many extensive regions that once made Egypt one of the chief kingdoms.” The desolation of Egypt is all the stranger because extreme misrule alone could have effected it.

Egypt in its largest dimensions has been calculated to contain 123,527 square miles or 79,057,339 acres, and to be three-fourths the size of France (Mémoire sur le lac de Moeris, 1843). The mountains that hem in Upper Egypt diverge at Cairo, with one range extending due east and the other northwest. The mountains on the west sink into the plains; those on the east retain their height as far as Suez.

About 10 miles below Cairo, the Nile parted, enclosing within the outside of its seven branches that triangle of wondrous fertility, the Delta. A network of canals, formed by the stupendous industry of the ancient Egyptians, enclosed this triangle in another yet larger, whose base along the coast was 235 miles (in direct distance about 181 miles). East of the easternmost branch of the Nile lay the "land of Goshen," formerly, at least for cattle, the good of the land (Genesis 47:6, Genesis 47:11), a part, at least, of the present esh-Sharkiyyeh, second in size of the provinces of Egypt, but which, in 1375 A.D., yielded the highest revenue of the state.

On the western side of the Nile, and about a degree south of the apex of the Delta, a stupendous work, the artificial lake of Moeris, enclosing within masonry 64.75 square miles of water, received the superfluous waters of the river. It thus at once prevented the injury incidental to any too great rise of the Nile and supplied water for six months for the irrigation of 1,724 square miles, or 1,103,375 acres.

The Nile, which, when it overflowed, spread like a sea over Egypt, encircling its cities like islands, carried with it a fertilizing power, attested by all, but which, unless so attested, would seem fabulous. Beneath a glowing heat, greater than its latitude would account for, the earth, supplied with continual moisture and an ever-renewed alluvial deposit that supersedes all need of “dressing” the soil, yields, within the year, three harvests of varied produce. This system of canalizing Egypt must have been of very early antiquity. That giant conception of the water system of Lake Moeris is supposed to have been the work of Amenemhat, perhaps about 1673 B.C. But such a giant plan presupposes the existence of an artificial system of irrigation that it expanded.

In the time of Moses, we hear incidentally of “the streams” of Egypt, “the canals” (that is, those used for irrigation), and “the ponds” (Exodus 7:19; Exodus 8:1), the receptacles of the water that was left when the Nile retired.

Besides these, an artificial mode of irrigation by the foot (Deuteronomy 11:40) is mentioned, now no longer distinctly known, but used, like the present methods of the water-wheel and the lever, to irrigate the lands for the later harvests. This system of irrigation had, in the time of Joel, probably lasted for over 1000 years. The Egyptians ascribed the first turning of the Nile to their first king, Menes, of fabulous antiquity.

But while it lasted in any degree, Egypt could not become barren except by miracle. Even now it recovers whenever water is applied. “Wherever there is water, there is fertility.” “The productive powers of the soil of Egypt are incalculable. Wherever water is scattered, a rapid and beautiful vegetation springs up. The seed is sown and watered, and scarcely any other care is needed for the ordinary fruits of the earth. Even in spots adjacent to the desert and that seem to be taken possession of by the sands, irrigation rapidly brings forth a variety of green herbs and plants.”

For its first crop, it was only necessary to cast the seed and have it trodden in by cattle.

Nothing then could desolate Egypt, except man’s abiding negligence or oppression. No passing storm or inroad could annihilate a fertility that poured in upon it in ever-renewing richness. For 1000 years, the Nile had brought unabated richness to Egypt. The Nile still overflows, but in vain amid depopulation and grinding, uniform oppression. Not the country is exhausted, but man.

“If,” says Mengin, “it is true that there is no country richer than Egypt in its territorial productions, still there is perhaps no one whose inhabitants are more miserable. It is owing solely to the fertility of its soil and the sobriety of its cultivators that it retains the population which it still has.”

The marked diminution of the population had begun before the Birth of our Lord. “Of old,” says Diodorus, “it far exceeded in density of population all the known countries in the world, and in our own times too it seems to be inferior to no other. For in ancient times it had more than 18,000 considerable villages and towns, as you may see registered in the sacred lists. In the time of Ptolemy Lagus more than 30,000 were counted, a number that has continued until now. But the whole people are said of old to have been about seven million, and in our days not less than three.”

A modern estimate supposes that Egypt, if cultivated to the utmost, would, in plentiful years, support eight million. It is difficult to calculate a population where different ranks wish to conceal it. It has been guessed, however, that two centuries ago, it was four million; that, at the beginning of this century, it was two and a half million; and that, in 1845, it was 1,800,000.

The great diminution, then, had begun 1900 years ago. Temporary causes, such as plague, smallpox, and conscription, have, in this last century, again halved the population; but down to that time, it had sunk to no lower level than it had already reached at least 18 centuries before. The land still, for its fruitfulness, continues to supply more than its inhabitants consume; it yields, in addition, cotton for strangers to use.

Yet its brilliant patches of vegetation are but indications of the great powers implanted in it. In vain “the rising Nile overflows (as it is thought) a larger proportion of the soil” than previously; in vain has the rich alluvial deposit encroached upon the gradual slope of the desert; in vain, in Upper Egypt, has a third been added since about the time of the Exodus. Egypt is stricken. Canals, and even arms of the Nile, were allowed to choke up.

Of the seven branches of the Nile, only two, at first artificial, remain. “The others have either entirely disappeared or are dry in summer.” The great eastern arm, the Pelusian, is nearly effaced, “buried almost wholly beneath the sands of the desert.” “The land at the mouth of the canal that represents it is a sand waste or a marsh.” “There is now no trace of vegetation in the whole Pelusian plain. Only one slight isolated rise has some thickets on it, and some shafts of columns lie on the sand.” “In the midst of a most fertile plain, they lack the barest necessities of life.”

The sand of the desert, which was checked by the river and by the reeds on its banks, has swept over lands no longer fertilized. “The sea has not been less destructive. It has broken down the dikes with which man’s labor held it in and has carried barrenness over the productive lands that it converted into lakes and marshes.” A glance at the map of Egypt will show how widely the sea has burst in where land once was. On the east, the salt lake Menzaleh (itself from west-northwest to southeast about 50 miles long, and over 10 miles from north to south) absorbs two more of the ancient arms of the Nile: the Tanitic and the Mendesian.

The Tanitic branch is marked by a deeper channel below the shallow waters of the lake. The lake of Burlos “occupies from east to west more than half the base of the Delta.” Further westward are a succession of lakes: Edkou, Madyeh (over 12.5 miles), Mareotis (37.5 miles). “The ancient Delta has lost more than half its surface, of which one-fifth is covered with the waters of the lakes Mareotis, Madyeh, Edkou, Burlos, and Menzaleh—sad effects of the carelessness of the rulers, or rather spoilers, of this unhappy country.”

Even when Lake Mareotis was, before the English invasion in 1801, allowed nearly to dry up, it was but an unhealthy lagoon; and the Mareotic district, once famous for its wine, olives, and papyrus, had become a desert. So far from being a source of fertility, these lakes from time to time, at low Nile, inundate the country with salt water and are “surrounded by low and barren plains.”

The ancient populousness and capabilities of the western province are attested by its ruins: “The ruins that the French found everywhere in the military reconnaissances of this part of Egypt attest the truth of the historical accounts of the ancient population of the Province, now deserted”; “so deserted, that you can scarcely tell the numbers of ruined cities frequented only by wandering Arabs.”

According to a calculation lower than others, one-third of the land formerly tilled in Egypt has been thrown out of cultivation, i.e., not less than 1,763,895 acres or 2,755.71 square miles. And this is not of yesterday. Toward the end of the 14th century, the extent of the land taxed was 3,034,179 feddans (i.e., 4,377,836.56 acres or 6,840.13 square miles).

The list of lands taxed by the Egyptian government in 1824 yields but a sum of 1,956,040 feddans (or 2,822,171 acres or 4,409 square miles). Yet even this does not represent the land actually cultivated. Some even of the taxed land is left wholly, some partially, uncultivated.

In an official report, 2,000,000 feddans are stated to be cultivated when the overflow of the Nile is most favorable (i.e., only 47 percent of the estimated cultivable amount). The French, who surveyed Egypt minutely with a view to future improvement, calculated that over 1,000,000 feddans (1,012,887) might be approximately restored by the restoration of the irrigation system, and nearly 1,000,000 more (942,810) by the drainage of its lakes, ponds, and marshes (i.e., nearly as much again as is actually cultivated). One of the French surveyors sums up his account of the present state of Egypt: “Without canals and their dikes, Egypt, ceasing to be vivified throughout, is only a corpse that the mass of the waters of its river inundates to superfluity and destroys through fullness.

Instead of those ancient cultivated and fertile plains, one finds only, here and there, canals filled up or cut in two, whose numerous ramifications, crossing each other in every direction, exhibit only scarcely distinguishable traces of a system of irrigation. Instead of those villages and populous cities, one sees only masses of bare and arid ruins, remnants of ancient habitations reduced to ashes. Lastly, one finds only lagoons, miry and pestilential, or sterile sands that extend themselves and unceasingly invade a land that the industry of man had gained from the desert and the sea.”

Yet this is wholly unnatural. In the prophet’s time, it was contrary to all experience. Egypt is alike prolific in its people and in the productions of the earth. The Egyptian race is still accounted very prolific. So general is this that the ancients thought that the waters of the Nile must have some power of fecundity. Yet with these powers implanted in nature unimpaired, the population is diminished, the land half-desert. No one doubts that man’s abiding misgovernment is the cause of Egypt’s desolation.

Under their native princes, they were happy and prosperous. Alexander, some of the Ptolemies, and the Romans saw, at least, the value of Egypt. The great conception of its Greek conqueror, Alexandria, has been a source of prosperity to strangers for over 2000 years. Prosperity has hovered around Egypt.

Minds, the most different, are agreed in thinking that, with a good government, internal prosperity and its far-famed richness of production might at once be restored. Conquerors of varied nations—Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Georgians, Tartars, and Turks—have tried their hands on Egypt. Strange that selfishness or powerlessness for good should have rested upon all; strange that no one should have developed its inherent powers! Strange contrast: one long prosperity, and one long adversity; one scarcely broken day, and one troubled night. And that doom foretold in the midday of its prosperity by those three words: Egypt shall be a desolation.

Edom shall be a desolate wilderness – Edom, long unknown, its ancient capital, its rock-dwellings, have been, within these last forty years, revealed anew. The desolation has been so described to us that we have seen it, as it were, with our own eyes. The land is almost the more hopelessly desolate because it was once, artificially, highly cultivated. Once it had the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven from above (Genesis 27:39); it had (Numbers 20:17) “cornfields” and “vineyards” in abundance, and “wells” of water. Its vegetation, its trees, and its vineyards attracted the dew by which they were supported.

“Petra,” says Strabo (16.4.21), “lies in a spot precipitous and abrupt without, but within possessed of abundant fountains for watering and horticulture.” The terrace-cultivation, through which each shower that falls is stored to the utmost, clothing the mountain-sides with fertility, leaves those steep sides all the more bare when disused.

“We saw,” says a traveler, “many ruined terraces, the evidences and remains of a flourishing agriculture that, in the prosperous days of Edom and Petra, clothed many of these now sterile mountains with fertility and beauty. Fields of wheat and some agricultural villages still exist in the eastern portion of Edom; but, with very slight exceptions, the country is blighted with cheerless desolations and hopeless sterility.”

“The hill-sides and mountains, once covered with earth and clothed with vineyards, are now bare rocks. The soil, no longer supported by terraces and sheltered by trees, has been swept away by the rains. The various contrivances for irrigation that even now might restore fertility to many considerable tracts have all disappeared. Sand from the desert, and the debris of the soft rock of the mountains, cover the valleys that formerly smiled with plenty.”

Now, “the springs have been dried up to such an extent as to render the renewal of the general fertility of Edom (nearly) impossible. In places along the course of the stream, reeds and shrubs grow luxuriantly, oleanders and wild figs abound, and give proof that a little cultivation would again cover the rock and fill the cliffs with the numberless gardens that once adorned them. The traces of former fertility are innumerable; every spot capable of sustaining vegetable life was carefully watered and cultivated. There are numerous grooves in the rocks to carry rainwater to the little clefts in which figs are even now found. Every spot capable of being so protected has been walled up, however small the space gained, or however difficult the means of securing it.”

“The ancient inhabitants seem to have left no accessible place untouched. They have exhibited equal art and industry in eliciting from the grand walls of their marvelous capital whatever the combination of climate, irrigation, and botanical skill could foster in the scanty soil afforded them. The hanging gardens must have had a wondrous effect among the noble buildings of the town when it was in all its glory.” This desolation began soon after the captivity of Judah and Edom’s malicious joy in it. For Malachi appeals to Judah that whereas God had restored him, He had laid the mountains and heritage of Esau waste for the jackals of the wilderness (Malachi 1:3).

Yet Edom was the center of the commerce of nations. Occupying, as it did in its narrowest dimensions, the mountains between the south end of the Dead Sea and the Aelanitic Gulf, it lay on the direct line between Egypt and Babylonia. A known route lay from Heroopolis to Petra its capital, and from there to Babylon. Elath and Ezion-geber discharged through its valley, the Arabah, the wealth that they received by sea from India or Africa.

Petra was the natural halting-place of the caravans. “The Nabataeans,” says Pliny, “enclose Petra, in a valley of rather more than two miles in extent, surrounded by inaccessible mountains, through which a stream flows. Here the two roads meet of those who go to Palmyra of Syria, and of those who come from Gaza.” Eastward again, he says, “they went from Petra to Fora, and from there to Charax” on the banks of the Tigris, near the Persian Gulf.

Yet further, the wealth of Arabia Felix poured by a land-route through Petra: “To Petra and Palestine, Gerrhaeans and Minaeans and all the neighboring Arabs brought down from the upper country the frankincense, it is said, and all other fragrant merchandise.”

Even after the foundation of Alexandria had diverted much of the stream of commerce from Leuce Come, the Aelanitic Gulf, and Petra to Myos Hormus on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, the Romans still connected Elath and Petra with Jerusalem by a great road, portions of which are still extant, and guarded the contact by military stations. Of these routes, that from Arabia Felix and from Egypt to Babylonia had probably been used for over 1000 years before the time of Joel. Elath and Ezion-geber were well-known towns at the time of the Exodus (Deuteronomy 2:8).

The contact was itself complex and manifold. The land exports of Arabia Felix and the commerce of Elath necessarily passed through Edom, and from there radiated to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The withdrawal of the commerce of Egypt would not alone have destroyed that of Petra, while Tyre, Jerusalem, and Damascus still received merchandise through her. To them she was the natural channel; the pilgrim-route from Damascus to Mecca still lies by Petra.

In Joel’s time, not the slightest shadow was cast on her future. Then Babylon destroyed her for a time, but she recovered. The Babylonian and Persian Empires perished; Alexander rose and fell; Rome, the master alike of Alexandria and Petra, still intended for Petra to survive. No human eye could even then tell that it would be finally desolate; much less could any human knowledge have foreseen it in Joel’s time. But God said by him, Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, and it is so!

As, however, Egypt and Edom are only instances of the enemies of God’s people and Church, so their desolation is only one instance of a great principle of God’s Government: that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the ungodly for a moment (Job 20:5); that, after their short-lived office of fulfilling God’s judgment on His people, the judgment rolls around on themselves, and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate (Psalms 34:21).