Albert Barnes Commentary Joel 3:8

"and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the men of Sheba, to a nation far off: for Jehovah hath spoken it." — Joel 3:8 (ASV)

I will sell your sons – God Himself would reverse the injustice of people. The sons of Zion should be restored; the sons of the Phoenicians and of the Philistines sold into distant captivity. Tyre was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, and then by Alexander, who sold “more than 13,000” of the inhabitants into slavery. Sidon was taken and destroyed by Artaxerxes Ochus, and it is said, above 40,000 of its inhabitants perished in the flames. Similar things happened to the Philistines (see the notes at Zephaniah 2:4-7). The Sabaeans are probably instanced as being the remotest nation in the opposite direction, a nation probably the partner of Tyre’s traffic in people, as well as in their other merchandise, and who (as is the way of unregenerate nature) would just as readily trade in Tyrians as with Tyrians.

The Sabaeans were like the Phoenicians, a wealthy merchant people, and, in ancient times, united with them in the trade of the world, the Sabaeans sending out their fleets across the Indian Ocean, as the Tyrians along the Mediterranean. Three fathers of distinct races bore the name Sheba: one, a descendant of Ham, the other two, descended from Shem. The Hamite Sheba was the son of Raamah, the son of Cush (Genesis 10:7), and doubtless long ago lived in the country on the Persian Gulf called by the name Raamah. Traces of the name Sheba occur there, and some even after our era.

The Shemite Sabaeans included some descendants of Sheba, the tenth son of Joktan (Genesis 10:28), and others from Sheba, the son of Abraham and Keturah (Genesis 25:3). The Sabaeans descended from Joktan lived in the southwest extremity of Arabia, extending from the Red Sea to the Sea of Babel-mandeb. The country is still called “ard-es-Seba,” “land of Saba;” and Saba is often mentioned by Arabic writers.

To the Greeks and Latins they were known by the name of one division of the race (Himyar) Homeritae. Their descendants still speak an Arabic acknowledged by the learned Arabs to be a distinct language from that which, through Muhammed, prevailed and was diffused; a species of Arabic which they attribute “to the times of (the prophet) Hud (perhaps Eber) and those before him.”

It belonged to them as descendants of Joktan. Sabaeans are mentioned, distinct from both of these, as “dwelling in Arabia Felix, next beyond Syria, which they frequently invaded, before it belonged to the Romans.” These Sabaeans probably are those spoken of as marauders by Job, and may have been descendants of Keturah.

Those best known to the Greeks and Romans were, naturally, those in the southwestern corner of Arabia. The account of their riches and luxuries is detailed and, although from different authorities consistent, otherwise almost fabulous.

One metropolis is said to have had 65 temples; private individuals possessed more than kingly magnificence. Arabic historians expanded into fable the extent and prerogatives of their Paradise lands, before the breaking of the artificial dike made for the irrigation of their country.

They traded with India, doubtless availing themselves of the Monsoon, and perhaps brought their gold from there, if not also the best and most costly frankincense. The Sheba of the prophet appears to have been the wealthy Sheba near the Red Sea. Indeed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is natural to understand the name as referring to those best known.

Solomon unites it with Seba (Psalms 72:10) (the Ethiopian Sabae). The known frankincense-districts are on the southwest corner of Arabia. The tree has diminished, perhaps has degenerated through the neglect resulting from Muslim oppression, diminished consumption, and change of the line of commerce; but it still survives in those districts, a relic of what has passed away.

Ezekiel indeed unites “the merchants of Sheba and Raamah” (Ezekiel 27:22) as trading with Tyre: The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants; with the chief of all spices and with all precious stones and gold they occupied in thy fairs. It may be that he joins them together as kindred tribes, yet it is as probable that he unites the two great channels of merchandise, east and west: Raamah on the Persian Gulf, and Sheba near the Red Sea. Having just mentioned the produce of Northern Arabia as poured into Tyre, he would, in this case, enumerate north, east, and west of Arabia as combined to enrich her.

Agatharcides unites the Sabaeans of southwest Arabia with the Gerrhaeans, who were certainly on the Persian Gulf. “No people,” he says, “is apparently richer than the Sabaeans and Gerrhaeans, who provide everything worth speaking of from Asia and Europe. These made the Syria of Ptolemy full of gold. These supplied the industry of the Phoenicians with profitable imports, not to mention countless other proofs of wealth.”

Their caravans went to Elymais and Carmania; Charrae was their emporium; they returned to Gabala and Phoenicia. Wealth is the parent of luxury and effeminacy. At the time of our Lord’s coming, the softness and effeminacy of the Sabaeans became proverbial. The “soft Sabaeans” is their characteristic in the Roman poets.

Commerce, navigation, and goldmines were then carried on by means of slaves, and since wealth and luxury at that time always demanded domestic slaves, the Sabaeans had need of slaves for both. They too had distant colonies, where the Tyrians could be transported, as far from Phoenicia as the shores of the Aegean are from Palestine. The great law of divine justice, as I have done, so God hath requited me (Judges 1:7), was again fulfilled. It is a sacred proverb of God’s overruling Providence, written in the history of the world and in people’s consciences.