Charles Ellicott Commentary Joel 1

Joel. —Compounded of Jehovah—El, the composite title of the God of Revelation and of Nature, which is the subject of Psalm 19:0. It was a favourite name among the Jews and was borne by an ancestor of Samuel, who gave it to his elder son. There is nothing known of the personal history of Joel the prophet, except the name of his father, Pethuel, or—according to the Septuagint—Bethuel.

Hath this been in your days? The introduction points to the startling nature of the portent: it was unexampled; it was a cause of consternation to all who saw it; it would be recollected as a subject of wondering comment among succeeding generations. The hand of God was evident, recalling the marvellous things he did in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.

That which the palmerworm has left.— The picture is introduced suddenly and graphically. “Behold the desolation!” “Note the cause.” The earth is bared by locusts beyond all previous experience. There were different kinds of locusts; as many as ninety have been counted. The four names, palmerworm, locust, cankerworm, caterpiller, indicate different swarms of the insect. The first, Gazam, points to its voracity; the second, Arbeh, to its multitude; the third, Yelek, to its manner of “licking up” the grass like cattle; the fourth, Chasil, to its destructive effect.

The number enumerated, four, draws attention to the four sore judgments with which Ezekiel was instructed to threaten Jerusalem, and to the four foreign invasions by the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Macedonians, and Romans.

Awake, ye drunkards— i.e., awake from such an insensibility as wine causes. The people failed to see the hand of God in the terrible calamity, like an acted parable, of the locusts. Insensate, as the revellers in the halls of Belshazzar, they carried on their feasting even while the enemies were at the city gates.

It is cut off from your mouth. —Either joy and gladness, as given in the Septuagint, or the means of indulgence have been suddenly taken away.

A nation. —It was not uncommon with Hebrew writers to apply the name people or folk to animals, as, The ants are a people not strong; The conies are but a feeble folk (Proverbs 30:25–26); but the word used by Joel is different from that in the Proverbs. He selected a word indicative of foreign nations, suggestive of attack, including both the irrational invader and the foreign conqueror. The surpassing strength of the nation is indicated by the extraordinary power of the locust’s teeth, compared to that of the lion’s jaws. The same comparison is made by St. John (Revelation 9:8): Their teeth (the locusts) were as the teeth of lions.