John Calvin Commentary Joel 1:8

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

The Prophet now addresses the whole land. Lament, he says; not in an ordinary way, but like a widow whose husband, whom she married when young, is dead. The love, we know, of a young man towards a young woman, and so of a young woman towards a young man, is more tender than when an older person marries an elderly woman. This is the reason the Prophet here mentions the husband of her youth; he wished to portray the heaviest lamentation. Thus he says, “The Jews surely ought not to be affected by so many calamities any differently than a widow who has lost her husband—a man who died young, not having reached maturity, but in the flower of his age.” Just as such widows feel their loss bitterly, so the Prophet has used their case as an illustration.

The Hebrews often call a husband בעל bol, because he is the lord of his wife and has her under his protection. Literally it is, For the lord of her youth; and this is why they also called their idols בעלים bolim, as though they were their patrons, as we have often said in our commentary on the Prophet Hosea.

In summary, the Jews could not have remained unconcerned without being devoid of all reason and discernment, for they were forced, willing or unwilling, to feel a most grievous calamity. It is a monstrous thing when a widow, losing her husband while still young, refrains from mourning. So now, since God had afflicted his land with so many evils, he wished to bring on them, as it were, the grief of widowhood.