John Gill Commentary Joel 1:15

"Alas for the day! for the day of Jehovah is at hand, and as destruction from the Almighty shall it come." — Joel 1:15 (ASV)

Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand. A time of severer and heavier judgments than these of the locusts, caterpillars which were a presage and emblem of greater ones, even of the total destruction of their city, temple, and nation, either by the Chaldeans, or by the Romans, or both: and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come; unawares, suddenly, and irresistibly.

There is in the Hebrew text an elegant play on words, which may be rendered, as "wasting from the waster", or "destruction from the destroyer, shall it come" ^F24; even from the almighty God, who is able to save and destroy, and none can deliver out of his hands; see (Isaiah 13:6); the word signifies one powerful and victorious, as Aben Ezra observes; and so it does in the Arabic language.

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FOOTNOTES:

• F24: (ydvm dvk) "uti vastitas a Deo vastatore", Drusius.