_THE BOOK OF JOEL_
In the criticism of the Book of Joel there exist differences of
opinion—upon its date, the exact reference of its statements and its
relation to parallel passages in other prophets—as wide as even those
by which the Book of Obadiah has been assigned to every century between
the tenth and the fourth before Christ.[1068] As in the case of
Obadiah, the problem is not entangled with any doctrinal issue or
question of accuracy; but while we saw that Obadiah was not involved in
the central controversy of the Old Testament, the date of the Law, not
a little in Joel turns upon the latter. And, besides, certain
descriptions raise the large question between a literal and an
allegorical interpretation. Thus the Book of Joel carries the student
further into the problems of Old Testament Criticism, and forms an even
more excellent introduction to the latter, than does the Book of
Obadiah.
1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK.
In the history of prophecy the Book of Joel must be either very early
or very late, and with few exceptions the leading critics place it
either before 800 B.C. or after 500. So great a difference is due to
most substantial reasons. Unlike every other prophet, except Haggai,
“Malachi” and “Zechariah” ix.—xiv., Joel mentions neither Assyria,
which emerged upon the prophetic horizon about 760,[1069] nor the
Babylonian Empire, which had fallen by 537. The presumption is that he
wrote before 760 or after 537. Unlike all the prophets, too,[1070] Joel
does not charge his people with civic or national sins; nor does his
book bear any trace of the struggle between the righteous and
unrighteous in Israel, nor of that between the spiritual worshippers of
Jehovah and the idolaters. The book addresses an undivided nation, who
know no God but Jehovah; and again the presumption is that Joel wrote
before Amos and his successors had started the spiritual antagonisms
which rent Israel in twain, or after the Law had been accepted by the
whole people under Nehemiah.[1071] The same wide alternative is
suggested by the style and phraseology. Joel’s Hebrew is simple and
direct. Either he is an early writer, or imitates early writers. His
book contains a number of phrases and verses identical, or nearly
identical, with those of prophets from Amos to “Malachi.” Either they
all borrowed from Joel, or he borrowed from them.[1072]
Of this alternative modern criticism at first preferred the earlier
solution, and dated Joel before Amos. So Credner in his Commentary in
1831, and following him Hitzig, Bleek, Ewald, Delitzsch, Keil, Kuenen
(up to 1864),[1073] Pusey and others. So, too, at first some living
critics of the first rank, who, like Kuenen, have since changed their
opinion. And so, even still, Kirkpatrick (on the whole), Von Orelli,
Robertson,[1074] Stanley Leathes and Sinker.[1075] The reasons which
these scholars have given for the early date of Joel are roughly as
follows.[1076] His book occurs among the earliest of the Twelve: while
it is recognised that the order of these is not strictly chronological,
it is alleged that there is a division between the pre-exilic and
post-exilic prophets, and that Joel is found among the former. The
vagueness of his representations in general, and of his pictures of the
Day of Jehovah in particular, is attributed to the simplicity of the
earlier religion of Israel, and to the want of that analysis of its
leading conceptions which was the work of later prophets.[1077] His
horror of the interruption of the daily offerings in the Temple, caused
by the plague of locusts,[1078] is ascribed to a fear which pervaded
the primitive ages of all peoples.[1079] In Joel’s attitude towards
other nations, whom he condemns to judgment, Ewald saw “the old
unsubdued warlike spirit of the times of Deborah and David.” The
prophet’s absorption in the ravages of the locusts is held to reflect
the feeling of a purely agricultural community, such as Israel was
before the eighth century. The absence of the name of Assyria from the
book is assigned to the same unwillingness to give the name as we see
in Amos and the earlier prophecies of Isaiah, and it is thought by some
that, though not named, the Assyrians are symbolised by the locusts.
The absence of all mention of the Law is also held by some to prove an
early date: though other critics, who believe that the Levitical
legislation was extant in Israel from the earliest times, find proof of
this in Joel’s insistence upon the daily offering. The absence of all
mention of a king and the prominence given to the priests are explained
by assigning the prophecy to the minority of King Joash of Judah, when
Jehoyada the priest was regent;[1080] the charge against Egypt and Edom
of spilling innocent blood by Shishak’s invasion of Judah,[1081] and by
the revolt of the Edomites under Jehoram;[1082] the charge against the
Philistines and Phœnicians by the Chronicler’s account of Philistine
raids[1083] in the reign of Jehoram of Judah, and by the oracles of
Amos against both nations;[1084] and the mention of the Vale of
Jehoshaphat by that king’s defeat of Moab, Ammon and Edom in the Vale
of Berakhah.[1085] These allusions being recognised, it was deduced
from them that the parallels between Joel and Amos were due to Amos
having quoted from Joel.[1086]
These reasons are not all equally cogent,[1087] and even the strongest
of them do not prove more than the possibility of an early date for
Joel.[1088] Nor do they meet every historical difficulty. The minority
of Joash, upon which they converge, fell at a time when Aram was not
only prominent to the thoughts of Israel, but had already been felt to
be an enemy as powerful as the Philistines or Edomites. But the Book of
Joel does not mention Aram. It mentions the Greeks,[1089] and, although
we have no right to say that such a notice was impossible in Israel
in the ninth century, it was not only improbable, but no other Hebrew
document from before the Exile speaks of Greece, and in particular
Amos does not when describing the Phœnicians as slave-traders.[1090]
The argument that the Book of Joel must be early because it was placed
among the first six of the Twelve Prophets by the arrangers of the
Prophetic Canon, who could not have forgotten Joel’s date had he lived
after 450, loses all force from the fact that in the same group of
pre-exilic prophets we find the exilic Obadiah and the post-exilic
Jonah, both of them in precedence to Micah.
The argument for the early date of Joel is, therefore, not conclusive.
But there are besides serious objections to it, which make for the
other solution of the alternative we started from, and lead us to place
Joel after the establishment of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah in 444 B.C.
A post-exilic date was first proposed by Vatke,[1091] and then
defended by Hilgenfeld,[1092] and by Duhm in 1875.[1093] From this
time the theory made rapid way, winning over many who had previously
held the early date of Joel, like Oort,[1094] Kuenen,[1095] A. B.
Davidson,[1096] Driver and Cheyne,[1097] perhaps also Wellhausen,[1098]
and finding acceptance and new proofs from a gradually increasing
majority of younger critics, Merx,[1099] Robertson Smith,[1100]
Stade,[1101] Matthes and Scholz,[1102] Holzinger,[1103] Farrar,[1104]
Kautzsch,[1105] Cornill,[1106] Wildeboer,[1107] G. B. Gray[1108] and
Nowack.[1109] The reasons which have led to this formidable change of
opinion in favour of the late date of the Book of Joel are as follows.
In the first place, the Exile of Judah appears in it as already past.
This is proved, not by the ambiguous phrase, _when I shall bring again
the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem_,[1110] but by the plain statement
that _the heathen have scattered Israel among the nations and divided
their land_.[1111] The plunder of the Temple seems also to be
implied.[1112] Moreover, no great world-power is pictured as either
threatening or actually persecuting God’s people; but Israel’s active
enemies and enslavers are represented as her own neighbours, Edomites,
Philistines and Phœnicians, and the last are represented as selling
Jewish captives to the Greeks. All this suits, if it does not
absolutely prove, the Persian age, before the reign of Artaxerxes
Ochus, who was the first Persian king to treat the Jews with
cruelty.[1113] The Greeks, Javan, do not appear in any Hebrew writer
before the Exile;[1114] the form in which their name is given by Joel,
B’ne ha-Jevanim, has admittedly a late sound about it,[1115] and we
know from other sources that it was in the fifth and fourth centuries
that Syrian slaves were in demand in Greece.[1116] Similarly with the
internal condition of the Jews as reflected in Joel. No king is
mentioned; but the priests are prominent, and the elders are introduced
at least once.[1117] It is an agricultural calamity, and that alone,
unmixed with any political alarm, which is the omen of the coming Day
of the Lord. All this suits the state of Jerusalem under the Persians.
Take again the religious temper and emphasis of the book. The latter is
laid, as we have seen, very remarkably upon the horror of the
interruption by the plague of locusts of the daily meal and drink
offerings, and in the later history of Israel the proofs are many of
the exceeding importance with which the regularity of this was
regarded.[1118] This, says Professor A. B. Davidson, “is very unlike
the way in which all other prophets down to Jeremiah speak of the
sacrificial service.” The priests, too, are called to take the
initiative; and the summons to a solemn and formal fast, without any
notice of the particular sins of the people or exhortations to distinct
virtues, contrasts with the attitude to fasts of the earlier prophets,
and with their insistence upon a change of life as the only acceptable
form of penitence.[1119] And another contrast with the earliest
prophets is seen in the general apocalyptic atmosphere and colouring of
the Book of Joel, as well as in some of the particular figures in which
this is expressed, and which are derived from later prophets like
Zephaniah and Ezekiel.[1120]
These evidences for a late date are supported, on the whole, by the
language of the book. Of this Merx furnishes many details, and by a
careful examination, which makes due allowance for the poetic form of
the book and for possible glosses, Holzinger has shown that there are
symptoms in vocabulary, grammar and syntax which at least are more
reconcilable with a late than with an early date.[1121] There are a
number of Aramaic words, of Hebrew words used in the sense in which
they are used by Aramaic, but by no other Hebrew, writers, and several
terms and constructions which appear only in the later books of the Old
Testament or very seldom in the early ones.[1122] It is true that these
do not stand in a large proportion to the rest of Joel’s vocabulary and
grammar, which is classic and suitable to an early period of the
literature; but this may be accounted for by the large use which the
prophet makes of the very words of earlier writers. Take this large use
into account, and the unmistakable Aramaisms of the book become even
more emphatic in their proof of a late date.
The literary parallels between Joel and other writers are unusually
many for so small a book. They number at least twenty in seventy-two
verses. The other books of the Old Testament in which they occur are
about twelve. Where one writer has parallels with many, we do not
necessarily conclude that he is the borrower, unless we find that some
of the phrases common to both are characteristic of the other writers,
or that, in his text of them, there are differences from theirs which
may reasonably be reckoned to be of a later origin. But that both of
these conditions are found in the parallels between Joel and other
prophets has been shown by Prof. Driver and Mr. G. B. Gray. “Several of
the parallels—either in their entirety or by virtue of certain words
which they contain—have their affinities solely or chiefly in the later
writings. But the significance [of this] is increased when the very
difference between a passage in Joel and its parallel in another book
consists in a word or phrase characteristic of the later centuries.
That a passage in a writer of the ninth century should differ from its
parallel in a subsequent writer by the presence of a word elsewhere
confined to the later literature would be strange; a single instance
would not, indeed, be inexplicable in view of the scantiness of
extant writings; but every additional instance—though itself not
very convincing—renders the strangeness greater.” And again, “the
variations in some of the parallels as found in Joel have other common
peculiarities. This also finds its natural explanation in the fact
that Joel quotes: for that the _same_ author even when quoting from
different sources should quote with variations of the same character
is natural, but that _different_ authors quoting from a common source
should follow the same method of quotation is improbable.”[1123] “While
in some of the parallels a comparison discloses indications that the
phrase in Joel is probably the later, in other cases, even though the
expression may in itself be met with earlier, it becomes frequent only
in a later age, and the use of it by Joel increases the presumption
that he stands by the side of the later writers.”[1124]
In face of so many converging lines of evidence, we shall not wonder
that there should have come about so great a change in the opinion of
the majority of critics on the date of Joel, and that it should now be
assigned by them to a post-exilic date. Some place it in the sixth
century before Christ,[1125] some in the first half of the fifth before
“Malachi” and Nehemiah,[1126] but the most after the full establishment
of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah in 444 B.C.[1127] It is difficult,
perhaps impossible, to decide. Nothing certain can be deduced from the
mention of the _city wall_ in chap. ii. 9, from which Robertson Smith
and Cornill infer that Nehemiah’s walls were already built. Nor can we
be sure that Joel quotes the phrase, _before the great and terrible day
of Jehovah come_, from “Malachi,”[1128] although this is rendered
probable by the character of Joel’s other parallels. But the absence of
all reference to the prophets as a class, the promise of the rigorous
exclusion of foreigners from Jerusalem,[1129] the condemnation to
judgment of all the heathen, and the strong apocalyptic character of
the book, would incline us to place it after Ezra rather than before.
How far after, it is impossible to say, but the absence of feeling
against Persia requires a date before the cruelties inflicted by
Artaxerxes about 360.[1130]
One solution, which has lately been offered for the problems of date
presented by the Book of Joel, deserves some notice. In his German
translation of Driver’s _Introduction to the Old Testament_,[1131]
Rothstein questions the integrity of the prophecy, and alleges reasons
for dividing it into two sections. Chaps. i. and ii. (Heb.; i.—ii. 27
Eng.) he assigns to an early author, writing in the minority of King
Joash, but chaps. iii. and iv. (Heb.; ii. 28—iii. Eng.) to a date after
the Exile, while ii. 20, which, it will be remembered, Robertson Smith
takes as a gloss, he attributes to the editor who has joined the two
sections together. His reasons are that chaps. i. and ii. are entirely
taken up with the physical plague of locusts, and no troubles from
heathen are mentioned; while chaps. iii. and iv. say nothing of a
physical plague, but the evils they deplore for Israel are entirely
political, the assaults of enemies. Now it is quite within the bounds
of possibility that chaps. iii. and iv. are from another hand than
chaps. i. and ii.: we have nothing to disprove that. But, on the other
hand, there is nothing to prove it. On the contrary, the possibility of
all four chapters being from the same hand is very obvious. Joel
mentions no heathen in the first chapter, because he is engrossed with
the plague of locusts. But when this has passed, it is quite natural
that he should take up the standing problem of Israel’s history—their
relation to heathen peoples. There is no discrepancy between the two
different subjects, nor between the styles in which they are
respectively treated. Rothstein’s arguments for an early date for
chaps. i. and ii. have been already answered, and when we come to the
exposition of them we shall find still stronger reasons for assigning
them to the end of the fifth century before Christ. The assault on the
integrity of the prophecy may therefore be said to have failed, though
no one who remembers the composite character of the prophetical books
can deny that the question is still open.[1132]
2. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BOOK: IS IT DESCRIPTION,
ALLEGORY OR APOCALYPSE?
Another question to which we must address ourselves before we can pass
to the exposition of Joel’s prophecies is of the attitude and intention
of the prophet. Does he describe or predict? Does he give history or
allegory?
Joel starts from a great plague of locusts, which he describes not only
in the ravages they commit upon the land, but in their ominous
foreshadowing of the Day of the Lord. They are the heralds of God’s
near judgment upon the nation. Let the latter repent instantly with a
day of fasting and prayer. Peradventure Jehovah will relent, and spare
His people. So far chap. i. 2—ii. 17. Then comes a break. An uncertain
interval appears to elapse; and in chap. ii. 18 we are told that
Jehovah’s zeal for Israel has been stirred, and He has had pity on His
folk. Promises follow, _first_, of deliverance from the plague and of
restoration of the harvests it has consumed, and _second_, of the
outpouring of the Spirit on all classes of the community: chap. ii.
17-32 (Eng.; ii. 17—iii. Heb.). Chap. iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) gives
another picture of the Day of Jehovah, this time described as a
judgment upon the heathen enemies of Israel. They shall be brought
together, condemned judicially by Him, and slain by His hosts, His
“supernatural” hosts. Jerusalem shall be freed from the feet of
strangers, and the fertility of the land restored.
These are the contents of the book. Do they describe an actual plague
of locusts, already experienced by the people? Or do they predict this
as still to come? And again, are the locusts which they describe real
locusts, or a symbol and allegory of the human foes of Israel? To these
two questions, which in a measure cross and involve each other, three
kinds of answer have been given.
A large and growing majority of critics of all schools[1133] hold that
Joel starts, like other prophets, from the facts of experience. His
locusts, though described with poetic hyperbole—for are they not the
vanguard of the awful Day of God’s judgment?—are real locusts; their
plague has just been felt by his contemporaries, whom he summons to
repent, and to whom, when they have repented, he brings promises of the
restoration of their ruined harvests, the outpouring of the Spirit, and
judgment upon their foes. Prediction is therefore found only in the
second half of the book (ii. 18 onwards): it rests upon a basis of
narrative and exhortation which fills the first half.
But a number of other critics have argued (and with great force)
that the prophet’s language about the locusts is too aggravated and
too ominous to be limited to the natural plague which these insects
periodically inflicted upon Palestine. Joel (they reason) would hardly
have connected so common an adversity with so singular and ultimate a
crisis as the Day of the Lord. Under the figure of locusts he must be
describing some more fateful agency of God’s wrath upon Israel. More
than one trait of his description appears to imply a human army. It can
only be one or other, or all, of those heathen powers whom at different
periods God raised up to chastise His delinquent people; and this
opinion is held to be supported by the facts that chap. ii. 20 speaks
of them as the Northern and chap. iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) deals with the
heathen. The locusts of chaps. i. and ii. are the same as the heathen
of chap. iii. In chaps. i. and ii. they are described as threatening
Israel, but on condition of Israel repenting (chap. ii. 18 ff.) the
Day of the Lord which they herald shall be their destruction and not
Israel’s (chap. iii.).[1134]
The supporters of this allegorical interpretation of Joel are, however,
divided among themselves as to whether the heathen powers symbolised by
the locusts are described as having already afflicted Israel or are
predicted as still to come. Hilgenfeld,[1135] for instance, says that
the prophet in chaps. i. and ii. speaks of their ravages as already
past. To him their fourfold plague described in chap. i. 4 symbolises
four Persian assaults upon Palestine, after the last of which in 358
the prophecy must therefore have been written.[1136] Others read them
as still to come. In our own country Pusey has been the strongest
supporter of this theory.[1137] To him the whole book, written before
Amos, is prediction. “It extends from the prophet’s own day to the end
of time.” Joel calls the scourge the Northern: he directs the priests
to pray for its removal, that _the heathen may not rule over God’s
heritage_;[1138] he describes the agent as a responsible one;[1139] his
imagery goes far beyond the effects of locusts, and threatens drought,
fire and plague,[1140] the assault of cities and the terrifying of
peoples.[1141] The scourge is to be destroyed in a way physically
inapplicable to locusts;[1142] and the promises of its removal include
the remedy of ravages which mere locusts could not inflict: the
captivity of Judah is to be turned, and the land recovered from
foreigners who are to be banished from it.[1143] Pusey thus reckons as
future the relenting of God, consequent upon the people’s penitence:
chap. ii. 18 ff. The past tenses in which it is related, he takes as
instances of the well-known prophetic perfect, according to which the
prophets express their assurance of things to come by describing them
as if they had already happened.
This is undoubtedly a strong case for the predictive and allegorical
character of the Book of Joel; but a little consideration will show
us that the facts on which it is grounded are capable of a different
explanation than that which it assumes, and that Pusey has overlooked
a number of other facts which force us to a literal interpretation of
the locusts as a plague already past, even though we feel they are
described in the language of poetical hyperbole.
For, in the first place, Pusey’s theory implies that the prophecy is
addressed to a future generation, who shall be alive when the predicted
invasions of heathen come upon the land. Whereas Joel obviously
addresses his own contemporaries. The prophet and his hearers are
one. _Before our eyes_, he says, _the food has been cut off_.[1144]
As obviously, he speaks of the plague of locusts as of something that
has just happened. His hearers can compare its effects with past
disasters, which it has far exceeded;[1145] and it is their duty to
hand down the story of it to future generations.[1146] Again, his
description is that of a physical, not of a political, plague. Fields
and gardens, vines and figs, are devastated by being stripped and
gnawed. Drought accompanies the locusts, the seed shrivels beneath the
clods, the trees languish, the cattle pant for want of water.[1147]
These are not the trail which an invading army leave behind them. In
support of his theory that human hosts are meant, Pusey points to
the verses which bid the people pray _that the heathen rule not over
them_, and which describe the invaders as attacking cities.[1148] But
the former phrase may be rendered with equal propriety, _that the
heathen make not satirical songs about them_;[1149] and as to the
latter, not only do locusts invade towns exactly as Joel describes,
but his words that the invader steals into houses like _a thief_ are
far more applicable to the insidious entrance of locusts than to the
bold and noisy assault of a storming party. Moreover Pusey and the
other allegorical interpreters of the book overlook the fact that Joel
never so much as hints at the invariable effects of a human invasion,
massacre and plunder. He describes no slaying and no looting; but when
he comes to the promise that Jehovah will restore the losses which have
been sustained by His people, he defines them as the years which His
army has _eaten_.[1150] But all this proof is clenched by the fact that
Joel compares the locusts to actual soldiers.[1151] They are _like_
horsemen, the sound of them is _like_ chariots, they run _like_ horses,
and _like_ men of war they leap upon the wall. Joel could never have
compared a real army to itself!
The allegorical interpretation is therefore untenable. But some
critics, while admitting this, are yet not disposed to take the first
part of the book for narrative. They admit that the prophet means
a plague of locusts, but they deny that he is speaking of a plague
already past, and hold that his locusts are still to come, that they
are as much a part of the future as the pouring out of the
Spirit[1152] and the judgment of the heathen in the Valley of
Jehoshaphat.[1153] All alike, they are signs or accompaniments of
the Day of Jehovah, and that Day has still to break. The prophet’s
scenery is apocalyptic; the locusts are “eschatological locusts,” not
historical ones. This interpretation of Joel has been elaborated by Dr.
Adalbert Merx, and the following is a summary of his opinions.[1154]
After examining the book along all the lines of exposition which have
been proposed, Merx finds himself unable to trace any plan or even
sign of a plan; and his only escape from perplexity is the belief that
no plan can ever have been meant by the author. Joel weaves in one
past, present and future, paints situations only to blot them out and
put others in their place, starts many processes but develops none.
His book shows no insight into God’s plan with Israel, but is purely
external; the bearing and the end of it is the material prosperity of
the little land of Judah. From this Merx concludes that the book is
not an original work, but a mere summary of passages from previous
prophets, that with a few reflections of the life of the Jews after
the Return lead us to assign it to that period of literary culture
which Nehemiah inaugurated by the collection of national writings and
which was favoured by the cessation of all political disturbance. Joel
gathered up the pictures of the Messianic age in the older prophets,
and welded them together in one long prayer by the fervid belief that
that age was near. But while the older prophets spoke upon the ground
of actual fact and rose from this to a majestic picture of the last
punishment, the still life of Joel’s time had nothing such to offer
him and he had to seek another basis for his prophetic flight. It is
probable that he sought this in the relation of Type and Antitype. The
Antitype he found in the liberation from Egypt, the darkness and the
locusts of which he transferred to his canvas from Exodus x. 4-6. The
locusts, therefore, are neither real nor symbolic, but ideal. This is
the method of the Midrash and Haggada in Jewish literature, which
constantly placed over against each other the deliverance from Egypt
and the last judgment. It is a method that is already found in such
portions of the Old Testament as Ezekiel xxxvii. and Psalm lxxviii.
Joel’s locusts are borrowed from the Egyptian plagues, but are
presented as the signs of the Last Day. They will bring it near to
Israel by famine, drought and the interruption of worship described in
chap. i. Chap. ii., which Merx keeps distinct from chap. i., is based
on a study of Ezekiel, from whom Joel has borrowed, among other
things, the expressions _the garden of Eden_ and _the Northerner_. The
two verses generally held to be historic, 18 and 19, Merx takes to be
the continuation of the prayer of the priests, pointing the verbs so
as to turn them from perfects into futures.[1155] The rest of the
book, Merx strives to show, is pieced together from many prophets,
chiefly Isaiah and Ezekiel, but without the tender spiritual feeling
of the one, or the colossal magnificence of the other. Special nations
are mentioned, but in this portion of the work we have to do not with
events already past, but with general views, and these not original,
but conditioned by the expressions of earlier writers. There is no
history in the book: it is all ideal, mystical, apocalyptic. That is
to say, according to Merx, there is no real prophet or prophetic fire,
only an old man warming his feeble hands over a few embers that he has
scraped together from the ashes of ancient fires, now nearly wholly
dead.
Merx has traced Joel’s relations to other prophets, and reflection of
a late date in Israel’s history, with care and ingenuity; but his
treatment of the text and exegesis of the prophet’s meaning are alike
forced and fanciful. In face of the support which the Massoretic
reading of the hinge of the book, chap. ii. 18 ff., receives from the
ancient versions, and of its inherent probability and harmony with the
context, Merx’s textual emendation is unnecessary, besides being in
itself unnatural.[1156] While the very same objections which we have
already found valid against the allegorical interpretation equally
dispose of this mystical one. Merx outrages the evident features of
the book almost as much as Hengstenberg and Pusey have done. He has
lifted out of time altogether that which plainly purports to be
historical. His literary criticism is as unsound as his textual. It is
only by ignoring the beautiful poetry of chap. i. that he transplants
it to the future. Joel’s figures are too vivid, too actual, to be
predictive or mystical. And the whole interpretation wrecks itself in
the same verse as the allegorical, the verse, viz., in which Joel
plainly speaks of himself as having suffered with his hearers the
plague he describes.[1157]
We may, therefore, with confidence conclude that the allegorical and
mystical interpretations of Joel are impossible; and that the only
reasonable view of our prophet is that which regards him as calling,
in chap. i. 2—ii. 17, upon his contemporaries to repent in face of
a plague of locusts, so unusually severe that he has felt it to be
ominous of even the Day of the Lord; and in the rest of his book,
as promising material, political and spiritual triumphs to Israel
in consequence of their repentance, either already consummated, or
anticipated by the prophet as certain.
It is true that the account of the locusts appears to bear features
which conflict with the literal interpretation. Some of these, however,
vanish upon a fuller knowledge of the awful degree which such a plague
has been testified to reach by competent observers within our own
era.[1158] Those that remain may be attributed partly to the poetic
hyperbole of Joel’s style, and partly to the fact that he sees in
the plague far more than itself. The locusts are signs of the Day of
Jehovah. Joel treats them as we found Zephaniah treating the Scythian
hordes of his day. They are as real as the latter, but on them as on
the latter the lurid glare of Apocalypse has fallen, magnifying them
and investing them with that air of ominousness which is the sole
justification of the allegorical and mystic interpretation of their
appearance.
To the same sense of their office as heralds of the last day, we owe
the description of the locusts as _the Northerner_.[1159] The North
is not the quarter from which locusts usually reach Palestine, nor
is there any reason to suppose that by naming the North Joel meant
only to emphasise the unusual character of these swarms. Rather he
takes a name employed in Israel since Jeremiah’s time to express the
instruments of Jehovah’s wrath in the day of His judgment of Israel.
The name is typical of Doom, and therefore Joel applies it to his
fateful locusts.
3. STATE OF THE TEXT AND THE STYLE OF THE BOOK.
Joel’s style is fluent and clear, both when he is describing the
locusts, in which part of his book he is most original, and when he
is predicting, in apocalyptic language largely borrowed from earlier
prophets, the Day of Jehovah. To the ease of understanding him we may
attribute the sound state of the text and its freedom from glosses. In
this, like most of the books of the post-exilic prophets, especially
the Books of Haggai, “Malachi” and Jonah, Joel’s book contrasts very
favourably with those of the older prophets; and that also, to some
degree, is proof of the lateness of his date. The Greek translators
have, on the whole, understood Joel easily and with little error.
In their version there are the usual differences of grammatical
construction, especially in the pronominal suffixes and verbs, and of
punctuation; but very few bits of expansion and no real additions.
These are all noted in the translation below.
FOOTNOTES:
[1068] See above, Chap. XIII.
[1069] See Vol. I. The Assyria of “Zech.” x. 11 is Syria. See below.
[1070] The two exceptions, Nahum and Habakkuk, are not relevant to this
question. Their dates are fixed by their references to Assyria and
Babylon.
[1071] See Rob. Smith, art. “Joel,” _Encyc. Brit._
[1072] So obvious is this alternative that all critics may be said to
grant it, except König (_Einl._), on whose reasons for placing Joel
in the end of the seventh century see below, p. 386, n. 1130. Kessner
(_Das Zeitalter der Proph. Joel_, 1888) deems the date unprovable.
[1073] See _The Religion of Israel_, Vol. I., pp. 86 f.
[1074] _The O.T. and its Contents_, p. 105.
[1075] _Lex Mosaica_, pp. 422, 450.
[1076] See especially Ewald on Joel in his _Prophets of the O.T._, and
Kirkpatrick’s very fair argument in _Doctrine of the Prophets_, pp. 57
ff.
[1077] On Joel’s picture of the Day of Jehovah Ewald says: “We have it
here in its first simple and clear form, nor has it become a subject of
ridicule as in Amos.”
[1078] i. 9, 13, 16, ii. 14.
[1079] So Ewald.
[1080] 2 Kings xi. 4-21.
[1081] 1 Kings xiv. 25 f.: cf. Joel iii. 17_b_, 19.
[1082] 2 Kings viii. 20-22: cf. Joel iii. 19.
[1083] 2 Chron. xxi. 16, 17, xxii. 1: cf. Joel iii. 4-6.
[1084] Amos i.: cf. Joel iii. 4-6.
[1085] 2 Chron. xx., especially 26: cf. Joel iii. 2.
[1086] Joel iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) 16; Amos i. 2. For a list of the
various periods to which Joel has been assigned by supporters of this
early date see Kuenen, § 68.
[1087] The reference of Egypt in iii. 19 to Shishak’s invasion appears
particularly weak.
[1088] Cf. Robertson, _O. T. and its Contents_, 105, and Kirkpatrick’s
cautious, though convinced, statement of the reasons for an early date.
[1089] iii. 6 (Heb. iv. 6).
[1090] Amos i. 9.
[1091] _Bibl. Theol._, I., p. 462; _Einl._, pp. 675 ff.
[1092] _Ztschr. f. wissensch. Theol._, X., Heft 4.
[1093] _Theol. der Proph._, pp. 275 ff.
[1094] _Theol. Tijd._, 1876, pp. 362 ff. (not seen).
[1095] _Onderz._, § 68.
[1096] _Expositor_, 1888, Jan.—June, pp. 198 ff.
[1097] See Cheyne, _Origin of Psalter_, xx.; Driver, _Introd._, in the
sixth edition of which, 1897, he supports the late date of Joel more
strongly than in the first edition, 1892.
[1098] Wellhausen allowed the theory of the early date of Joel to stand
in his edition of Bleek’s _Einleitung_, but adopts the late date in his
own _Kleine Propheten_.
[1099] _Die Prophetie des Joels u. ihre Ausleger_, 1879.
[1100] _Encyc. Brit._, art. “Joel,” 1881.
[1101] _Gesch._, II. 207.
[1102] _Theol. Tijdschr._, 1885, p. 151; _Comm._, 1885 (neither seen).
[1103] “Sprachcharakter u. Abfassungszeit des B. Joels” in _Z.A.T.W._,
1889, pp. 89 ff.
[1104] _Minor Prophets._
[1105] _Bibel._
[1106] _Einleit._
[1107] _Litteratur des A. T._
[1108] _Expositor_, September 1893.
[1109] _Comm._, 1897.
[1110] iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 1. For this may only mean _turn again the
fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem_.
[1111] iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 2. The supporters of a pre-exilic date
either passed this over or understood it of incursions by the heathen
into Israel’s territories in the ninth century. It is, however, too
universal to suit these.
[1112] iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 5.
[1113] Kautzsch dates after Artaxerxes Ochus, and _c._ 350.
[1114] Ezekiel (xxvii. 13, 19) is the first to give the name Javan,
_i.e._ ΙαϜων, or Ionian (earlier writers name Egypt, Edom, Arabia
and Phœnicia as the great slave-markets: Amos i.; Isa. xi. 11; Deut.
xxviii. 68); and Greeks are also mentioned in Isa. lxvi. 19 (a
post-exilic passage); Zech. ix. 13; Dan. viii. 21, x. 20, xi. 2; 1
Chron. i. 5, 7, and Gen. x. 2. See below, Chap. XXXI.
[1115] בני היונים instead of בני יון, just as the Chronicler gives
בני הקרחים for בני קרח: see Wildeboer, p. 348, and Matthes, quoted by
Holzinger, p. 94.
[1116] Movers, _Phön. Alterthum._, II. 1, pp. 70 _sqq._: which
reference I owe to R. Smith’s art. in the _Encyc. Brit._
[1117] With these might be taken the use of קהל (ii. 16) in its sense of
a gathering for public worship. The word itself was old in Hebrew, but
as time went on it came more and more to mean the convocation of the
nation for worship or deliberation. Holzinger, pp. 105 f.
[1118] Cf. Neh. x. 33; Dan. viii. 11, xi. 31, xii. 11. Also Acts xxvi.
7: τὸ δωδεκάφυλον ἡμῶν ἐν ἐκτενεία νύκτα καὶ ἡμέραν λατρεύον. Also the
passages in Jos., XIV. _Ant._ iv. 3, xvi. 2, in which Josephus mentions
the horror caused by the interruption of the daily sacrifice by famine
in the last siege of Jerusalem, and adds that it had happened in no
previous siege of the city.
[1119] Cf. Jer. xiv. 12; Isa. lviii. 6; Zech. vii. 5, vi. 11, 19, with
Neh. i. 4, ix. 1; Ezra viii. 21; Jonah iii. 5, 7; Esther iv. 3, 16, ix.
31; Dan. ix. 3.
[1120] The gathering of the Gentiles to judgment, Zeph. iii. 8 (see
above, p. 69) and Ezek. xxxviii. 22; the stream issuing from the Temple
to fill the Wady ha-Shittim, Ezek. xlvii. 1 ff., cf. Zech. xiv. 8; the
outpouring of the Spirit, Ezek. xxxix. 29.
[1121] _Z.A.T.W._, 1889, pp. 89-136. Holzinger’s own conclusion is
stated more emphatically than above.
[1122] For an exhaustive list the reader must be referred to
Holzinger’s article (cf. Driver, _Introd._, sixth edition; _Joel and
Amos_, p. 24; G. B. Gray, _Expositor_, September 1893, p. 212). But the
following (a few of which are not given by Holzinger) are sufficient to
prove the conclusion come to above: i. 2, iv. 4, וְאִם ... הֲ— this
is the form of the disjunctive interrogative in later O. T. writings,
replacing the earlier אִם ... הֲ; i. 8, אלי only here in O. T., but
frequent in Aram.; 13, נמנע in Ni. only from Jeremiah onwards, Qal only
in two passages before Jeremiah and in a number after him; 18, נאנחה,
if the correct reading, occurs only in the latest O. T. writings, the
Qal only in these and Aram.; ii. 2, iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 20, דור ודור
first in Deut. xxxii. 7, and then exilic and post-exilic frequently; 8,
שלח, a late word, only in Job xxxiii. 18, xxxvi. 12, 2 Chron. xxiii.
10, xxxii. 5, Neh. iii. 15, iv. 11, 17; 20, סוֹף, _end_, only in 2
Chron. xx. 16 and Eccles., Aram. of Daniel, and post Bibl. Aram. and
Heb.; iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 4, נמל על, cf. 2 Chron. xx. 11; 10, רמח,
see below on this verse; 11, הנחת, Aram.; 13, בשׁל, in Hebrew to cook
(cf. Ezek. xxiv. 5), and in other forms always with that meaning down
to the Priestly Writing and “Zech.” ix.—xiv., is used here in the sense
of _ripen_, which is frequent in Aram., but does not occur elsewhere
in O. T. Besides, Joel uses for the first personal pronoun אני—ii. 27
(_bis_), iv. 10, 17—which is by far the most usual form with later
writers, and not אנכי, preferred by pre-exilic writers. (See below on
the language of Jonah.)
[1123] G. B. Gray, _Expositor_, September 1893, pp. 213 f. For
the above conclusions ample proof is given in Mr. Gray’s detailed
examination of the parallels: pp. 214 ff.
[1124] Driver, _Joel and Amos_, p. 27.
[1125] Scholz and Rosenzweig (not seen).
[1126] Hilgenfeld, Duhm, Oort. Driver puts it “most safely shortly
after Haggai and Zechariah i.—viii., _c._ 500 B.C.”
[1127] Vernes, Robertson Smith, Kuenen, Matthes, Cornill, Nowack, etc.
[1128] Joel iii. 4 (Heb.; Eng. ii. 31); “Mal.” iv. 5.
[1129] iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) 17.
[1130] Perhaps this is the most convenient place to refer to König’s
proposal to place Joel in the last years of Josiah. Some of his
arguments (_e.g._ that Joel is placed among the first of the Twelve)
we have already answered. He thinks that i. 17-20 suit the great
drought in Josiah’s reign (Jer. xiv. 2-6), that the name given to the
locusts, הצפוני, ii. 20, is due to Jeremiah’s enemy _from the north_,
and that the phrases _return with all your heart_, ii. 12, and _return
to Jehovah your God_, 13, imply a period of apostasy. None of these
conclusions is necessary. The absence of reference to the _high places_
finds an analogy in Isa. i. 13; the מנחה is mentioned in Isa. i. 13:
if Amos viii. 5 testifies to observance of the Sabbath, and Nahum ii.
1 to other festivals, who can say a pre-exilic prophet would not be
interested in the meal and drink offerings? But surely no pre-exilic
prophet would have so emphasised these as Joel has done. Nor is König’s
explanation of iv. 2 as of the Assyrian and Egyptian invasion of Judah
so probable as that which refers the verse to the Babylonian exile.
Nor are König’s objections to a date after “Malachi” convincing.
They are that a prophet near “Malachi’s” time must have specified as
“Malachi” did the reasons for the repentance to which he summoned the
people, while Joel gives none, but is quite general (ii. 13_a_). But
the change of attitude may be accounted for by the covenant and Law of
444. “Malachi” i. 11 speaks of the Gentiles worshipping Jehovah, but
not even in Jonah iii. 5 is any relation of the Gentiles to Jehovah
predicated. Again, the greater exclusiveness of Ezra and his Law may be
the cause. Joel, it is true, as König says, does not mention the Law,
while “Malachi” does (ii. 8, etc.); but this was not necessary if the
people had accepted it in 444. Professor Ryle (_Canon of O.T._, 106 n.)
leaves the question of Joel’s date open.
[1131] Pages 333 f. n.
[1132] Vernes, _Histoire des Idées Messianiques depuis Alexandre_,
pp. 13 ff., had already asserted that chaps. i. and ii. must be by
a different author from chaps. iii. and iv., because the former has
to do wholly with the writer’s present, with which the latter has
no connection whatever, but it is entirely eschatological. But in
his _Mélanges de Crit. Relig._, pp. 218 ff., Vernes allows that his
arguments are not conclusive, and that all four chapters may have come
from the same hand.
[1133] _I.e._ Hitzig, Vatke, Ewald, Robertson Smith, Kuenen,
Kirkpatrick, Driver, Davidson, Nowack, etc.
[1134] This allegorical interpretation was a favourite one with the
early Christian Fathers: cf. Jerome.
[1135] _Zeitschr. für wissensch. Theologie_, 1860, pp. 412 ff.
[1136] Cambyses 525, Xerxes 484, Artaxerxes Ochus 460 and 458.
[1137] In Germany, among other representatives of this opinion,
are Bertholdt (_Einl._) and Hengstenberg (_Christol._, III. 352
ff.), the latter of whom saw in the four kinds of locusts the
Assyrian-Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek and the Roman tyrants of
Israel.
[1138] ii. 17.
[1139] ii. 20.
[1140] i. 19, 20.
[1141] Plur. ii. 6.
[1142] ii. 20.
[1143] iii. (Heb. iv.) 1 f., 17.
[1144] i. 16.
[1145] i. 2 f.
[1146] i. 3.
[1147] i. 17 ff.
[1148] ii. 17, ii. 9 ff.
[1149] למשל בם
[1150] A. B. Davidson, _Expos._, 1888, pp. 200 f.
[1151] ii. 4 ff.
[1152] Eng. ii. 28 ff., Heb. iii.
[1153] Eng. iii., Heb. iv.
[1154] _Die Prophetie des Joel u. ihre Ausleger_, 1879. The following
summary and criticism of Merx’s views I take from an (unpublished)
review of his work which I wrote in 1881.
[1155] For וַיְקַנֵּא etc. he reads וִיקַנֵּא etc.
[1156] “The proposal of Merx, to change the pointing so as to transform
the perfects into futures, ... is an exegetical monstrosity.”—Robertson
Smith, art. “Joel,” _Encyc. Brit._
[1157] i. 16.
[1158] Even the comparison of the ravages of the locusts to burning
by fire. But probably also Joel means that they were accompanied by
drought and forest fires. See below.
[1159] ii. 20.