The book of Joel admirably illustrates the intimate connection which
subsisted for the prophetic mind between the sorrows and disasters
of the present and the coming day of Jehovah: the one is the
immediate harbinger of the other. In an unusually devastating plague
of locusts, which, like an army of the Lord,[1] has stripped the
land bare and brought misery alike upon city and country, man and
beast--"for the beasts of the field look up sighing unto Thee," i.
20--the prophet sees the forerunner of such an impending day of
Jehovah, bids the priests summon a solemn assembly, and calls upon
the people to fast and mourn and turn in penitence to God. Their
penitence is met by the divine pity and rewarded by the promise not
only of material restoration but of an outpouring of the spirit upon
all Judah,[2] which is to be accompanied by marvellous signs in the
natural world. The restoration of Judah has as its correlative the
destruction of Judah's enemies, who are represented as gathered
together in the valley of Jehoshaphat--i.e. the valley where
"Jehovah judges"--and there the divine judgment is to be executed
upon them.
[Footnote 1: Some regard the locusts as an allegorical designation
for an invading army. But without reason: in ii. 7 they are
_compared_ to warriors, and the effect of their devastations is
described in terms inapplicable to an army.]
[Footnote 2: The sequel, in which the nations are the objects of
divine wrath, shows that the "all flesh," ii. 28, must be confined
to Judah.]
The theological value of the book of Joel lies chiefly in its clear
contribution to the conception of the day of Jehovah. As Marti says,
"The book does not present one side of the picture only, but
combines all the chief traits of the eschatological hope in an
instructive compendium"--the effusion of the spirit, the salvation
of Jerusalem, the judgment of the heathen, the fruitfulness of the
land, the permanent abode of Jehovah upon Zion. These features of
the Messianic hope are, in the main, characteristic of post-exilic
prophecy; and now, with very great unanimity, the book is assigned,
in spite of its position near the beginning of the minor prophets,
to post-exilic times.
A variety of considerations appears to support this date. Judah is
the exclusive object of interest. Israel has no independent
existence, and, where the name is mentioned, it is synonymous with
Judah, ii. 27, iii. 2, 16. Further, the people are scattered among
the nations, iii. 2, and strangers are not to pass through the
"holy" Jerusalem any more, iii. 17. The exile and the destruction of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 586 B.C. appear therefore to be
presupposed. But the temple has been rebuilt; there are numerous
allusions to priests and to meal and drink offerings, i. 9, 13, ii.
14,17, and an assembly is summoned to "the house of Jehovah your
God," i. 14: the reference to the city wall, ii. 9, would bring the
date as late as Nehemiah in the fifth century. Other arguments,
though more precarious, are not without weight, e.g., the ease and
smoothness of the language, the allusion to the Greeks, in. 6, the
absence of any reference to the sin of Judah,[1] the apparent
citations from or allusions to other prophetic books.[2]
[Footnote 1: Though it may be implied in ii. 12f ]
[Footnote 2: Obad. _v_. 17, Jo. ii. 32; Amos i. 2, Jo. iii. 16;
Amos ix. 13, Jo. iii. 18; Ezek. xlvii. 1ff., Jo. iii. 18.]
The effect of this cumulative argument has been supposed to be
overwhelming in favour of a post-exilic date. Recently, however,
Baudissin, in a very careful discussion, has ably argued for at
least the possibility of a pre-exilic date. Precisely in the manner
of Joel, Amos iv. 6-9 links together locusts and drought as already
experienced calamities. Both alike complain of the Philistine and
Phoenician slave-trade. The enemies--Edom, Phoenicia, Philistia,
iii. 4, l9--fit the earlier period better than the Persian or Greek.
In the ninth century, Judah was invaded by the Philistines and
Arabians according to the Chronicler (2 Chron. xxi. 16ff.), whose
statements in such a matter there is no reason for doubting, and
Jerusalem may then have suffered: in any case, we know that the
treasures of temple and palace were plundered as early as Rehoboam's
time (1 Kings xiv. 25ff.), and this might be enough to satisfy the
allusion in Joel iii. 17. Again, if Joel is smooth, Amos is not much
less so; and linguistic peculiarities that seem to be late might be
due to dialect or personal idiosyncrasy. With regard to the argument
from citations, it would be possible to maintain that Joel's simple
and natural picture of the stream from the temple watering the
acacia valley, iii. 18, was not borrowed from, but rather suggested
the more elaborate imagery of Ezekiel, xlvii. For these and other
reasons Baudissin suggests with hesitation that a date slightly
before Amos is by no means impossible.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is interesting to note that Vernes, Rothstein and
Strack have independently reached the conclusion that chs. i., ii.
have a different origin from iii., iv. In the former, the state
still exists, and the calamity is a plague of locusts; in the
latter, no account is taken of the locusts--it is a time of national
disaster. The reasons, however, are hardly adequate for denying the
unity of the book.]
The question is much more than an academic one, for on the answer to it
will depend our whole conception of the development of Hebrew prophecy.
Sacerdotal interests, e.g., here receive a prominence in prophecy which
we are accustomed to associate only with the period after the exile.
Here again, the promises are for Judah, the threats for her enemies--an
attitude also characteristic of post-exilic prophecy: it is customary
to deny to the pre-exilic prophets any word of promise or consolation
to their own people. Obviously if the priest and the element of promise
have already so assured a place in the earliest of the prophets, the
ordinary view of the course of prophecy will have to be seriously
modified. The lack of emphasis displayed by Joel on the ethical aspect
of religion, which has been made to tell in favour of a late date,
might tell equally well in favour of a very early one. Indeed, the
book is either very early or very late; and, if early, it represents
what we might call the pre-prophetic type of Israel's religion, and
especially the non-moral aspirations of those who, in Amos's time,
longed for the day of Jehovah, and did not know that for them it meant
thick darkness, without a streak of light across it (Amos v. 18). On
the whole, however, the balance leans to a post-exilic date. The Jewish
dispersion seems to be implied, iii. 2. The strange visitation of
locusts suggests to the prophet the mysterious army from the north,
ii. 20, which had haunted the pages of Ezekiel (xxxviii., xxxix.);
and in this book, prophecy (i., ii.) merges into apocalyptic (iii.,
iv.).