:confused: Some Questions about Joel...

jd.morrison · #1 (**permalink**) 02-14-2008, 04:51 PM

In Joel

:

1.) Are the locust in Joel 1 and 2 happen in the present or past tense?

2.) Is the reference to the Army a reference to the Locust and is it happening in the past or present tense.

3.) Joel 3, is that a fulfilled prophecy, partially fulfilled, or has yet to occur.

k.seymore · #2 (**permalink**) 02-14-2008, 05:40 PM

The Reformation Study Bible says that the locusts are actual locust that had destroyed their crops (chapter 1), and their experience of this event is used to talk about a future worse attack by armies sent from God if they don't repent (chapter 2). As far as Chapter 3, I don't know. It sounds like it is speaking of the final judgment maybe, only using idealistic language that they would have understood in their then-current circumstances. For instance it prophesies that Judah will sell their enemy's children as slaves to the Sabeans. I assume that is what their enemies had done to them, so it seems like God explaining that justice will truly come but the language is expressed in an idealistic way that they will understand. The things this would then point to are far greater than the language itself. But I don't really know, that's just from a quick skim over the passage.

k.seymore · #3 (**permalink**) 02-14-2008, 05:49 PM

I just reread what I wrote, and maybe I'm using the word "idealistic" incorrectly. I just meant the true justice that God will bring is described in language speaking of the greatest form of justice these people could imagine: they will get to do to their enemy what their enemy did to them, and more.

***Contra_Mundum*** · #4 (**permalink**) 02-14-2008, 09:35 PM

The locusts that came (ch1) were a manifestation of the judgment of God against the covenant nation (see Lev. 26:5 cf. 26:22). Such were presages of worse judgments if requisite repentance was not forthcoming.

Moreover (ch2) all temporal calamities point ahead to a coming judgment day, the Day of the Lord. The locusts are rendered terrible, coming as it were against not just the land and crops, but as literally attacking the cities and the people in them. Joel's purpose is to get his hearers to recall the locusts they saw, but to truly see them for their symbolic import, to sense that in their coming it is the wrath of God manifested.

For what is true relief? Not freedom from locusts. It is the product of God's forgiveness of sin, of heartfelt repentance. Scripture says that the fulfillment of God's promises of blessing at the end of ch2 came on Pentecost (Acts 2:17).

Ch 3 is primarily a look ahead to the ultimate Final Day. Remember, that the OT prophets ran the Lord's triumph all together. The three-phase victory (Cross/Resurrection--Ascension/Session--Return/Glory) was not sharply delineated in the prophets' writings at all, be that Isaiah, Joel, Daniel, etc. This tightened perspective of bringing the Advents together continued all the way to the disciples of Christ, who even after the Death (shocking!) and Resurrection were expecting a kingdom immediately (Acts 1:6).