Joel 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Joel calls for the ram's horn to be blown in Zion because the day of the LORD is near, and he describes an army that comes like fire and like locusts, darkening the sun and moon. He calls the whole nation, from elders to nursing babies, to fast and turn back to God with torn hearts rather than torn clothes. God answers with promises of grain, wine, and oil, the driving off of the northern army, and repayment for the years the locusts ate. The chapter closes with God pouring out his Spirit on all people, wonders in the sky and on the earth, and the promise that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • A command is given to blow the ram's horn in Zion.
   • A command is given to sound an alarm on God's holy mountain.
   • All the inhabitants of the land are to tremble.
   • The day of the LORD is coming.
   • The day of the LORD is near.
2. 2:2
   • The day is a day of darkness and gloom.
   • The day is a day of clouds and thick darkness.
   • Like dawn spread over the mountains, a great and strong people comes.
   • There has never been anything like this people before.
   • There will never be anything like it again, through the years of generation after generation.
3. 2:3
   • A fire devours ahead of them.
   • Behind them a flame burns.
   • The land ahead of them is like the garden of Eden.
   • Behind them the land is a desolate wilderness.
   • Nothing escapes them.
4. 2:4
   • Their appearance is like the appearance of horses.
   • They run like war-horses.
5. 2:5
   • They leap over the mountaintops with a sound like chariots.
   • Their sound is like the sound of a flame of fire devouring stubble.
   • They are like a strong people drawn up for battle.
6. 2:6
   • Before them peoples writhe in anguish.
   • All faces change color (the term is ambiguous: they gather darkness or grow flushed/pale).
7. 2:7
   • They run like warriors.
   • They climb a wall like men of war.
   • Each one marches on his own course.
   • They do not swerve from their paths.
8. 2:8
   • They do not shove one another.
   • Each one walks in his own track.
   • They fall upon the weapons and are not halted (the KJV reads that they fall upon the sword and are not wounded).
9. 2:9
   • They rush about in the city.
   • They run on the wall.
   • They climb up into the houses.
   • They enter through the windows like a thief.
10. 2:10
    • The earth quakes before them.
    • The heavens tremble.
    • The sun and the moon are darkened.
    • The stars withdraw their shining.
11. 2:11
    • The LORD utters his voice before his army.
    • His camp is very great.
    • The one who carries out his word is strong.
    • The day of the LORD is great and very terrible.
    • The question is asked: who can endure it?
12. 2:12
    • The LORD declares that even now the people are to return to him with all their heart.
    • They are to return with fasting.
    • They are to return with weeping.
    • They are to return with mourning.
13. 2:13
    • They are to tear their hearts and not their garments.
    • They are to return to the LORD their God.
    • The LORD is gracious and merciful.
    • The LORD is slow to anger.
    • The LORD is abundant in steadfast love.
    • The LORD relents concerning disaster.
14. 2:14
    • It is asked who knows whether he will turn and relent.
    • It is asked whether he will leave a blessing behind him.
    • That blessing is a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD their God.
15. 2:15
    • A command is given to blow the ram's horn in Zion.
    • A command is given to consecrate a fast.
    • A command is given to call a solemn assembly.
16. 2:16
    • A command is given to gather the people.
    • A command is given to consecrate the congregation.
    • A command is given to assemble the elders.
    • A command is given to gather the children and the nursing infants.
    • The bridegroom is to come out of his room.
    • The bride is to come out of her chamber.
17. 2:17
    • The priests, the ministers of the LORD, are to weep between the porch and the altar.
    • They are to say: Spare your people, O LORD.
    • They are to say: Do not give your heritage over to reproach.
    • They are to say: do not let the nations rule over them (the phrase may also mean: do not make them a byword among the nations).
    • They are to ask why it should be said among the peoples, Where is their God?
18. 2:18
    • The LORD is jealous for his land (the Hebrew reads as a past act; the KJV renders it as future).
    • The LORD has pity on his people (the Hebrew reads as a past act; the KJV renders it as future).
19. 2:19
    • The LORD answers and says to his people that he will send them grain, new wine, and oil.
    • They will be satisfied with these.
    • The LORD will no longer make them a reproach among the nations.
20. 2:20
    • The LORD will remove the northern one far from them.
    • The LORD will drive it into a barren and desolate land.
    • Its front will go toward the eastern sea.
    • Its rear will go toward the western sea.
    • Its stench will rise.
    • Its foul smell will rise.
    • The reason given is that he has done great things.
21. 2:21
    • The land is told not to fear.
    • The land is told to be glad and rejoice.
    • The reason is that the LORD has done great things (the KJV renders this as future: will do).
22. 2:22
    • The beasts of the field are told not to be afraid.
    • The pastures of the wilderness have turned green.
    • The tree bears its fruit.
    • The fig tree and the vine yield their strength.
23. 2:23
    • The children of Zion are told to be glad.
    • They are told to rejoice in the LORD their God.
    • He has given them the early rain in due measure (the phrase is ambiguous: it may mean he has given them the teacher for righteousness).
    • He will send down rain for them, both the early rain and the latter rain.
    • This will happen in the first month (the word may instead mean: as at the first, as before).
24. 2:24
    • The threshing floors will be full of grain.
    • The vats will overflow with new wine and oil.
25. 2:25
    • The LORD will repay them for the years that the locust ate.
    • Four kinds of locust are named as the devourers.
    • The LORD calls them his great army.
    • The LORD says he sent that army among them.
26. 2:26
    • They will eat abundantly and be satisfied.
    • They will praise the name of the LORD their God.
    • The LORD has dealt wondrously with them.
    • The LORD's people will never be ashamed.
27. 2:27
    • They will know that the LORD is in the midst of Israel.
    • They will know that he is the LORD their God.
    • They will know that there is no other.
    • The LORD's people will never be ashamed.
28. 2:28
    • Afterward the LORD will pour out his spirit on all flesh.
    • Their sons and daughters will prophesy.
    • Their old men will dream dreams.
    • Their young men will see visions.
29. 2:29
    • In those days the LORD will also pour out his spirit on the male servants and the female servants.
30. 2:30
    • The LORD will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth.
    • Those wonders are blood, fire, and columns of smoke.
31. 2:31
    • The sun will be turned into darkness.
    • The moon will be turned into blood.
    • This happens before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.
32. 2:32
    • Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered.
    • On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance.
    • The LORD has said this.
    • Deliverance will be among the survivors whom the LORD calls.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

The ram's horn (Hebrew *shofar*) was the standard signal instrument: one pattern of blasts called people to assemble, another warned that an enemy was sighted. Zion is the hill in Jerusalem where the temple stood, and its name is often used for the whole city. "The day of the LORD" was already a fixed phrase in Joel's time, meaning a coming day when God steps in and settles accounts, popularly expected to fall on Israel's enemies.

2:2

The comparison with dawn is not about light. Dawn does not creep; it spills over a mountain ridge and covers the whole valley in minutes, and that is how the swarm arrives.

2:3

The garden of Eden is the lush garden described at the beginning of Genesis. The contrast is between land as green as that garden on one side of the swarm and bare desert on the other.

2:4

Through verses 4-11 the Hebrew keeps two pictures in play at once and never chooses between them: a locust swarm described as if it were an invading army, or an invading army described as if it were locusts. Ancient readers noticed that a locust's head does look strikingly like a horse's.

2:5

Stubble is the dry stalk left standing in a field after the grain has been cut. Farmers burned it off, and it goes up fast and loud, with a crackle very like the sound of a swarm feeding.

2:6

The Hebrew phrase behind "turns pale" literally means faces "gather a glow" or "gather blackness," and interpreters disagree whether it pictures faces drained white with fear or flushed dark; both readings are old.

2:7

Towns were ringed with high stone walls to keep enemies out. Getting over the wall was the hardest part of any attack, so an army that climbs it without slowing down is frightening.

2:8

The KJV "when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded" and the modern "they burst through the defenses" translate the same difficult Hebrew line. The image is of the swarm pouring straight through armed resistance without being stopped.

2:9

Windows then had no glass. They were open holes, sometimes covered with a lattice or a cloth, so anything small could pour straight in.

2:11

"Who can abide it" uses "abide" in its older sense of standing up under something and surviving it, not staying somewhere.

2:12

Fasting means deliberately going without food for a set time. In Israel it was a public sign of grief or of taking a crisis seriously, usually done by a whole community together rather than privately.

2:13

Tearing your outer garment at the neck was the ordinary public gesture of grief or horror in Israel, the way a black armband later was. The point of the line is the contrast between the visible gesture and what is not visible. The string of words that follows (gracious, merciful, slow to anger, full of steady love) is a set formula about God's character that Israelite hearers knew by heart from Exodus 34.

2:14

"Repenteth him of the evil" in the KJV does not mean God is sorry for wrongdoing. "Evil" here means harm or disaster, and "repent" means to change course, so the sense is that God holds back a threatened disaster. The grain offering and drink offering were the daily gifts of flour and wine presented at the temple; a failed harvest meant there was literally nothing left to present, so the return of crops is also the return of worship.

2:15

"Sanctify a fast" means to set the fast apart as sacred time and declare it officially, not to make it holier. The solemn assembly was a formal gathering of the whole community called for a religious emergency.

2:16

The word rendered "elders" can mean either old people in general or the community's leaders; paired here with children and nursing babies, it most likely means the aged. A newly married man was normally excused from public duties for a year; that even the bridegroom and bride must leave their wedding chamber marks how total the summons is.

2:17

The porch was the covered entrance at the front of the temple building; the altar for burnt offerings stood in the open courtyard in front of it. The strip of ground between them was where priests stood to act on the people's behalf. "Give not thine heritage to reproach" uses the legal image of land handed down in a family: Israel is God's allotted property, and letting it be shamed would be a loss to its owner.

2:18

The Hebrew verbs here can be read either as past ("the LORD became jealous") or as future ("the LORD will become jealous"), and translations split on it. This is the hinge of the book, so the choice decides whether the rescue that follows is being narrated as already granted or still promised. "Jealous" translates a word meaning fiercely possessive on behalf of something one owns and loves; it carries no suggestion of envy.

2:19

"Corn" in the KJV means grain of any kind, not maize, which did not reach Europe until after 1492. Grain, new wine and olive oil were the three staple crops of the land, and naming them together is a standard shorthand for a full harvest. "New wine" is juice freshly pressed and still fermenting.

2:20

Invading armies reached Israel from the north, since the desert blocked a direct approach from the east, so "the northern army" is the usual way of naming an invader, though locusts normally arrive from the south or east. The eastern sea is the Dead Sea, the western sea the Mediterranean; the swarm is pictured being driven off both edges of the country and left to rot. The last clause, "because he hath done great things," is ambiguous in Hebrew: it may be the invader's arrogant boasting, or the same phrase applied to the LORD as in the next verse.

2:22

Figs and grapes take years to establish, so a fig tree and a vine bearing fruit meant a household had been settled and undisturbed for a long time. They were the standard image of security, not just of food.

2:23

Rain in Israel falls in two seasons: the "former" or early rain in the autumn, which softens the ground for plowing and sowing, and the "latter" or spring rain, which swells the grain before harvest. Both were needed for a crop. The phrase translated "the early rain in right measure" is genuinely disputed, the Hebrew words can also mean "the early rain for your vindication" or "a teacher for righteousness," and ancient and modern translators divide between them. The last phrase is likewise either "in the first month" or "as at the first."

2:24

A threshing floor was a flat, hard, open patch of ground, usually on a windy rise, where grain was trampled and then tossed in the air so the wind carried off the chaff. The vats were basins cut into rock below a press, which the juice or oil ran into.

2:25

The Hebrew names four different words for the destroyers, traditionally rendered locust, cankerworm, caterpillar and palmerworm. They may be four stages in a locust's growth, four kinds of locust, or simply a piling-up of terms for effect; no one is certain which.

2:28

In Hebrew Bibles these last five verses form a separate short chapter 3, which is why references to "Joel 3" can point to two different passages. "All flesh" means all human beings. To "prophesy" is to speak on God's behalf; in this period it was the work of a recognized few, and the striking claim here is that it spreads across every group named.

2:29

"Servants" and "handmaids" are male and female slaves, the bottom of the social order, people with no standing to speak for anyone. Listing them completes the sweep begun in the previous verse, which crossed the divides of sex and age.

2:30

Blood, fire and columns of smoke are the standard sights of a city under attack, the smoke of a burning town rising in a pillar, used here as signs in the sky and on the earth.

2:31

The sun darkening and the moon looking blood-red are things ancient observers actually saw during eclipses, dust storms and heavy smoke, and such sights were widely read as announcements of a coming upheaval.

2:32

To "call on the name of the LORD" is a set phrase for appealing to God out loud by name, as one would call for help. The "remnant" is a standard term in the prophets for the portion of a people left alive after a catastrophe, out of which the nation could begin again. The verse leaves an unresolved pull between everyone who calls and the limited group whom the LORD calls, and the Hebrew does not settle it.