BEMA 60: Joel — Locusts

Transcription Status

18 Dec 22 — Initial public release

23 Sep 22 — Transcript approved for release

Joel — Locusts

Brent Billings: This is The BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we hear the words of the Prophet Joel, speaking to God’s people about the hope that exists even in the midst of utter destruction.

Marty Solomon: Yes. It’s a short little prophet, three chapters. We’re all about the Text here, so we’re going to do what we’ve been doing the last couple of prophets, short prophets, we’re going to read it. We are going to read the whole thing. Let’s just dive in, because the image that we’re going to talk about with Joel, we’ve been working through Babylonian prophets—weeping prophet Jeremiah, a little chiasm of lament and hope in the alphabetic acrostic of the book what, Brent?

Brent: Lamentations.

Marty: Lamentations. We had a watchtower as the image for who?

Brent: Habakkuk.

Marty: Habakkuk. Last week, we talked about the image of Petra for the prophet…?

Brent: Obadiah.

Marty: Obadiah. And today, Joel. The image is going to strike us right off the bat. Go ahead and start reading there, Brent.

Brent: The word of the Lord that came to Joel, son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders. Listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left, the great locusts have eaten. What the great locusts have left, the young locusts have eaten. What the young locusts have left, other locusts have eaten. So, locusts, I guess.

Marty: [laughs]

Brent: Wake up, you drunkards, and weep. Wail, all you drinkers of wine. Wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number. It has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away leaving their branches white. Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth. Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord. The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up, the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the olive oil fails. Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers. Grieve for the wheat and the barley because the harvest of the field is destroyed. The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered. The pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree, all the trees of the field are dried up. Surely the people’s joy is withered away.

Marty: Man, it just strikes me every now and then when we’re going through the prophets, how much I love the prophets, and how sick that love of the prophets is. [chuckles] Because I just love the poetry and the vivid images and its ability to communicate principles—but man, it is dark. As we wander through all the prophets, it’s just so much despair and darkness, but that is what the people of God are going through.

You’re right, Brent, we have the image just right off the bat. It’s not easy to miss. Our image is going to be exactly what you said, which is locusts, ends up being our image. Joel starts right off the bat by introducing us to the image that will serve as the plot for his prophecy. As we pointed out time and time again, many of these prophetic voices have a picture or an image that they like to use to communicate their message. Joel introduces us to the plot of God’s people by using the metaphor of a locust plague.

I am no scientist or biologist, I’m not going to pretend to be, but I have been told that as the winds in that region of the Middle East change and shift, that if everything aligns at the right time of year and the wind shift in the right direction, you get these massive locust plagues that get blown off of, if I understand it correctly, blown off the Mediterranean Sea. It’s odd, it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it can be, not just inconvenient, but unbelievably destructive.

I can remember even here in the states, it wasn’t too long ago, we actually had a cricket infestation go through the Southern Pacific Northwest, so much so that they actually shut down a stretch to the freeway because there were so many crickets, locust-type critters, that the roads were actually slick from all the crushed cricket guts. Just astounding how many of these things that there can be in the Middle East.

In fact, I encourage you—we didn’t put anything in the show notes—but just do a Google image search for locust plague. In fact, I typed in locust plague in the Middle East, you get all kinds of incredible YouTube videos, photos, you can look at images. It’s astounding the magnitude when these plagues come through an area, the amount of locusts we’re talking about.

To truly appreciate what Joel is doing here, you have to have one of those pictures or one of those images or videos, so that when Joel says, essentially, “Look around you, people of God, Babylon has come in and it was like a locust plague.” The sheer number of Babylonians would give you that image, but then even after Babylon has left, the locusts are now gone but there’s nothing left. They’ve eaten all of our fields, all of our produce, it’s all gone. This becomes his metaphor to communicate God’s message.

From here, Joel is going to turn his attention into an invitation to repent. It’s going to set the stage for Judah’s demise, but then Joel invites the people to respond with an appropriate amount of introspection and repentance. It’s pretty straightforward and, really, it’s not a whole lot for me to add as far as commentary, so just go ahead and keep reading here. Here is the invitation to repent.

Brent: Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn. Wail, you who minister before the altar. Come spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God, for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God. Declare a holy fast. Call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. Alas for that day. For the day of the Lord is near. It will come like destruction from the almighty. Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? The seeds are shriveled beneath the clods… Oh, clods of dirt.

Marty: Yes, indeed.

Brent: The storehouses are in ruins, the granaries have been broken down, for the grain has dried up. How the cattle moan. The herds mill about because they have no pasture, even the flocks of sheep are suffering. To you, Lord, I call, for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness, and flames have burned up all the trees of the field. Even the wild animals pant for you. The streams of water had dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness. Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains, a large and mighty army comes, such as never was in the ancient times, nor ever will be in ages to come.

Marty: There was the invitation from Joel for the people to notice what’s happened and repent. Now he’s about ready to dive back into the metaphor of the locust plague, and whether that return to the metaphor is simply a literary tool of poetry, whether the author, whether Joel is trying to imply that maybe the people didn’t respond to that invitation to repent he thought they should, for whatever reason, Joel returns to this image of the locust plague to continue to make a point about God’s discipline among his people.

The difference is that this time when he returns to the metaphor, now that he’s taken the metaphor of the locust and talked about Babylon, and there, and the people of God’s failure, you now don’t know whether or not he’s talking about locust plague or Babylonian army. I think that’s on purpose.

Go ahead and dive back into where you left off there, Brent.

Brent: Before them, fire devours, behind them, a flame blazes. Before them, the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste, nothing escapes them. They have the appearance of horses, they gallop along like cavalry. With a noise like that of chariots, they leap over the mountaintops, like a crackling fire consuming stubble, like a mighty army drawn up for battle. At the sight of them, nations are in anguish. Every face turns pale. They charge like warriors, they scale walls like soldiers. They all marched in line, not swerving from their course. They do not jostle each other. Each marches straight ahead. They plunge through defenses without breaking ranks. They rush upon the city. They run along the wall. They climb into the houses, like thieves, they enter through the windows. Before them, the earth shakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The Lord thunders at the head of his army, His forces are beyond number, and mighty is the army that obeys His command. The day of the Lord is great. It is dreadful. Who can endure it?

Marty: This image continues, and you can hear this blending of Babylonians. Obviously, he’s talking about the Babylonians, but it’s also got this air of locusts—they climb along the walls, they’re crawling into your windows—and it applies to both of these images. Now, he’s going to go from this metaphor back into, again, back into a plea and an invitation to repent.

Again, the prophet is going to plead with his people to take what they can from this horrible situation. If they would consider their ways and consider their past actions, what would they find? If they would humble themselves, would it change their perspective? Go ahead and pick up where you left off there, Brent.

Brent: Even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart with fasting and weeping and mourning, rend your heart and not your garments.

Marty I’m going to jump in here, that “Rend your heart, not your garments”—something that we’re not really used to in our culture. We’ve heard about it before. The rending of garments was an ancient Eastern method of showing your grief, releasing the grief that you were experiencing. People in this biblical culture would grab their garment from the collar and just tear it and rip it from top to bottom, and it was this huge. I remember my teacher, Ray, sharing a story once. He was leading a trip years and years ago, and he had this guide that he had used for a long time, and this guide was on a trip with him. They were in the middle of a site, and he collapsed with a heart attack and passed away. There was nothing they could do. They couldn’t get anybody there to help him fast enough.

Ray, as the trip leader, knew he had to talk to this man’s wife. He shows up at her house. This was the day before cell phones. He shows up at her house at 2:00 in the morning, and they come to the door, and she knows—2:00 in the morning—here’s Ray standing at the door. She knows that it’s her husband, and she knows almost immediately that he’s gone. She faints at the doorstep. The son, who if I remember the story correctly, is in his 20s and a doctor, he is reviving his mother, and as soon as he makes sure his mother is okay and he’s able to let the force of the news hit him, he’s in a sleeping gown like a robe that goes from shoulders down to his knees, a set of pajamas, he grabs his gown and he rips it. Ray says, he’ll never forget the sound of that garment rending from top to bottom, and ripping in two. It’s an expression of grief.

By the way, as a PS, Ray would say, when the curtain of the temple is torn in the Gospels when Jesus dies, you have that same idea. He says a Jewish reader would hear this as God the father rending His garments at the death of His son. They say that the curtain was four to six inches thick—if you want to imagine what that sounded like as God rent His garment.

Brent: Oh, man.

Marty: That had to have been a thing, nevertheless.

Brent: To be there for that moment.

Marty: Would’ve been stunning on a whole lot of levels.

Brent: So… “Rend your heart, not your garments.”

Marty: Rend your heart. Exactly. God’s saying, “You can have grief that’s going to rend your garment. What I really am asking you to do is actually tear your heart in two, care about what’s going on. Be changed, be moved, be compelled to be different, rend your heart.” That’s the image there that they’re using. Go ahead and pick up there and keep going.

Brent: Rend your hearts and not your garments, return to the Lord your God for He’s gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relentless from sending calamity. Who knows, He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing. Grain offering and drink offerings for the Lord your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly, gather the people, consecrate the assembly, bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast, let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Let the priest who ministers before the Lord weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”

Marty: What’s going to happen is now after the second plea, there was the image and there was the call to repent, and then we jumped back into the metaphor back into the image, and then there was the plea to repent. Now, Joel is going to shift towards hope in a pretty big way, and the situation with God’s people is definitely bad. It’s actually horrible. It’s as bad as one could imagine, really—and the conquest of Babylon was not light or trivial or a fun time by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s bad, but it’s far from hopeless. God has not left their side. God is not planning on deserting them in their future. In fact, God is at work right here in their midst of this horrible metaphor of a locust plague. There’s something redemptive to be found in the destruction that the Babylonians have left behind, and Joel insists on this throughout the rest of the entire book.

Go ahead and pick up where you left off.

Brent: Then the Lord was jealous for His land and took pity on His people. The Lord replied to them, “I am sending you grain, new wine, and olive oil enough to satisfy you fully. Never again will I make you an object of scorn to the nations. I will drive the northern horde far from you, pushing it into a parched and barren land. Its eastern ranks will drown in the Dead Sea, and its western ranks, in the Mediterranean Sea, and its stench will go up. Its smell will rise. Surely he has done great things. Do not be afraid, Land of Judah. Be glad and rejoice. Surely the Lord has done great things.

Do not be afraid, you wild animals, for the pastures and the wilderness are becoming green, the trees are bearing their fruit, the fig tree and the vine yield, their riches. Be glad, people of Zion. Rejoice in the Lord your God for He has given you the autumn rains because He is faithful. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring reigns as before. The threshing floors will be filled with grain. The vats will overflow with new wine and oil. I will repay you for the years the locust have eaten, the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm. My great army that I sent among you.

You will have plenty to eat until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God who has worked wonders for you. Never again will my people be shamed. Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other. Never again, will my people be shamed. Afterward, I’ll pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved, for Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, there will be deliverance as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.”

Marty: Joel makes a definite shift towards a whole lot of hope, and this really poetic apocalyptic call, “apocalyptic” might be the wrong word to use there, but this thinking forward to a great day when everything’s going to be made right, and God says, “I’m going to restore all your fortunes. I’m going to pay you back for what the locusts have eaten.” Then this beautiful poetic image that’s going to show up in the New Testament in a really big way. Kudos, anybody who can tell me where Joel said I’m going to pour out my spirit, on how many people, Brent?

Brent: On all people.

Marty: On all people.

Brent: Men and women.

Marty: Oh, well, I thought just men. I thought men were the ones that lead and they get the spirit poured out on them.

Brent: I guess we’ll see about that.

Marty: Well, according not to Joel. Even centuries before, Joel says on all people, sons, and daughters, men and women, adults and children, young men, old men, women included. He’s pointing forward to this great and glorious day when everything’s going to be made right, and all things will be as it should be. Now, you can definitely feel it already, but we’ve got a whole other chapter of this. The next chapter’s not going to turn south. It’s going to continue to be a declaration and explanation of hope.

Up to this point, Brent, what kind of hope have we seen in most of the prophets? It’s there.

Brent: Just a small amount.

Marty: We’ve called it a dusting or a sprinkling of hope. A little nugget dropped in there. Now the tone of the prophets, we’re going to notice a shift in the tone—the prophets, they’re going to start to move away from all of this condemnation and despair, and they’re going to start moving towards hope. Oftentimes in class when we talk about the prophets, we’re going to talk about warning, woes, and hope. We have now navigated the first two, the pre-Assyrian period where God’s really sending a bunch of warning, even into the Assyrian period, and then the Assyrian and Babylonian period where God is basically describing the woes that are befalling everyone.

Now that everyone has experienced the woes, and we start to head into the exilic period, next, you feel this shift of the prophet saying, “All right, God’s people, you have been disciplined, you have experienced the rough go that is this prophetic period, but hang in there because God’s going to put it back together,” and the whole voice is going to shift. Very much like I would experience as a father to my children in their discipline stages. There’s a period where I just put an end to the chaos, and there’s a period where I dole out their punishment, and a period where they get into their punishment.

Then there’s a period where, all right now, it’s just about, “Okay, you’ve experienced your punishment and now you need to get to the end of your—you’ve been grounded for a week. The first couple of days were hard, and now I’m here to get you through the rest of the week because it’s going to be okay and we’re going to make it.” You see that same kind of tone with God.

One more chapter. Let’s go ahead and finish out the prophet and go from there.

Brent: “In those days and at that time when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.”

Marty: Yes, Jehoshaphat.

Brent: “There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land. They cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes. They sold girls for wine to drink. Now what have you against me, Tyre and Sidon and all you regions of Philistia? Are you repaying me for something I have done? If you are paying me back, I will swiftly and speedily return on your own heads what you have done. For you took my silver and my gold and carried off my finest treasures to your temples. You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, that you might send them far from their homeland. See, I am going to rouse them out of the places to which you sold them, and I will return on your own heads what you have done. I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away.” The Lord has spoken.

Sabeans, who are those people?

Marty: Man, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.

Brent: [chuckles]

Marty: I don’t know. I read that and went, “Gosh dang, this doesn’t ring a bell.” I’ll do some study there…

Brent: Okay, well maybe we’ll leave it up to listeners to—

Marty: There you go.

Brent: —write in and tell us what we need to know.

Marty: There you go. Look forward to the email.

Brent: A nation far away anyway.

Proclaim this among the nations, prepare for war, rouse the warriors, let all the fighting men draw near and attack. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, “I am strong.” Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, Lord. Let the nations be roused, let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side. Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow, so great is their wickedness.

Multitudes, multitude in the valley of decision. For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars will no longer shine. The Lord will roar from Zion, and thunder from Jerusalem. The earth and the heavens will tremble, but the Lord will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.

Then you will know that I, the Lord your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy. Never again will foreigners invade her. In that day, the mountains will drip new wine, and the hills will flow with milk. All the ravines of Judah will run with water. A fountain will flow out of the Lord’s house and will water the valley of acacias.

Marty: All right, acacias. Interesting. Been there before. We know what those are, session one.

Brent: But Egypt will be desolate, Edom, a desert waste, because of violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they shed innocent blood. Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem, through all generations. Shall I leave their innocent blood unavenged? No, I will not. The Lord dwells in Zion.

Marty: This is how the message of the prophet generally functions in different ways. The problem in the plea to repent is all couched in a metaphor in an image to powerful and poetically communicate the plot of God’s people. The crescendo into a glorious future if they will weather the storm of God’s discipline well, if they will walk forward humbly and overcome, resisting the urge to give up on the other side, they will find the Lord’s redemptive plan still at work among them and in the world. The prophecy of Joel’s book ended with the symbol of new wine. At the beginning of the work, Joel speaks of a people who were about to enjoy the fresh taste of new wine, only to have it snatched from their lips at the last moment.

Joel starts with that. I don’t know—you’re not a wine connoisseur, are you, Brent?

Brent: Certainly not a connoisseur. I’m not even a wine drinker really.

Marty: If you’re into wine, I’m sure some of my listeners are. If you’re of age, you have this—those who really appreciate that wine—you put it in the glass, you do the little swirl, you get it all moved in the oxygen in the glass. You get the nose. You’ve got to get the nose of the wine. You’re smelling what kind of things you can pick up on the nose, and then you’re going to put it in your mouth and swish it around, but as they get it up to their mouth, all of a sudden it’s snatched from their grasps. This is what happened to their futures. At the end of the prophecy, it’s bookended, the prophecy will end with a vision of new wine dripping from the mountains. That’s going to show up in the New Testament.

New wine dripping from the mountains in a river flowing from the temple and watering even the desert acacias. Should we go back and remember our lesson on the acacias, that’s going to speak a little bit. We find ourselves confronted yet again with images that began our journey out of Egypt so long ago, and that is what the woes of the prophets and the discipline of God is asking us to do. Will we remember our own story?

That is the prophecy of Joel, Brent, and the Babylonian prophets.

Brent: Sounds great.

Marty: We are heading to the period of the exilic prophets next.

Brent: Sounds like a fun time.

Marty: Should be.

Brent: Alright, well, if you live on the Palouse, please join us for our discussion groups in Moscow on Tuesday or Pullman on Wednesday. You can get a hold of Marty on Twitter at @martysolomon. You can find me at @eibcb. You can find more details about the show at bemadiscipleship.com. Thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast, and we’ll talk to you again soon.