Book of Joel

Click here for the previous book, Hosea.

CHAPTER 1

So far, I’ve hardly read any Bible books less than 10 chapters long.  There was Lamentations, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Baruch – and that’s about it.  But from here on out, there is just one book left with double-digit chapters (Zechariah). 

But this is Joel.  He definitely has a memorable style: apocalyptic.  He is either living through or prophesizing of a great famine, I can’t quite tell.  If I had to guess, I’d say he’s living through the direst famine in memory, and he predicts even worse things to come.

He’s a very nature-centric prophet as a result as he focuses on the devastated grain, the dead vines, and all the barren fields. You could call him a green prophet for his focus on nature, but there is no greenery in his nature. 

He grabs people’s attention right away – and comes off at least a little bit like a jerk when he says, “Listen to this, you elders!  Pay attention, all who dwell in the land!”  Yeah, it’s a little arrogant-young-punk-esque.  That impression isn’t helped by other lines like, “Wake up, you drunkards, and weep, wail, all you wine drinkers.”  That said, I get a kick out of a prophet who bellows out, “Wake up, you drunkards!”

However, he’s less a brash youth and more a demoralized prophet seeing gloom all around him.  He tells people, “Wail like a young woman dressed in sackcloth” and “Be appalled, you farmers!” and “Proclaim a holy fast! Call an assembly!” Heck, I started flashing to The Simpsons episode where Lisa steals all the teacher’s guides and one panic stricken teacher says “Declare a snow day!”

Dark times, man.  Dark times.

CHAPTER 2

We get more doom talk here, as the Day of the Lord approaches.  If that day comes, be afraid everyone, for: “How great is the day of the Lord!  Utterly terrifying!  Who can survive it?”  Truly, this is a literal apocalypse Joel is foreseeing.

But, believe it or not, it’s not all gloom.  Now that he has your attention by making you pee your pants in fear, he offers up a solution: pray to God.  Return to God and he’ll be kind to you, for he is slow to anger and full of love.  So the doom people are facing is because, well, because they’ve earned it through misdeeds.  This is what makes the prophets so notable: the insistence on personal morality as central to the faith.  This is the ultimate call of ethical behavior  - do it or God will kill you.

CHAPTER 3

This is a very short chapter – just five verses – but serves as a capstone to all that’s come before.  When the day of the Lord comes, “The sun will darken, the moon turn blood-red.”  It sounds horrible, but there is an escape hatch: “Before the day of the Lord arrives, that great and terrible day, then everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will escape harm.” 

A few things about that last bit.  First, it really presages what the Book of Revelations in the New Testament will say.  God will come and all will be doomed, but the good people will be saved.  Second, on a literary level, I love the inclusion of “that great and terrible day.”  It pauses to amplify the effect of what came before and makes you wait for the good news.  It increases tension and builds suspense.  Nice job.

CHAPTER 4

Now, after all this apocalyptic talk, we get Judgment Day itself.  God will sit and judge.  Man, this really is a lot like how the New Testament ends.  He’ll gather the nations down in the Valley of Jehoshaphat to judge them.  Hey – I know that place!  That’s the place of the Bible’s great forgotten miracle!  In Chapter 20 of Chronicles II, foreign nations are attacking Israel.  Jehoshaphat brings all the people before this mountain pass and they all pray to God to save them.  So God kills all the foreign invaders. It’s a helluva miracle, but it’s in Chronicles II so no one pays it any attention because that would involve reading Chronicles II – and who wants to do that?

Actually, this chapter is rather nasty.  So far it’s been gloomy, sure, but the gloominess was in the service of morality.  Joel wants to encourage everyone to follow God’s path to avoid a bad fate.  That’s nice.  Here?  Well, now he says we should kill a bunch of other people.  Yeah, that’s nasty.

Joel says God will judge foreign nations and find them wanting.  So let’s have a Hebrew kill-fest upon them!  Joel even reverses one of the famous parts of Isaiah (Chapter 2, verse 4) saying, “Beat your plowshares into swords.”  This is a chapter that is open and avowedly militaristic.

As such, I can only assume this chapter is well received by the current right-wing political groups in Israel who call for increased military belligerence.  In fact, just before the plowshares-into-swords comment, Joel flatly declares, “Proclaim a holy war!”  Oh.  Wonderful.  I do believe that’s the first time I’ve seen the phrase “holy war” the Bible, but maybe it happened earlier. 

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Joel is fascinating and memorable, but not always in a good way.  He is a key figure in proclaiming an apocalyptic future.  His gloom-and-doom view serves a bigger cause, though: morality.  He wants the Hebrew to behavior in a proper, moral manner – or else God will kill them.

But then he moves from looking at the Hebrew to their neighbors and his gloom becomes a mean-spirited call for mass murder.  He has a blinkered view of morality.  It’s how you treat God and I suppose your fellow Hebrew.  The rest of humanity?  Fuck them.  

Click here for the next book - Amos.