Introduction
Joel opens with a catastrophe. A locust plague has descended on Judah — swarm after swarm, four waves of them named in the first chapter — and they have stripped the land bare. No grain. No wine. No oil. The offerings have been cut off from the house of God because there is nothing left to offer. Fields lie ruined. Vines are withered. The animals groan. Joel takes this devastation and does not merely lament it as a natural disaster. He sees through it. The locusts are the opening note of something much larger — a shadow cast backward from the coming Day of the Lord, a day when every self-sufficient scaffold humanity has built will be stripped away just as thoroughly.
The Day of the Lord is Joel’s central theme, and he handles it with unusual range. It is a day of darkness and gloom, of clouds and thick darkness. It is a day when the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood. It is a day when the nations will be gathered into the valley of decision for judgment. And yet — astonishingly — it is also the day when God pours out His Spirit on all flesh, when sons and daughters prophesy, when old men dream dreams and young men see visions, when whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. The same day is both terror and deliverance, depending entirely on whose side of the covenant one stands on.
“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” — Joel 2:12-13
Joel’s call, woven through every chapter, is return. Not ritual repentance, not the performance of grief, but a tearing of the heart. A real turning. The God he preaches is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, one who relents from disaster — but only for the heart that actually comes back, not the one that merely goes through the motions. Peter will stand up in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, see the Spirit poured out on the gathered disciples, and declare: this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. The outpouring Joel saw from a distance had arrived. The locusts, the darkness, the valley of decision, and the outpoured Spirit are all still part of the same day — the Day of the Lord that has already begun and has not yet finished.
Chapters
Joel 1 —The Locust Army and the Day of the Lord Is Near
Joel 2 —Blow the Trumpet, Return, and the Spirit Poured Out
Joel 3 —The Valley of Decision and the Lord’s Dwelling in Zion