The Day of Alarm Becomes a Promise of Presence

The trumpet is the shofar, a ram’s horn, and the “alarm” is the teru’ah, the blast Numbers 10:9 prescribes when an enemy invades. It was normally blown from a city wall to warn of attack; here it sounds from the temple mount itself, God’s own watchtower.

The four words of darkness are the Sinai vocabulary of Deuteronomy 4:11, and Zephaniah 1:15 repeats them for the same day. “As the morning spread upon the mountains” pictures the swarm coming over the ridges like first light, though some read the word as blackness instead of dawn.

Isaiah 51:3 and Ezekiel 36:35 promise a desolate land turned into Eden; Joel runs the promise backwards, Eden turned into desolation. Travellers who have seen a locust swarm pass describe ground that looks scorched, which is why fire goes before and behind.

A locust’s head is shaped remarkably like a horse’s, and several languages still name the insect for it: the Italian cavalletta means little horse. Revelation 9:7 draws on this verse for its own locusts “like unto horses prepared unto battle”.

A large swarm is audible from a distance, a roar of wings and a crackle of jaws in dry stalks, which is the sound of stubble catching fire. Revelation 9:9 borrows it: “the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle”.

“Gather blackness” renders a word of uncertain meaning; it is often taken as growing pale, the blood draining from the face. Nahum 2:10 uses the identical phrase for Nineveh’s terror, so it was a fixed expression for faces changed by dread.

Locusts do climb walls and enter houses. The great plague that struck Jerusalem in 1915, described by John Whiting in National Geographic, recorded them marching up walls and into homes without changing course. The KJV’s “break their ranks” renders a verb meaning to swerve or twist aside.

“Thrust” means jostle: in the press of a swarm no insect crowds another. The weapon may be a sword or a javelin; either way, cutting down a few does nothing to a mass of millions, and the advance does not break off.

Windows had no glass, only lattice openings, and a thief came in through them rather than by the door. Jeremiah 9:21 has death climbing in at the windows the same way. The movement runs from city to wall to rooftop to room: nowhere left to shut out.

A dense swarm can blot out the sun in plain fact; the eighth plague “covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened” (Exodus 10:15). The quaking earth and trembling heavens belong to the language of God’s coming at Sinai and in Judges 5:4.

“His camp” is the war camp of a general: the swarm is God’s mustered host, as in Isaiah 13:4, “the LORD of hosts mustereth the host of the battle”. The closing question returns in Malachi 3:2, “who may abide the day of his coming?”

“Saith the LORD”, the formal oracle signature, appears only here in Joel, marking the turn as God’s own word. “Even to me” is literally “all the way to me”, the phrase of Amos’s refrain, “yet have ye not returned unto me” (Amos 4:6–11).

The five attributes are God’s self-description at Sinai (Exodus 34:6), with one clause added, “repenteth him of the evil”. Jonah 4:2 quotes the same combination word for word, as a complaint. Tearing garments was the ordinary sign of grief, as when Jacob mourned Joseph (Genesis 37:34).

The king of Nineveh uses the same words in Jonah 3:9, “Who can tell if God will turn and repent”, and David said the same over his dying child (2 Samuel 12:22). The locusts left nothing behind them; the hope is that God, passing by, will leave a blessing.

Numbers 10:2–10 gives the silver trumpets two uses, to raise the alarm for war and to call the assembly together. Verse 1 blew the first; this verse blows the second. The rest repeats the command of 1:14 word for word, now issued with the trumpet behind it.

A new husband was excused from war for a year to make his wife glad (Deuteronomy 24:5); he is not excused from this. Even nursing infants are brought. The bride’s “closet” is her bridal chamber, and the wedding week itself is interrupted.

The space between the temple porch and the great altar was the priests’ own ground, the place Ezekiel 8:16 saw defiled by sun worshippers. “Where is their God?” is the taunt the Psalms dread (Psalm 79:10; 115:2). The plea appeals to God’s reputation, not the people’s merit.

In Hebrew the verbs are past tense: “then the LORD was jealous for his land, and pitied his people”. The prayer has been heard, and the book turns on this line. Jealousy here is zeal, the protective passion of a husband for his wife.

God answers the priests in their own words: they asked that his heritage not be given to “reproach” among “the heathen” (verse 17), and he promises that very thing. “Satisfied” returns in verse 26, framing the whole promise of restored food.

Locusts usually reached Judah from the south or east, which is one reason “northern” has pushed readers toward a human invader, the enemy “out of the north” of Jeremiah 1:14. The east sea is the Dead Sea, the utmost sea the Mediterranean. Rotting swarms washed ashore were known for their stench.

The ground itself, adamah, is spoken to as a person; in 1:10 it was mourning. The line echoes Psalm 126:3, “The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad”, with gladness and great things in the same pairing.

The comfort follows the lament of chapter 1 in order: the beasts who groaned (1:18), “the pastures of the wilderness” in the same words as 1:19–20, and the fig and vine stripped in 1:7. “Strength” is chayil, wealth or full yield.

The former rain came in autumn, softening the ground for sowing; the latter rain came in spring, filling out the ears before harvest. Deuteronomy 11:14 promised both. “In the first month” may be read “as before”, the rains coming as they always used to.

“Fats” is the 1611 spelling of vats, the basins cut into rock below a wine or olive press to catch what ran down. Full threshing floors answer the empty barns of 1:17, and overflowing vats answer the dried-up wine and failing oil of 1:10.

“Years” is plural: the plague ran more than one season, or its damage did. The four insects of 1:4 return in a different order. God calls them “my great army which I sent”, taking ownership of the disaster he now undoes.

“Dealt wondrously” is the verb of the exodus wonders, “my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof” (Exodus 3:20). “My people shall never be ashamed” is said here and again at the end of the next verse, a refrain that closes the promise twice.

“Ye shall know that I am the LORD” is the purpose God gave for the exodus itself (Exodus 6:7). “None else” is the language of Isaiah 45:5–6. Zephaniah 3:15–17 uses the same phrase, “the LORD… is in the midst of thee”, for the restored Jerusalem.

Hebrew Bibles start a new chapter here. Moses had wished it: “would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them” (Numbers 11:29). Peter quotes these verses at Pentecost (Acts 2:17–21), reading “afterward” as “in the last days”.

Servants and handmaids are slaves, male and female, the lowest rank in any household. The Greek version, followed by Peter in Acts 2:18, reads “my servants” and “my handmaids”, so those owned by others are claimed as God’s own.

“Pillars of smoke” are columns shaped like palm trunks, a rare word found also in Song of Solomon 3:6. Blood and fire recall Egypt’s water turned to blood and fire running along the ground with the hail (Exodus 7:20; 9:23–24). The exodus signs return on a cosmic scale.

A total eclipse turns the moon a dull copper red, which may lie behind the image. Jesus uses the darkened sun (Matthew 24:29), and Revelation 6:12 the blood moon. Malachi 4:5 has the same Hebrew for “the great and the terrible day”, translated there as “dreadful”.

“As the LORD hath said” marks a quotation: Obadiah 17 reads “upon mount Zion shall be deliverance”, the same words. Paul uses the first clause in Romans 10:13 to make the promise cover Jew and Greek alike. The “remnant” are survivors, those who got away.