Joel 1:1-12
What the palmerworm left
Four waves named in one verse, each eating what the last one left. The vine is dried up, the fig tree languishes, and joy is withered away from the sons of men.
People of the Bible
Joel
Preached a sermon about locusts that turned into the text Peter used on the day the church began.
Joel gives no dates and almost no biography. What he has is an emergency: a plague of locusts in four waves has stripped the land, the grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD because there is nothing left to offer, and the priests are told to lie all night in sackcloth. He calls a fast and a solemn assembly, gathers the elders, the children and the nursing infants, and then says the thing the book is remembered for: rend your heart and not your garments.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Joel
- 01
- 02
Joel 1:13-20
Sanctify a fast
The priests are told to gird themselves and lament, because the offering is cut off from the house of their God. Even the beasts groan, and the cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture.
- 03
Joel 2:12-17
Rend your heart
Turn with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning, and rend your heart and not your garments, for he is gracious and merciful, and repents him of the evil.
- 04
Joel 2:28-32
I will pour out my spirit
Upon all flesh. Sons and daughters prophesying, old men dreaming, young men seeing visions, and on the servants and the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.
Why it matters
Joel takes a agricultural disaster and reads it as a summons, and then widens without warning. The promise of restored years that the locust has eaten is followed immediately by a pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh, sons and daughters, old men and young men, servants and handmaids. Peter stands up in Jerusalem at nine in the morning and says this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, and the whole of Acts follows from it.
9 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
