Joel 1: a plague of locusts - when all is stripped away
Joel 1 - read here.
The book of Joel, named after its writer, was probably written in the 'post-exilic' period. God's people had been exiled from the promised land by the Babylonians (as described in the later parts of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles), but then had been permitted to return and rebuild the temple and city walls of Jerusalem (see Ezra and Nehemiah). But although they had returned, at the point Joel was writing, disaster had befallen - a locust plague.
Judging by the descriptions Joel gives and background information from commentaries, I'd imagine that many of us will never have seen anything like the destruction the locusts brought. I certainly haven't. And the poetic lines of verse 4 serve to illustrate the impact (the use of four 'rounds' is common in the Bible to signify total destruction):
What the cutting locust left,the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten.
(Joel 1:4)
And the impact is universal - there are all sorts of people mentioned in the passage - from 'drunkards', 'drinkers of wine', to 'tillers' and 'vine dressers' (both agricultural occupations), and priests and ministers of God to children. Even the ground itself mourns (Joel 1:10).
And what is the response of the people? At first, in verse 5, Joel is urging people to wake up! Presumably there will be a slight lag on the stocks of wine - maybe this event occurs just before the harvest. For those not paying attention, they don't realise that this will mean there will be no new wine that year. When we spend too long focussing on indulging ourselves, we take everything for granted. We forget that everything can vanish in an instant - possibly we don't even believe it. That would never happen to me, we think. Even as I write this I have a lot of trouble imagining all my food, shelter and security being stripped away.
But when the realisation has struck, the overwhelming response is lamentation and sadness - even compared to a woman losing her fiancé before her wedding (Joel 1:8). But alongside this there is a sense of shame. The following struck me:
Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil;wail, O vine dressers,
for the wheat and the barley,
because the harvest of the field has perished. (Joel 1:11)
There is a feeling of everything being stripped away - including everything we think we can hold onto. The idea of nakedness to signify shame and sin is a recurring one in the Old Testament and its almost as if we get an echo of that here. Here it is like everything that we think makes us worthy - in this case the produce of the fields of which the farmers would feel proud, and from which they could feed their families and have security - is stripped away. The farmers would feel worthless, and in a financial sense, be worthless/wealthless.
But for Joel, the real stinger is that the people are no longer able to bring oil and drink offerings to the temple as part of their daily worship due to the lack of produce (Joel 1:9,13). The other 'covering' - the thing that signified to the people the covering over of their sins and gave them a relationship with God, was also gone. Of course, it was not God that was gone but merely the religious practices. But even the things we do which we think make us right with God, give us worth and security, can go in an instant.
And when all is stripped away, we realise how destitute we really are. This is why Joel calls:
Consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders
and all the inhabitants of the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
and cry out to the Lord.
(Joel 1:14)
The people realise at this point that it is only God who can save them. All the coverings are but a veneer of respectability and worth. The real worth comes from God - that is something that is eternal and does not fail. This passage does not deny the importance of food and drink and shelter - indeed it paints a grim picture without them. But they can fail, and they will fail if we depend on them for our spiritual worth. We need God.
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