A Locust Hoard and the Day of the Lord

Joel 1-2

            Joel’s prophecy focuses on the devastation caused by a locust hoard. If 1: 4 is to be taken literally, it might have even been a succession of locust hoards. Some suggest a drought also afflicted Israel.

            Joel uses these natural disasters as an opportunity to call Israel to repentance. They are a foreshadowing of the day of the Lord, a day of destruction for Israel (1:15), “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness” (2:2). Notice in 2:4-9 how Joel likens them to soldiers and how in 2:20 he refers to the locusts as “the northern horde.” Both Assyria and Babylon, while technically northeast and due east respectively, would have invaded from the north.

            This notion that disasters in the present are foreshadowings of God’s end-time judgment is important. Sometimes we want to know what present evil has occurred to occasion our troubles, but Joel offers an alternative explanation: they are reminders that the Lord will eventually judge a fallen world.

            Significantly, Joel prophesies that the Lord’s judgment is not His final word. He has a new age in store (2:28-32), a passage Peter quotes in connection to Pentecost (Acts). Peter’s appropriation of Joel 2 reminds us Christians that we already live in that new age through faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit.