The Old Testament · The Prophetic Books · Book 36 of 73
Prophecy in Joel
A plague of locusts strips the land bare, and a prophet sees in it the shadow of the day of the LORD. Then the call that opens every Lent, “Rend your hearts, not your garments,” and the promise St. Peter preached on Pentecost morning: “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.”
In progress: 6 passages so far
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The book at a glance
We know almost nothing of Joel, son of Pethuel, except his words (1:1). The book names no king, and scholars date it very differently: some place it early, before the exile, but many hold it was written after the return from Babylon, perhaps around 400 B.C., since it presupposes a rebuilt Temple with priests and offerings and quotes freely from earlier prophets. The Church receives it as inspired Scripture either way. Its occasion is a real disaster, a locust swarm and drought that ruined the harvest and stopped the Temple offerings.
Joel's prophecy moves from that disaster to the day of the LORD: the locusts become an army, the army becomes an image of judgment, and judgment becomes a call to repent. When the people turn, God answers with rain, harvest, and then something greater, his own Spirit on all flesh. A note on numbering matters here more than in most books: the NABRE (following the Hebrew) has four chapters, so its 3:1–5 is 2:28–32 in many other Bibles, and its chapter 4 is their 3:1–21.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1:2–2:11 | The locust army and the day of the LORD | Fulfilled Future |
| 2:12–17 | Rend your hearts | Unfolding |
| 3:1–2 | The Spirit poured out on all flesh | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 3:3–5 | The sun darkened, the moon turned to blood | Future Mystery |
| 4:1–17 | The Valley of Jehoshaphat | Future Mystery |
| 4:18–21 | The spring from the house of the LORD | Unfolding Future |
The passages
“O! The day! For near is the day of the LORD, like destruction from the Almighty it is coming!” (1:15)
- Reading
- Joel begins with a disaster the elders have never seen: “What the cutter left, the swarming locust has devoured” (1:4). Locusts are “a nation” that has invaded the land, “powerful and past counting,” “With teeth like a lion's” (1:6). The vines and fig trees are stripped, the grain offering stops. In chapter 2 the swarm becomes an army on the march: “Their appearance is that of horses; like war horses they run” (2:4). The sky darkens, “Sun and moon are darkened” (2:10), and the prophet cries, “How great is the day of the LORD!” (2:11). A real plague becomes an image of the judgment it foreshadows.
- Fulfilled
- The locusts did come, and the land did suffer; Joel tells his hearers to report it to their children (1:3). Its first fulfillment is the event itself.
- Future
- Revelation takes up Joel's picture almost line by line at the fifth trumpet: “Locusts came out of the smoke onto the land” (Revelation 9:3); “The appearance of the locusts was like that of horses ready for battle” (9:7); “Their teeth were like lions' teeth” (9:8); and the sound of their wings is like chariots racing into battle (9:9). Their king is the angel of the abyss, Abaddon (9:11). In both books the locusts are an image of evil let loose for a limited time, and in both the purpose is that people may turn (Revelation 9:20–21). This is an image, not a forecast of insects.
- See also
- Exodus 10:12–15; The Lamb's Victory: Revelation 9.
“Yet even now—oracle of the LORD—return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.” (2:12–13)
- Reading
- The turning point of the book is a single word: “Yet.” The day of the LORD is near, and still it is not too late. Tearing one's clothes was the sign of grief; God asks for the grief itself. The reason to come back is who he is: “For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting in punishment” (2:13), the very name God proclaimed to Moses (Exodus 34:6). Then the whole people is summoned: “Blow the horn in Zion! Proclaim a fast, call an assembly!” (2:15), elders and infants, bride and groom, with the priests weeping between the porch and the altar.
- Why unfolding
- The Church reads this passage every year on Ash Wednesday, the first word of Lent. The Catechism cites it when it teaches that interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance (CCC 1430). Joel's “even now” is said to each generation, and to each person, as long as there is time.
- What follows
- When the people turn, “the LORD grew jealous for his land and took pity on his people” (2:18). Rain and harvest return: “I will repay you double what the swarming locust has eaten” (2:25), a promise many have taken to heart as God's way of restoring wasted years.
“It shall come to pass I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” (3:1)
- Reading
- In Israel the Spirit had come on a few: judges, kings, prophets. Moses had wished for more: “If only all the people of the LORD were prophets!” (Numbers 11:29). Joel promises exactly that. The Spirit will be given without distinction of age, sex or rank: “Even upon your male and female servants, in those days, I will pour out my spirit” (3:2).
- Fulfilled
- On the morning of Pentecost, when the crowd thinks the apostles are drunk, St. Peter answers that “this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16), and quotes the whole passage, adding a phrase to its opening: “‘It will come to pass in the last days,’ God says, ‘that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh’” (Acts 2:17). The Catechism teaches that Christ's Passover is fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (CCC 731), and that from that day the “last days” have begun, the time of the Church (CCC 732).
- Why unfolding
- Peter says the promise is “to you and to your children and to all those far off” (Acts 2:39). Every Baptism and Confirmation is a new Pentecost in one life.
- Note on numbering
- The NABRE's Joel 3:1–5 is Joel 2:28–32 in many other Bibles. They are the same verses; the Hebrew simply divides the chapters differently.
“The sun will darken, the moon turn blood-red, Before the day of the LORD arrives, that great and terrible day.” (3:4)
- Reading
- God will set “signs in the heavens and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke” (3:3) before the day of the LORD. This is the prophets' common language for God's great interventions in history, when the whole order of things seems shaken (compare Isaiah 13:10). But the oracle does not end in terror: “Then everyone who calls upon the name of the LORD will escape harm” (3:5). St. Peter quotes this too, and St. Paul applies it to faith in Christ, for whom “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek” (Romans 10:12–13).
- Future
- Jesus speaks of the sun darkened and the moon failing before the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:29). Revelation sees it at the sixth seal: “the sun turned as black as dark sackcloth and the whole moon became like blood” (Revelation 6:12), and people ask the mountains to hide them, “because the great day of their wrath has come and who can withstand it?” (6:17).
- Why mystery
- Some readers have tried to match these signs to particular eclipses or “blood moons” and to set dates by them. The Church does not. These are images of the end, and how literally they will appear no one knows. The promise around them is plain: whoever calls on the Lord is saved.
“I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.” (4:2)
- Reading
- When God restores Judah, he summons the nations that scattered his people and divided his land. In a bitter reversal of Isaiah and Micah, they are told, “Beat your plowshares into swords” (4:10), and the harvest image becomes judgment: “Wield the sickle” (4:13). “Crowds upon crowds in the Valley of Decision; For near is the day of the LORD in the Valley of Decision” (4:14).
- Why mystery
- The name Jehoshaphat means “the LORD judges,” and the NABRE note treats it, with the Valley of Decision, as a symbolic name for the place where the nations are judged. A later tradition placed it in the Kidron Valley beside Jerusalem, and many have wished to be buried there; but Joel gives no map and no timetable, and this page offers none. The valley is better read as the place every person and nation will one day stand before God (Matthew 25:31–32).
- Future
- Revelation uses Joel's harvest image for the end: the sickle, the ripe harvest of the earth, the vintage trodden in the winepress of God's fury (Revelation 14:14–20).
“On that day the mountains will drip new wine, and the hills flow with milk… A spring will rise from the house of the LORD, watering the Valley of Shittim.” (4:18)
- Reading
- The book that began with a land stripped bare ends with a land overflowing. The streams of Judah run with water, and a spring rises from the Temple to water even the dry valley of Shittim, by the Jordan, where Israel camped before entering the promised land. Its last line is the reason for it all: “The LORD dwells in Zion” (4:21).
- Unfolding
- Ezekiel sees the same river flowing from the Temple and bringing life wherever it goes (Ezekiel 47:1–12), and Zechariah too (Zechariah 14:8). Jesus speaks of rivers of living water flowing from within the one who believes, meaning the Spirit (John 7:38–39), and from his pierced side on the Cross flow blood and water (John 19:34), which the Fathers read as the sacraments of the Church.
- Future
- Revelation closes with “the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).
- See also
- The Temple of His Body.
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: the call to the priests to put on sackcloth (1:13–14), “the northerner” removed (2:20), “Do not fear, O land!” (2:21–24), “my people will never again be put to shame” (2:26–27), and the lion's roar of the LORD from Zion (4:16), which opens the book of Amos (
Amos 1:2).
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