Old Testament · Minor Prophets
Locusts and the Day of the LORD, rend your hearts, and the Spirit poured on all flesh.
A locust plague so total that it becomes a lens for everything else. Joel describes stripped fields and empty granaries in language that slides, without warning, into the day of the LORD, and the reader is never quite sure where the insects end and the armies begin, which is the intended effect. The book is short, undated, and unusually hard to place historically. Its most famous passage is the promise that God will pour out his Spirit on all flesh, on sons and daughters, old and young, servants included, which Peter quotes on the day of Pentecost as the explanation for what has just happened. The line about beating ploughshares into swords is here too, inverted from Isaiah's version, and pointed the other way.
If you remember one thing
Locusts eat a year's food in a day, and Joel uses it to say the Day of the LORD will arrive that fast. Then he promises the Spirit on all flesh, which Peter quotes at Pentecost.
“Tear your heart, and not your garments.”
Joel 2:13
Joel 3:10
Beat your ploughshares into swords, the exact reverse of Isaiah and Micah. The prophets are not contradicting each other so much as describing different moments.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Reading a devastating locust plague as a foreshadow of the Day of the LORD, Joel called Judah to rend their hearts and return. His promise that God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh is the very text Peter quotes at Pentecost.
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