That it was the lurid clouds of Apocalypse, which thus hemmed in our prophet’s view, is clear from the next verses. They bring the terrible manifestations of God’s wrath in nature very closely upon the lavish outpouring of the Spirit: _the sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood, the great and terrible Day of the Lord_. Apocalypse must always paralyse the missionary energies of religion. Who can think of converting the world, when the world is about to be convulsed? There is only time for a remnant to be saved.
But when we get rid of Apocalypse, as the Book of Jonah does, then we have time and space opened up again, and the essential forces of such a prophecy of the Spirit as Joel has given us burst their national and temporary confines, and are seen to be applicable to all mankind.
[1221] A.V., adhering to the Massoretic text, in which the verbs are pointed for the past, has evidently understood them as instances of the prophetic perfect. But “this is grammatically indefensible”: Driver, _in loco_; see his _Heb. Tenses_, § 82, _Obs._ Calvin and others, who take the verbs of ver. 18 as future, accept those of the next verse as past and with it begin the narrative. But if God’s answer to His people’s prayer be in the past, so must His jealousy and pity. All these verbs are in the same sequence of time. Merx proposes to change the vowel-points of the verbs and turn them into futures. But see above, p. 395. Ver. 21 shows that Jehovah’s action is past, and Nowack points out the very unusual character of the construction that would follow from Merx’s emendation. Ewald, Hitzig, Kuenen, Robertson Smith, Davidson, Robertson, Steiner, Wellhausen, Driver, Nowack, etc., all take the verbs in the past.
[1222] This is scarcely a name for the locusts, who, though they might reach Palestine from the N.E. under certain circumstances, came generally from E. and S.E. But see above, p. 397: so Kuenen, Wellhausen, Nowack. W. R. Smith suggests the whole verse as an allegorising gloss. Hitzig thought of the locusts only, and rendered הצפוני ὁ τυφωνικός, Acts xxvii. 14; but this is not proved.
[1223] _I.e._ the Dead Sea (Ezek. xlvii. 18; Zech. xiv. 8) and the Mediterranean.
[1224] The construction shows that the clause preceding this, ועלה באשו, is a gloss. So Driver. But Nowack gives the other clause as the gloss.
[1225] Nah. iii. 17; Exod. x. 19.
[1226] _De Civitate Dei_, III. 31.
[1227] I. 278, quoted by Pusey.
[1228] i. 17-20: see above, p. 403.
[1229] Prophetic past: Driver.
[1230] Opinion is divided as to the meaning of this phrase: לצדקה = _for righteousness_. A. There are those who take it as having a _moral_ reference; and (1) this is so emphatic to some that they render the word for _early rain_, מורה, which also means _teacher_ or _revealer_, in the latter significance. So (some of them applying it to the Messiah) Targum, Symmachus, the Vulgate, _doctorem justitiæ_, some Jews, _e.g._ Rashi and Abarbanel, and some moderns, _e.g._ (at opposite extremes) Pusey and Merx. But, as Calvin points out (this is another instance of his sanity as an exegete, and refusal to be led by theological presuppositions: he says, “I do not love strained expositions”), this does not agree with the context, which speaks not of spiritual but wholly of physical blessings. (2) Some, who take מורה as _early rain_, give לצדקה the meaning _for righteousness_, _ad justitiam_, either in the sense that God will give the rain as a token of His own righteousness, or in order to restore or vindicate the people’s righteousness (so Davidson, _Expositor_, 1888, I., p. 203 n.), in the frequent sense in which צדקה is employed in Isa. xl. ff. (see _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._, Expositor’s Bible, pp. 219 ff.). Cf. Hosea x. 13, צדק; above, Vol. I., p. 289, n. 2. This of course is possible, especially in view of Israel having been made by their plagues a reproach among the heathen. Still, if Joel had intended this meaning, he would have applied the phrase, not to the _early rain_ only, but to the whole series of blessings by which the people were restored to their standing before God. B. It seems, therefore, right to take לצדקה in a purely physical sense, of the measure or quality of the _early rain_. So even Calvin, _rain according to what is just_ or _fit_; A.V. _moderately_ (inexact); R.V. _in just measure_; Siegfried-Stade _sufficient_. The root-meaning of צדק is probably _according to norm_ (cf. _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._, p. 215), and in that case the meaning would be _rain of normal quantity_. This too suits the parallel in the next clause: _as formerly_. In Himyaritic the word is applied to good harvests. A man prays to God for אפקל ואתֹמר צדקם, _full_ or _good harvests and fruits_: _Corp. Inscr. Sem._, Pars Quarta, Tomus I., No. 2, lin. 1-5; cf. the note.