[1231] Driver, _in loco_.
[1232] Heb. also repeats here _early rain_, but redundantly.
[1233] בראשון, _in the first_. A.V. adds _month_. But LXX. and Syr. read כראשננה, which is probably the correct reading, _as before_ or _formerly_.
[1234] i. 18.
[1235] Above, p. 189.
[1236] Cf. _Hist. Geog._, Chap. XXI., especially p. 463.
[1237] By Thorold Rogers, pp. 80 ff.
[1238] _E.g._ the Quakers and the Independents. The Independents of the seventeenth century “were the founders of the Bank of England.”
[1239] All living things, Gen. vi. 17, 19, etc.; mankind, Isa. xl. 5, xlix. 26. See Driver’s note.
[1240] Next chapter.
[1241] Acts x. 45.
JOEL iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.)
Hitherto Joel has spoken no syllable of the heathen, except to pray that God by His plagues will not give Israel to be mocked by them. But in the last chapter of the Book we have Israel’s captivity to the heathen taken for granted, a promise made that it will be removed and their land set free from the foreigner. Certain nations are singled out for judgment, which is described in the terms of Apocalypse; and the Book closes with the vision, already familiar in prophecy, of a supernatural fertility for the land.
It is quite another horizon and far different interests from those of the preceding chapter. Here for the first time we may suspect the unity of the Book, and listen to suggestions of another authorship than Joel’s. But these can scarcely be regarded as conclusive. Every prophet, however national his interests, feels it his duty to express himself upon the subject of foreign peoples, and Joel may well have done so. Only, in that case, his last chapter was delivered by him at another time and in different circumstances from the rest of his prophecies. Chaps. i.—ii. (Eng.; i.—iii. Heb.) are complete in themselves. Chap. iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) opens without any connection of time or subject with those that precede it.[1242]
The time of the prophecy is a time when Israel’s fortunes are at low ebb,[1243] her sons scattered among the heathen, her land, in part at least, held by foreigners. But it would appear (though this is not expressly said, and must rather be inferred from the general proofs of a post-exilic date) that Jerusalem is inhabited. Nothing is said to imply that the city needs to be restored.[1244]
All the heathen nations are to be brought together for judgment into a certain valley, which the prophet calls first the Vale of Jehoshaphat and then the Vale of Decision. The second name leads us to infer that the first, which means _Jehovah-judges_, is also symbolic. That is to say, the prophet does not single out a definite valley already called Jehoshaphat. In all probability, however, he has in his mind’s eye some vale in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, for since Ezekiel[1245] the judgment of the heathen in face of Jerusalem has been a standing feature in Israel’s vision of the last things; and as no valley about that city lends itself to the picture of judgment so well as the valley of the Kedron with the slopes of Olivet, the name Jehoshaphat has naturally been applied to it.[1246] Certain nations are singled out by name. These are not Assyria and Babylon, which had long ago perished, nor the Samaritans, Moab and Ammon, which harassed the Jews in the early days of the Return from Babylon, but Tyre, Sidon, Philistia, Edom and Egypt. The crime of the first three is the robbery of Jewish treasures, not necessarily those of the Temple, and the selling into slavery of many Jews. The crime of Edom and Egypt is that they have shed the innocent blood of Jews. To what precise events these charges refer we have no means of knowing in our present ignorance of Syrian history after Nehemiah. That the chapter has no explicit reference to the cruelties of Artaxerxes Ochus in 360 would seem to imply for it a date earlier than that year. But it is possible that ver. 17 refers to that, the prophet refraining from accusing the Persians for the very good reason that Israel was still under their rule.