The Pulpit Commentary — Joel — Section 4

§ II. AUTHOR AND DATE. "Joel the son of Pethuel "(in the Septuagint," Bethuel ")....:...tha.t is all that we know for certain concerning this prophet; every othel' detail about him is inferential or conjectural. His na.me is explained by St. Jerome to mean "beginning," or "God is;" but is better interpreted "Jehovah is God." Other persons in Holy Scripture have borne the name, e.g. Samuel's eldest son, who did not walk in• hie good father'e etepe (1 Sam. viii 2), a eon of Josibiah (1 Chron. iv. 35), one of David's warriors (1 Chron. xi. 38), and a Levite under the same king (1 Chron. xv. 7). Pseudo-Epiphanius1 who, in his 'Lives of the Prophets,' gives many legendary stories concerning these personages, asserts (bk. ii 245) that.he was of the tribe of Reuben, and born at Bethom, or Bethhoron, identified with Beil Ur, a place teh miles north-west of Jerus~lem. Here, too, he is said to have been buried. We know not the grounds on which this tradition rests. Equally insecure is the opinion held by many that he was a priest or •Levite ; the only argu- ment in favour of the notion being that he often mentions the offerings and festivals of the temple service; while, on the other hand, he addresses the priests as a class to which he did not belong; "Ye priests .. , ye ministers/' he says ( eh. i. 13), and he calls upon them officially to proclaim the fast which he enjoined. We may affirm with tolerable,certainty that he was a native of Judiea, and exercised hie prophetic office in that quarter of the Holy Land. probably at Jerusalem. His mission was to Judah, as Hosea's had been to Israel. He exhorts the priests as though living among them ( eh. i. 13, 14); he speaks of the sacrifices of the temple ( oh. i. 9, 18); he addressee the inhabitants of Jerusalem (eh. ii. 23); it is Jerusalem whioh he sees surrounded and threatened ( eh. ii. 9); the trumpet is to be sounded in Zion (eh. ii. 15); the house of the Lord is before his eyes (oh. i. 9); deliverance is to be in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem ( oh. ii. 32); the  TIIE BOOT( OF JOEL. vii ~~---~------------------ oapti-rity of ,Jndah is to be brought a.gain ( eh. iii. 1) ; the nation A are to M ohaetlsed for their treatment of the Judmans ( eh, iii. 2-8); the promiRed blel!lsings are e.11 destined for Zion ( eh. iii. 20, 21 ). There is throughout the book no mention of Israel, no recognition of its separate existence. So it iH evident that we ha.ve strong ground for a.tlhming that the scene of Joel'e prophecy '!Vas Jerusalem. But when we come to inquire the date of 011r prophet, ,ve are at once landed in a. very difficult question. Joel himself tell!! u~ nothing definite concerning this matter. He does not, as so many of his brother-prophet..! do, say under what king or kings he prophesied ; and we are left to gather our conclusions from internal evidence. How uncertain this is, and ho1v"likely to lead one astray, may be inferred from the widely differ- ing results ·e;t which critice have arrived. Some consider Joel t,-, be the earliest of all the prophets; others regard him a.s the latest, alleging that he composed hie book after Nehemiah's reformation, and that the prophecy is only ii. concoction of earlier writings, especially of Ezekiel (see Merx, 'Die Proph. des Joel'). St. Jerome asserts that he was a. contemporary of H'.-0eea, and tradition generally assigns him to the early part of that period. -There•eeems no reason to doubt that Amos quotes Joel in Amos i. 2, when he says, "The'.Lord will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jeru,a- lem ; " for he brings in the sentence abruptly, and as if citing from some writing well known; whereas in Joel (eh. iii. 16) it ocC1In1 naturally as p~t of a whole paragraph in due connection with what precedes and follows. Aleo Amos concludes with promises of blessings very similar to those of Joel, and quite -in the same strain (comp. Amos ix. 13 and eh. iii. 18). Other passages, too, seem to be reminiscences of the older prophet; e.g. Amos vii. 3 compared with eh. ii. 13; Amos vii. 4 with eh. i. 20. As Amoe prophesied ·during the time that Uzziah and Jeroboam II. were con- temporaneous, Joel :must have lived earlier, before the beginning of Uzziah's reign, thus exercising his office previously to Hosea. Other faots lead apparently to the same conclusion. The only enemies mentioned in the book are the Phrenicians; Philistines, Edomites, and Egyptians; the author says· nothing of invasions of Aesyrians, Babylonians, or Syrians. It seems incredible that he should not have enumerated these among hostile nations, if he had prophesied after their attaoke. The most serious Aram!l'lan inva- sion of Judah occurred at the end of the reign of Joa.eh, when "the host of Syria came up against him: and they came to Judah and Jerusalem, and destroyed all the princes of the people from among the people, and sent all the spoil of them unto the King of Dama.sous " (2 Kings xii. 7 ; 2 Chron. xxiv. 23). Had this great blow been etruok lately, Joel could not have refrained from noticing it; he therefore lived before this catastrophe. Further, the sin of idolatry is nowhere mentioned, and the regular worship of Jehovah is everywhere presupposed. Under the three monarchs pre- ceding J oash, idolatry was prevalent ; and under J oash himself pure worship was lamentably degraded as soon as the reverent hand of Jehoiacla the high '"iii INTRODUCTION TO