Joel 1:5

Verse 4 comes right after Joel’s opening words (Joel 1:1) and his summons to the elders and all the people of the land to consider what has happened. Israel lived from its fields. Its food, its trade and its feasts all depended on the harvest, so a plague of insects threatened the life of the nation itself. Locusts were a well-known and dreaded scourge, able to strip a field in a matter of hours, and Joel’s first hearers would have understood this verse at once.

Joel names four creatures. The palmerworm, gâzâm, takes its name from a root meaning to devour, and it is understood as a cutting or gnawing kind of locust. The locust, ʼarbeh, is the most common Hebrew word for the insect. It comes from a root meaning to increase, and it brings to mind the vast swarms that cover a whole landscape. The cankerworm is yeleq and the caterpiller is châçîyl. The verb “eaten”, ʼâkal, is the ordinary word for eating, and used figuratively it means to devour or consume. The same verb closes each clause of the verse.

The pattern “that which ... hath left hath ... eaten” comes three times, and each time it hands the remains of one wave to the next. Whatever the palmerworm spared, the locust ate. Whatever the locust spared, the cankerworm ate, and the caterpiller finished what was left. The repeated, mirrored clauses build to a total loss, and the language is heightened on purpose so that the hearer feels how complete the ruin was. The land is bare, and famine and the collapse of the nation’s living follow.

The LORD had warned Israel in his covenant that disobedience would bring the loss of its crops to pests (Deuteronomy 28:38–42), and he had once sent locusts on Egypt in judgment (Exodus 10:1–20). This plague is the hand of the same God, who rules over his creation and can use its smallest creatures to correct his people. The waves that follow one another also show how the consequences of sin left unaddressed can grow and compound until the land lies desolate.

The judgment has a purpose. Joel goes straight on to call one group after another to lament (Joel 1:5–12), he warns that the day of the LORD is near (Joel 1:15), and in Joel 2 that day grows darker before he calls the people to return to the LORD with fasting (Joel 2:12–17). The disaster is meant to wake a complacent people and bring them back to God. The last book of the Bible takes up the same picture, with symbolic locusts rising out of the abyss as agents of God’s judgment at the end (Revelation 9:3–9).

After the fields, Joel turns to people. The first he addresses are the drunkards, and in the verses that follow the call widens to the priests, the farmers and all who live in the land (Joel 1:8–13).

“Awake”, qûwts, means to awake, literally or figuratively, and to keep watch. It comes as a sharp command, rousing men from a stupor so that they see the crisis around them. The drunkards, shikkôwr, are those who drink to excess, and the second line widens the call to “all ye drinkers of wine”, using the plain verb for drinking, shâthâh, for anyone whose life ran on this pleasure. They are told to weep, bâkâh, and then to howl, yâlal, a louder and more desperate cry of anguish. Public lament of this kind was Israel’s way of mourning in a national crisis, and it often led to repentance. There is a bitter irony here, because the people most given to merriment are told to grieve, and the very thing that gave them pleasure is the cause of their grief.

The new wine, ʻâçîyç, comes from a root meaning to tread out. It is the fresh juice of the grape, just trodden out in the press. The usual word for wine is yayin. With grain and olive oil, new wine was one of the staples of the land, a mark of a good harvest, the joy of its festivals and a blessing from God. Now it is “cut off from your mouth”. The verb, kârath, means to cut off or cut down, and by implication to destroy, and it is also the verb used for making a covenant. “From your mouth” brings the loss home to each drinker, because the cup itself is gone.

God can withdraw his gifts, even good ones, to wake his people from complacency and turn their trust from the gifts to the Giver. Hosea speaks of God taking back his blessings in the same way (Hosea 2:8–9), Isaiah of the land mourning (Isaiah 24:7–9), and Lamentations of Jerusalem weeping (Lamentations 1:16). The New Testament carries the same call to wake up. Paul says that it is high time to awake out of sleep (Romans 13:11), and Peter tells believers to be sober and vigilant (1 Peter 5:8).

Verse 6 opens with “For”, giving the reason for the weeping, and it names what has done the damage. Joel calls the swarm a nation, gôwy, the word usually used of a nation, often a foreign or Gentile one, and used figuratively of a troop of animals or a flight of locusts. The word gives the insects the look of an invading army, organized, numerous and destructive. That army “is come up”, ʻâlâh, the plain verb for going up or ascending, and the picture of a nation coming up against the land would have called to mind the foreign armies that threatened Judah again and again.

It has come up on “my land”, ʼerets. The land is the LORD’s own, the land of his covenant, and its ruin is his judgment. The invader is “strong”, ʻâtsûwm, a word that means mighty, strong or numerous, and it is “without number”, from miçpâr, the word for a number or count, so resistance is useless. The swarm has the teeth, shên, of a lion, ʼărîy, and the cheek teeth, mᵉthallᵉʻâh, the jaw teeth or molars, of a great lion, lâbîyʼ. A lion’s front teeth tear and its back teeth grind, and the land is chewed down as if by the strongest of predators.

Jeremiah uses the same kind of picture for a foreign nation that devours the land (Jeremiah 5:17), and Joel will later show the LORD himself at the head of his army (Joel 2:11). Even the creatures of the field are under his command.

Verse 7 shows what the swarm has done to the trees. “He” is the swarm, the nation of verse 6, and “my” speaks for the LORD, whose vine and fig tree these are. The vine, gephen, is the grapevine, and with the fig tree it stood for the blessing of the land. In Solomon’s reign Judah and Israel lived safely, each family under its own vine and fig tree (1 Kings 4:25), and Micah uses the same picture for the peace God promises (Micah 4:4). When Joel shows the vine and fig tree destroyed, the whole picture of peace and plenty falls with them.

The verbs pile up. The vine is laid waste, made a shammâh, a ruin or desolation. The fig tree is “barked”, from qᵉtsâphâh, a fragment or splintering, which leaves a tree exposed to disease and unable to bear fruit. Both are “made clean bare”, châsaph, to strip off or make bare, so that leaf, fruit and bark are gone. Then the swarm has “cast it away”, shâlak, to throw away, like something useless and discarded. Last of all, “the branches thereof are made white”, from lâban, to be or become white. With the bark gone, the wood dries out and bleaches in the sun, and the white branches are a picture of dead trees and a barren land.

The ruin of the land prepares for the heart of Joel’s message. The LORD calls his people to return to him with all their heart, saying, “rend your heart, and not your garments” (Joel 2:13), and he goes on to promise a return of abundance and the pouring out of his Spirit (Joel 2:28–29).

That call comes to its fullest form in the gospel, which Jesus began to preach with the words “repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The judgment that stripped the land points to the judgment for sin, and Christ bore it: “he was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and through his cross God has forgiven us and set aside what stood against us (Colossians 2:13–14). The one who saves his people from the devouring lion is himself the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5).

Where the new wine was cut off, Christ gives new wine of his own. He spoke of new wine that must be put into new bottles (Matthew 9:17), and at the Last Supper he called the cup the new testament in his blood (Luke 22:20). He is the bread of life, who satisfies all who come to him (John 6:35). Where the vine was laid waste, he calls himself the true vine, and his people are the branches that bear fruit by abiding in him (John 15:1). Where the harvest was eaten, believers have an imperishable inheritance reserved in heaven (1 Peter 1:3–4). At the end, death and sorrow are gone for ever (Revelation 21:4), and the tree of life grows in the new Jerusalem (Revelation 22:2).

The land, the vine and the fig tree belong to the LORD, and so does every harvest. He gives the new wine, and he can take it away. He commands the smallest creatures as surely as the greatest armies, and when he sends loss on his people, he sends it to wake them. These four verses are full of ruin, yet they open a book that moves on to repentance and restoration, because the God who sends the locusts is the God who calls his people home. When the things we lean on are stripped bare, Joel points us to the LORD himself, who is gracious and merciful and the giver of every good thing we lost.