Joel 2:32

Joel’s book opens with a plague of locusts that stripped the land, and the prophet saw in it a forerunner of the day of the LORD. God called his people to turn back to him with fasting and repentance (Joel 2:12–17), and then promised to restore the land and its harvests (Joel 2:18–27). “And it shall come to pass afterward” opens a promise greater than full barns. Having healed the land, God now promises to give his own Spirit to his people.

The word behind “afterward”, achar, properly means the hind part of something, and it is used of what comes behind in place or after in time. Here it points to a time following the judgment and restoration of the chapters before it. When Peter quoted this verse on the day of Pentecost, he began, “And it shall come to pass in the last days” (Acts 2:17–21), and so the New Testament names this “afterward” as the age that began with Christ.

The verb shâphak means to pour out, spill or shed. It is the word for liquid leaving a vessel, and it pictures God’s Spirit coming down on his people as a free and generous gift. Isaiah uses the same picture of water and Spirit together: “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed” (Isaiah 44:3). Every part of this promise begins with God. He says “I will pour”, and the people receive.

“My spirit” is rûwach, which comes from a root meaning to blow or breathe, and its senses are wind, breath and spirit. Here it is God’s own Spirit, the Holy Spirit, his presence and power at work among his people, giving them life, understanding and his word.

“All flesh” uses bâsâr, which means flesh, body, kin or mortal creature, and it can describe man over against God as frail. So the promise is that the Spirit of the living God will rest on frail, mortal people. In Israel’s history the Spirit came upon particular people for particular work, on prophets, priests, kings and skilled craftsmen, and it was through such chosen people that God’s word usually came. Joel foresees the Spirit on the whole people. Moses had longed for this very thing when others prophesied in the camp: “would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:29).

Verse 29 carries the promise down to the bottom of the household. The servants, ʻebed, were bondmen, and the handmaids, shiphchâh, were female slaves or maidservants. They had the lowest standing in Israel, often bound to a master through debt, war or birth, with few rights of their own. “And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids” names them on purpose. If God pours out his Spirit on them, then he pours it out on everyone he calls, whatever their place in the world. Male and female are named again, so that this verse repeats the “sons and daughters” of the one before it.

“In those days” points ahead to the same future time as “afterward”. The word for days, yôwm, is the word used in “the day of the LORD”, and Joel ties the gift of the Spirit to that coming day of judgment and salvation. The New Testament calls this time the last days. They began with the resurrection of Christ and the coming of the Spirit, and they run until he returns. Peter quoted these two verses together on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17–18).

Before he went to the cross, Jesus promised his disciples, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter” (John 14:16), the Spirit of truth, who would dwell with them and be in them (John 14:16–17). Before his ascension he told them they would receive power when the Holy Ghost came upon them, and would be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). On the day of Pentecost the disciples were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues (Acts 2:4). When the crowd asked what it meant, Peter answered, “this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16), and he quoted Joel 2:28–32 in full (Acts 2:16–21). The whole account is in Acts 2.

Through Christ’s death and resurrection the way to God was opened, and the Spirit was poured out on all who believe, as Joel said. The other prophets promised the same gift in their own words. Through Ezekiel God said, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26–27), and through Jeremiah he promised to write his law in his people’s hearts, so that all of them would know him, from the least to the greatest (Jeremiah 31:33–34). Every believer is now a temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19), and the Spirit equips God’s people for witness, worship and service.

With verse 30 the prophecy turns from the gift of the Spirit to the signs of the coming day. “Shew” translates nâthan, the ordinary verb for giving, which is used very widely for putting, setting and making. God himself will give these wonders and set them in place. The word for wonders, môwphêth, means a wonder, miracle, sign or token. It can be a sign that confirms a message, or a miracle done by God, and both senses fit here, for these are God’s own works announcing that he is about to act. They appear “in the heavens and in the earth”, so the whole of creation is caught up in them.

Three are named. Blood, dâm, is the blood that is shed when life is taken, and it can stand for bloodshed and war. The word is also used of red liquids for their colour, as of wine, “the blood of grapes”, so blood can describe a sky or earth turned red. Fire often goes with God’s judgment and his purifying. The “pillars of smoke” are columns, tîymârâh, rising into the air, like the smoke of burning cities.

These sights recall earlier times when God came near. At Sinai “the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace” (Exodus 19:18). When he judged Sodom and Gomorrah he rained fire and brimstone on them, and Abraham saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace (Genesis 19:24–28). Fire and smoke speak of God’s presence, and of the judgment that comes with it.

“Turned” is hâphak, to turn about or over, to overturn. The sun, which gives the day its light and warmth, is turned into darkness, and the moon becomes the colour of blood. These are the lights God set in the sky to rule day and night, and in that day they are overturned before him. The two lines describe the same upheaval, one in the sun and one in the moon, and together they say that the order people rely on will be shaken when the LORD comes.

The prophets used this same language for other judgments of God. Isaiah described the darkening of the sun and moon when he spoke of the day of the LORD against Babylon (Isaiah 13:6–9, Isaiah 13:10), and Ezekiel did the same in his lament over Pharaoh (Ezekiel 32:7–8). Jesus used it of his own return: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken” (Matthew 24:29), “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven” (Matthew 24:29–30). These words come in his teaching on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24). John saw it too at the opening of the sixth seal, when “the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood” (Revelation 6:12), and the heaven departed as a scroll (Revelation 6:12–14).

The day of the LORD, Yom Yᵉhôvâh, is the time when God acts directly and decisively in the affairs of men. The prophets used the phrase for particular judgments on nations, and for Israel the locust plague was one such day. Its fullest meaning is the end of this age, when God judges the wicked, saves his people and sets up his eternal kingdom.

The day is “great” because of the power and majesty of the God who comes. It is “terrible” from yârêʼ, to fear, to revere or to frighten, so it is a day to be feared. For those who set themselves against God it is a day of dread, and for his people it is a day of awe and of deliverance, when “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ” (Revelation 11:15). After it comes a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1). The one who comes in that day is Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and he is the one “which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).

Verse 32 is where the whole prophecy has been heading. After the signs and the fearful day comes a promise as wide as the first one: “whosoever”. The verb “call”, qârâʼ, means to call out to someone, to address by name, or to proclaim. To call on the name of the LORD is to turn to him in prayer and trust, to own who he is, and to rely on him alone to save. People began to call upon the name of the LORD as early as the days of Enosh (Genesis 4:26), and through Isaiah God invited the whole world: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22).

“The LORD” here is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s own covenant name, which Strong’s explains as “the self-Existent or Eternal”. It is the name of the one true God who made promises to his people and keeps them. To be “delivered”, mâlaṭ, is to escape or to be rescued, to get away from danger to safety. The deliverance is from the judgment of the day just described.

The Spirit who is poured out in verse 28 is the same Spirit who brings people to call on God’s name. Peter ended his quotation of Joel at this line: “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21), and then he preached Jesus to the crowd. Paul quotes it in the same way: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). Just before, he says that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9–10). In that passage the Lord, Kyrios in Greek, is Jesus. The name on which we call is his, and salvation comes by faith in his death and resurrection, freely given to all who turn to him.

If you belong to Christ, you live in the “afterward” Joel spoke of. The Spirit he promised has been poured out on you, whatever your age, whether you are a man or a woman, and whatever your standing in the world. God gives his gifts to the old and the young, to sons and daughters, and to the servant as well as the master, so we can look at every brother and sister in the church as someone God may use. We can rely on the Spirit day by day, listen for God’s voice, and test what we hear by his written word.

The signs and the fearful day tell us to live soberly and ready for the Lord’s return, with our hope set on Christ. And the last verse gives the simplest of promises. Whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered. That promise is for you and for anyone you know, and the God who gave it keeps his word.