Joel 3:1

Joel’s prophecy began with a plague of locusts and a call for Judah to return to the LORD (Joel 1, Joel 2:1–27). It then promised that God would pour out his Spirit on all flesh before the great and terrible day of the LORD (Joel 2:28–32). Chapter 3 opens with “For”, kî in Hebrew, which ties what follows to those promises, and “behold”, hinnēh, which calls us to look closely at something certain and important. In the Hebrew Bible this chapter is numbered Joel 4, so some Bibles give these verses as Joel 4:1–8. When Joel prophesied is uncertain, and some place him after the exile and others before it. Either way, Judah knew well what it meant to be overrun, scattered and carried off, as the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles showed.

“In those days, and in that time” points to a season God has appointed. The word for days, yôwm, means a day or a span of time, and here it covers the whole era in which God will act, the time of the day of the LORD that Joel has just described (Joel 2:31). Setting “days” beside “time” stresses that this period is fixed and sure.

The promise itself is “I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem”. The verb shûwb means to turn back or return, and the noun shᵉbûwth means captivity, exile or captives. Together they make a well-known Hebrew phrase, shuv shĕbûṯ, which can mean bringing captives home and is also used more broadly for restoring someone’s fortunes, which is how many modern translations render it here. It covers release from exile and also the turning of a whole state of ruin into one of blessing, with the people restored to their land, their worship and their place before God.

The same promise runs through the prophets. Moses told Israel that after scattering them the LORD would turn their captivity and gather them again (Deuteronomy 30:1–5), and God says the same through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 29:14, Jeremiah 30:3), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 36:24) and Zephaniah (Zephaniah 3:20).

The one who acts is “I”, the LORD himself. Judah was the southern kingdom and Jerusalem its capital, the city of David and of the temple, so the promise is spoken to the heart of God’s covenant people. The rest of Joel 3 unfolds from this verse. God judges the nations for how they treated his people and calls them to come up to war (Joel 3:9–12). The chapter ends with the promise “for the LORD dwelleth in Zion” (Joel 3:21).

“I will also gather all nations.” The word for nations, gôwy, is the usual word for the foreign peoples, the Gentiles, as distinct from Israel. God himself does the gathering. Whatever plans kings and armies make, it is the LORD who brings them to the place of judgment. He will “bring them down”, yârad, the ordinary verb for going down or bringing down, into a valley, ʻêmeq, a broad stretch of low land.

The valley is named “Jehoshaphat”, Yᵉhôwshâphâṭ, built from the name of the LORD and the verb to judge, so that it means “the LORD judges”. The name says what happens there. The KJV’s “plead” translates shâphaṭ, the verb inside that name, which means to judge, to decide, to pronounce sentence. God enters into judgment with the nations, setting out his case against them and giving the verdict, as the verses that follow show. Isaiah also speaks of the LORD judging among the nations (Isaiah 2:4).

The day of the LORD announced in Joel 2 is a day of reckoning, and verse 3 shows why the nations have earned it. It gives the first specific charge, and the most shocking. “They have cast lots for my people.” A lot, gôwrâl, was properly a small stone, used to decide a question or share out a portion. Conquerors used lots to divide captives and plunder among themselves, so the men, women and children of God’s people were handed out by chance like any other spoil.

“And have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.” A boy was handed over as the price of a prostitute, from zânâh, a word for committing fornication or adultery that is also used figuratively of going after idols. A girl was sold, mâkar, for wine. The two halves of the verse match each other, and together they show captors who valued a child at less than an evening’s pleasure. “That they might drink” is the bitterest touch, because it shows how small and passing the gain was for which a child’s whole life was given away. Every one of those children bore the image of God, and God calls them “my people”.

Scripture condemns the same cruelty elsewhere. Amos charges Israel itself with selling “the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes” (Amos 2:6). Obadiah rebukes Edom for standing by on the day when strangers “cast lots upon Jerusalem” (Obadiah 1:11). Moses had warned that if Israel turned from the LORD they would be sold to their enemies as bondmen and bondwomen (Deuteronomy 28:68).

In verse 4 God turns and speaks to the guilty nations directly. Tyre and Zidon were the great Phoenician ports on the Mediterranean coast, rich from trade by sea. “The coasts of Palestine” are the lands of the Philistines, also on the coast, and Israel’s enemies for generations. These trading peoples dealt in captives and sold people of Judah to distant buyers, and Amos pronounces judgment on Gaza and Tyre for the same traffic (Amos 1:6–10).

“What have ye to do with me?” is the language of a dispute over rights. God asks by what right they have laid hands on his people. “Will ye render me a recompence?” asks whether they mean to pay him back, as though he had done them some injury. A recompence, gᵉmûwl, is treatment, an act of good or ill done to someone, or the return made for it.

Then comes the answer: “if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head.” “Swiftly”, qal, and “speedily”, mᵉhêrâh, are two words for one idea, set together for force, so that the reply will be sure and quick. “Return” is shûwb, the same verb as “bring again” in verse 1, and the two uses belong together. The God who turns back his people’s captivity also turns back the nations’ deeds on themselves. “Upon your own head” means on the very persons who did them.

The Psalms use the same picture: “His mischief shall return upon his own head” (Psalm 7:16). In the song of Moses God says, “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence” (Deuteronomy 32:35), and through Zechariah he says of his people, “he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zechariah 2:8). Isaiah foresees the sons of those who afflicted Zion coming bending to her (Isaiah 60:14).

Verse 5 gives the next charge: “ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things.” The verb for taken, lâqach, is a very common word for taking of every kind, and here it means plunder seized by force. Gold, zâhâb, comes from a root meaning to shimmer. “Goodly pleasant things” joins ṭôwb, good, with machmâd, a thing of delight or desire, a beloved and precious object. These may have been vessels and treasures from the temple in Jerusalem or the valued possessions of the people’s homes, and either way God calls them his.

“My” stands three times in this short verse, and each time it is the LORD speaking. The plunder of Judah is theft from God. Haggai records the same claim: “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts” (Haggai 2:8).

“Carried into your temples” makes the theft worse. A hêykâl is a palace or temple, a great public building, and here it means the shrines of the nations’ gods. Conquerors often dedicated spoil to their own gods as a boast that their gods had beaten the god of the defeated, as when the Philistines set the captured ark of God in the house of Dagon (1 Samuel 5:2). To put the LORD’s treasures in an idol’s house was to claim that the idol had triumphed over him. It struck at the first commandments (Exodus 20:3–5) and at his word, “my glory will I not give to another” (Isaiah 42:8).

“The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border.” The word for children, bên, is the word for son, and in its wider sense it covers offspring of any age. It comes from a root meaning to build.

The Grecians, Yᵉvânîy, are the descendants of Javan, Yawan in Hebrew, the Ionians or Greeks across the sea to the west. Greek buyers took slaves from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, often through Phoenician traders like those of Tyre and Zidon. To be sold to them meant being carried across the sea to an alien people, with little hope of ever coming home.

The last clause gives the sellers’ purpose: “that ye might remove them far from their border”. They meant to cut the captives off from their land, their families and their worship, and so from the inheritance God had given them. Scripture keeps count of this trade to the end. Among the merchandise of fallen Babylon John lists “slaves, and souls of men” (Revelation 18:13), and God’s judgment on proud nations such as Babylon runs through the prophets (Isaiah 13).

Verse 7 opens with “Behold” again: “I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them.” The verb ʻûwr means to wake or stir up, and so to rouse and raise. However far away the captives have been carried, God will rouse them and bring them out of the place where they were sold. Then he repeats his word from verse 4, “and will return your recompence upon your own head”.

Verse 8 tells what that recompence will be. “I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah.” The verb is mâkar, the same one used for the sale of Judah’s children in verse 6, and “sell” stands twice in verse 8. Sons, bên, and daughters, bath, the feminine of the same word, are the sellers’ own children. “Into the hand”, yâd, means into the power of the children of Judah, who in turn “shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off”. The Sabeans were the people of Sheba, probably in modern Yemen, traders whose routes ran far across Arabia and into Africa. The word for “people” there is gôwy, the same word as “nations” in verse 2. Those who sold Judah’s children far from their border will see their own children carried just as far away.

This is justice measure for measure, with the punishment matching the crime. Obadiah says the same to Edom: “as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head” (Obadiah 1:15). The psalmist sings that “the heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made” (Psalm 9:15–16), and Paul writes, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

The passage closes with “for the LORD hath spoken it”. The verb dâbar means to speak or tell, and these words set God’s own seal on everything before them. What the LORD has spoken will be done.

Joel’s valley of judgment points ahead to the day when the Son of man comes in his glory, gathers all nations before him and separates them as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, judging them by how they treated “the least of these my brethren” (Matthew 25:31–46). “Every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:10–12). The nations will see “the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30). He “shall judge the quick and the dead” (2 Timothy 4:1), and he rides out as King of kings and Lord of lords to judge and make war in righteousness (Revelation 19:11–16). The dead, small and great, stand before the great white throne (Revelation 20:11–15), and “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ” (Revelation 11:15).

The cross shows the other side of recompence, because every one of us has earned one for sin. Paul says of himself, “I am carnal, sold under sin” (Romans 7:14). Jesus is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). The Son of man came “to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and his people are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ” in place of silver and gold (1 Peter 1:18–19). The captives in Joel were removed far from their border, and in Christ Jesus those “who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).

These verses show us a God who notices what the powerful expect to pass unseen. A boy traded for a harlot and a girl sold for wine were small things to their captors, and the LORD names them in his court and makes their sale part of his case against the nations. He calls the stolen people his people, the divided land his land and the plundered silver his silver, so that every wrong done to those who are his is a wrong done to him.

The same God brings captives home. He promises to bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem and to raise the sold out of the places where they were sold, however far away those places are. His judgment and his restoration are one work, because in setting his people free he also settles the account with those who sold them.

The passage speaks to every age in which people are still bought and sold, trafficked for labour or for lust, and moved far from home for someone else’s gain. God’s verdict on that trade stands in his word, and he will answer for every one of its victims. Because the recompence is his to give, his people can leave vengeance with him and stand with the oppressed as those who belong to a just God. And in Christ, who gave his life a ransom, the deepest captivity of all is turned back. “For the LORD hath spoken it.”