Joel 3:18

Joel’s first two chapters describe a devastating locust plague and drought (Joel 1:4–7) and call the people to repent. The plague is a foretaste of the Day of the LORD, the great and terrible day when God steps in to judge his enemies and save his people (Joel 2:31). Chapter 3 turns to the nations who scattered God’s people and divided his land (Joel 3:2). God gathers them in the valley of Jehoshaphat, a name meaning “the LORD judges” (Joel 3:12), which Joel also calls the valley of decision (Joel 3:14). Signs in the heavens mark that day, and the LORD roars out of Zion (Joel 3:15–16).

These five verses are what follows the judgment. The date of Joel’s prophecy is hard to fix, but it speaks into a time of national distress, and for a people who had known invasion, bloodshed and exile, every line here answers a wound. The famine of the early chapters becomes overflowing plenty, the enemies who invaded are shut out, and the blood that went unanswered is answered by God himself.

The passage opens and closes with the same verb, shâkan: God “dwelling in Zion” in verse 17 and “the LORD dwelleth in Zion” in verse 21. The word means to settle down, stay or dwell, and Scripture uses it for God’s presence among his people, first in the tabernacle in the wilderness and then in the temple in Jerusalem. Everything between these two verses, the holiness, the safety, the plenty, the justice and the lasting home, rests on this one fact about God.

Zion was a hill in Jerusalem, and its name came to stand for the city and its temple. God calls it “my holy mountain”. A psalm says that the LORD has chosen Zion and desired it for his habitation, to rest there for ever (Psalm 132:13–14), and another calls on Israel to sing praises to the LORD who dwells in Zion (Psalm 9:11). The temple stood there as the place God had chosen for his name (1 Kings 8:29). The God who speaks is “the LORD your God”, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of Israel’s God, and he claims Zion as his own home.

“In that day” marks the time God has appointed. The word yôwm means a day or a span of time, and in “that day” it points to the Day of the LORD and what comes after its judgment. Verse 18 then fills that day with plenty, in pictures drawn from Israel’s farms and vineyards.

The mountains “drop down new wine”. The word ʻâçîyç means fresh grape juice, the sweet new wine of the harvest. Rocky mountainsides are where a farmer would expect the least, and here they drip with the best. The hills flow with milk, which means herds that thrive, and calls to mind the land flowing with milk and honey that God first promised. Amos ends his prophecy with the same kind of abundance (Amos 9:13). This is picture language, describing a fruitfulness far beyond what the land produces on its own, and it reverses the dried-up harvests and empty barns of Joel’s first chapter.

“All the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters.” Many of Judah’s streams were seasonal and ran dry for part of the year. In that day they will run full, and the land that suffered drought will have water everywhere.

Verse 19 turns from Judah’s plenty to the ruin of her enemies. “Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness.” The word shᵉmâmâh means devastation or desolation, and it can also mean horror. The two lines stand side by side, and Edom’s ruin is described as a “desolate wilderness”, the very opposite of the watered valley of verse 18.

God gives the reason plainly: “for the violence against the children of Judah”. The word châmâç covers violence, cruelty and wrong, the whole record of oppression these nations had carried out. And it adds, “because they have shed innocent blood in their land”. The adjective nâqîy means innocent, clean or exempt, so this was the blood of people who had done nothing to deserve death. “Their land” is most likely Judah’s land, where the killing took place.

Egypt and Edom are named because each had a long history against God’s people. Egypt was the first oppressor, the land of slavery in the Exodus, and it fought Israel again in later years. Edom came from Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, so its hostility was that of a brother. When Babylon took Jerusalem in 586 BC, Edomites joined in the plunder and stood in the way of Judah’s people as they fled. The prophecy of Obadiah is given to this sin (Obadiah 1:10–14).

The shedding of innocent blood is grave in God’s sight from the beginning: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Genesis 9:6). God judges the world in righteousness (Psalm 9:8), and at the end of history the blood of prophets and saints is found in the great city that shed it (Revelation 18:24). Nations answer to him for how they treat the innocent and his people, and though the wicked have their way for a time, he sees and he acts.

Verse 20 opens with “But”, setting Judah against the desolate nations. Edom becomes a wilderness, and Judah becomes a home that lasts.

“Judah”, Yᵉhûwdâh, is the name Strong’s glosses “celebrated”, from yâdâh, “to praise”. Judah was the tribe of David’s kings and the line of the Messiah, and here the name stands for God’s people as a whole. The verb yâshab first means to sit down, and from there to dwell, remain or stay, so it gives a picture of people settled in their land. “For ever”, ʻôwlâm, means time out of mind, a time so long its end is out of sight, and so eternity. “From generation to generation” repeats the word dôwr, generation (dôwr wāḏôwr). It can also mean a period or age, and Strong’s calls it “a revolution of time”. The doubled phrase says that Jerusalem will be lived in by one generation after another without a break, and with “for ever” it makes one promise in two lines.

The promise reaches back to Abraham, to whom God gave the land for his seed (Genesis 12:7) and said, “for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever” (Genesis 13:15). Isaiah says God will make the city that was forsaken “an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations” (Isaiah 60:15). Israel had known invasion and exile over and over, and this verse promises a home that no enemy will take away.

The last verse returns to the innocent blood of verse 19. The verb nâqâh means to be or make clean, and it carries the sense of being acquitted or held guiltless. In its harsher sense it can mean emptied or removed, as of a city emptied of its people. The word dâm is blood, the blood whose shedding takes a life, and in the plural it often means bloodshed. It can also be used of the juice of grapes, the “blood” of grapes, because of the colour.

The blood in this verse is the blood of God’s people shed by the nations, blood that by any human reckoning had gone unpunished. In Israel’s law, blood shed and left unanswered defiled the land: “for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it” (Numbers 35:33–34). God now takes this into his own hands. He will answer for that blood, which means avenging it, as Moses sang, “for he will avenge the blood of his servants” (Deuteronomy 32:43). He will also cleanse his people and land from its stain. Isaiah speaks of the day “when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem” (Isaiah 4:4), and Ezekiel hears God promise to cleanse his people and give them a new heart (Ezekiel 36:25).

The reason comes last, and it is the reason for the whole passage: “for the LORD dwelleth in Zion.” Because God lives among his people, the wrongs done to them are his concern, and his presence guarantees their cleansing, their safety and their future. Joel’s whole book, from the locusts to this final line, ends here.

The New Testament shows God’s dwelling with his people coming to pass in Jesus. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), so in Christ God came to live among men. Through him the church is built into “an holy temple in the Lord”, a dwelling place of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19–22), and Paul tells believers, “ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16). The holiness promised to Jerusalem in verse 17 is the holiness God gives the people among whom he lives.

The fountain from God’s house points to Christ too. On the last day of the feast Jesus stood and cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37–38). He came that his people might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10), and the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost (Romans 5:5). The new wine, milk and water of verse 18 picture that overflowing life, and Christ turns the barren places of sin, the valleys of Shittim, into fruitful ground.

The innocent blood of verse 19 and the cleansing of verse 21 lead to the cross. Jesus is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), whose own innocent blood was shed, and “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). The same Christ will return as the righteous judge, and the desolation of Egypt and Edom foreshadows the final judgment on all who persist in wickedness. The end of the story is the end of Joel’s: a holy city where God dwells with his people for ever.

Joel’s last word is about where God lives. After locusts, drought, repentance and the judgment of the nations, the prophecy comes to rest in five words: “the LORD dwelleth in Zion.” Every blessing in this passage flows from that. The city is holy because he is there, the land is fruitful because the spring rises from his house, and his people are safe and their blood answered because he lives among them.

These verses also show us a God who keeps account of innocent blood. Violence that went unpunished in this world is known to him, and he has said he will answer it. That is a sober word to the nations and a deep comfort to his people, who can leave their wrongs with the God who says, “I will cleanse their blood.”

And they show us a God whose purposes end in joy. The book that began with ruined vines and dried-up streams ends with mountains dripping with new wine and a river flowing from his house. That river runs on through Ezekiel and Zechariah to the river of the water of life in Revelation, and to the city where God dwells with us for ever.