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Commentary on Joel 3 verses 1–8
We have often heard of the year of the redeemed, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion; now here we have a description of the transactions of that year, and a prophecy of what shall be done when it comes, whenever it comes, for it comes often, and at the end of time it will come once for all.
I. It shall be the year of the redeemed, for God will bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, Joe 3:1. Though the bondage of God's people may be grievous and very long, yet it shall not be everlasting. That in Egypt ended at length in their deliverance into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Let my son go, the he may serve me. That in Babylon shall likewise end well. And the Lord Jesus will provide for the effectual redemption of poor enslaved souls from under the dominion of sin and Satan, and will proclaim that acceptable year, the year of jubilee, the release of debts and servants, and the opening of the prison to those that were bound. There is a day, there is a time, fixed for the bringing again of the captivity of God's children, for the redeeming of them from the power of the grave; and it shall be the last day and the end of all time.
II. It shall be the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. Though God may suffer the enemies of his people to prevail against them very far and for a long time, yet he will call them to an account for it, and will lead captivity captive (Psa 68:18), will lead those captive that led his people captive, Rev 13:10. Observe,
1.Who those are that shall be reckoned with - all nations, Joe 3:2. This intimates, (1.) That all the nations had made themselves liable to the judgment of God for wrong done to his people. Persecution is the reigning crying sin of the world; that lying in wickedness itself is set against godliness. The enmity that is in the old serpent, the god of this world, against the seed of the woman, appears more or less in the children of this world. Marvel not if the world hate you. (2.) That, whatsoever nation injured God's nation, they should not go unpunished; for he that touches the Israel of God shall be made to know that he touches the apple of his eye. Jerusalem will be a burdensome stone to all people, Zac 12:3. But the neighboring nations shall be particularly reckoned with - Tyre, and Sidon, and all the coasts of Palestine, or the Philistines, who have been troublesome neighbours to the Israel of God, Joe 3:4. When the more remote and potent nations that laid Israel wastes are reckoned with the impotent malice of those that lay near them, and helped forward the affliction, (Zac 1:15), and made a hand of it (Eze 26:2), shall not be passed by. Note, Little persecutors shall be called to an account as well as great ones; and, though they could not do much mischief, shall be reckoned with according to the wickedness of their endeavors and the mischief they would have done.
2.The sitting of this court for judgment. They shall all be gathered (Joe 3:2), that those who have combined together against God's people, with one consent (Psa 83:5), may together receive their doom. They shall be brought down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, which lay near Jerusalem, and there God will plead with them, (1.) Because it is fit that criminals should be tried in the same country where they did the fact. (2.) For their greater confusion, when they shall see that Jerusalem which they have so long endeavored and hoped for the ruin of, in spite of all their rage, made a praise in the earth. (3.) For the greater comfort and honor of God's Jerusalem, which shall see God pleading their cause. (4.) Then shall be re-acted what God did for Jehoshaphat when he gave him victory over those that invaded him, and furnished him and his people with matter of joy and praise, in the valley of Berachah. See Ch2 20:26. (5.) It was in this valley of Jehoshaphat (as Dr. Lightfoot suggests) that Sennacherib's army, or part of it, lay, when it was destroyed by an angel. They came together to ruin Jerusalem, but God brought them together for their own ruin, as sheaves into the floor, Mic 4:12.
3.The plaintiff called, on whose behalf this prosecution is set on foot; it is for my people, and for my heritage Israel. It is their cause that God will now plead with jealousy. Note, God's people are his heritage, his peculiar, his portion, his treasure, above all people, Exo 19:5; Deu 32:9. They are his demesne, and therefore he has a good action against those that trespass upon them.
4.The charge exhibited against them, which is very particular. Many affronts they had put upon God by their idolatries, but that for which God has a quarrel with them is the affront they have put upon his people and upon the vessels of his sanctuary.
(1.)They had been very abusive to the people of Israel, had scattered them among the nations and forced them to seek for shelter where they could find a place, or carried them captive into their respective countries and there industriously dispersed them, for fear of their incorporating for their common safety. They parted their land, and took every one his share of it as their own; nay, they have cast lots for my people, and sold them. When they had taken them prisoners, [1.] They made a jest of them, made a scorn of them as of no value. They would not release them and yet thought them not worth the keeping; they made nothing of playing them away at dice. Or they made a dividend of the prisoners by lot, as the soldiers did of Christ's garments. [2.] They made a gain of them. When they had them they sold them, yet with so much contempt that they did not increase their wealth by their price, but sold them for their pleasure rather than their profit; they gave a boy taken in war for the hire of a harlot, and a girl for so many bottles of wine as would serve them for one sitting, a goodly price at which they valued them, and goodly preferment for a son and daughter of Israel to be a slave and a drudge in a tavern or a brothel. Observe, here, how that which is got by sin is commonly spent upon another. The spoil which these enemies of the Jews gathered by injustice and violence they scattered and threw away in drinking and whoring; such is frequently the character, and such the conversation, of the enemies and persecutors of the people of God. The Tyrians and Philistines, when they seized any of the children of Judah and Jerusalem, either took them prisoners in war or kidnapped them, they sold them to the Grecians (with whom the men of Tyre traded in the persons of men, Eze 27:13), that they might remove them far from their own border, Joe 3:6. It was a great reproach to Israel, God's first-born, his free-born, to be thus bought and sold among the heathen.
(2.)They had unjustly seized God's silver and gold (Joe 3:5), by which some understand the wealth of Israel. The silver and gold which God's people had he calls his, because they had received it from him and devoted it to him; and whosoever robbed them God took it as if they had robbed him and would make reprisals accordingly. Those who take away the estates of good men for well-doing will be found guilty of sacrilege; they take God's silver and gold. But it seems rather to be meant of the vessels and treasures of the temple, which God here calls his goodly pleasant things, precious and desirable to him and all that are his. These they carried into their temples as trophies of their victory over God's Israel, thinking that therein they triumphed over Israel's God, nay, and that their idols triumphed over him. Thus the ark was put in Dagon's temple. Thus they did unjustly. "What have you to do with me (Joe 3:4), with my people; what wrong have they done you? What provocation have they given you? You had nothing to do with them, and yet you do all this against them. Devices are devised against the quiet in the land, and those offended and harmed that are harmless and inoffensive: Will you render me a recompence?" Can they pretend that either God or his people have done them any injury, for which they may justify themselves by the law of retaliation in doing them these mischiefs? No; they have no colour for it. Note, It is no new thing for those who have been very civil and obliging to their neighbours to find them very unkind and unneighbourly and for those who do no injuries to suffer many.
5.The sentence passed upon them. In general (Joe 3:4), "If you recompense me, if you pretend a quarrel with me, if you provoke me thus to jealousy, if you touch the apple of my eye, I will swiftly and speedily return your recompence upon your own head." Those that contend with God will find themselves unable to make their part good with him. He will recompense them suddenly, when they little think of it, and have not time to prevent it; if he take them to task, he will soon effect their ruin. Particularly, it is threatened, (1.) That they should not gain their end in the mischief they designed against God's people. They thought to remove them so far from their border that they should never return to it again, Joe 3:6. But (says God) "I will raise them out of the place whither you have sold them, and they shall not, as you intended, be buried alive there." Men's selling the people of God will not deprive him of his property in them. (2.) That they shall be paid in their own coin, as Adonibezek was (Joe 3:8): "I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah; you shall lie as much at their mercy as they have been at yours," Isa 60:14. Thus the Jews had rule over those that hated them, Est 9:1. And then they shall justly be sold to the Sabeans, to a people far off. This (some think) had its accomplishment in the victories obtained by the Maccabees over the enemies of the Jews; others think it looks as far forward as the last day, when the upright shall have dominion (Psa 49:14) and the saints shall judge the world. It is certain that none ever hardened his heart against God, or his church, and prospered long; no, not Pharaoh himself, for the Lord has spoken it, for the comfort of all his suffering servants, that vengeance is his and he will repay.
(Verse 7, 8) Behold, I will raise them up from the place where you sold them, and I will turn your retribution upon your own heads. I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, a distant nation. For the Lord has spoken. LXX: Behold, I will raise them up from the place where you sold them, and I will return your retribution upon your heads. I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them into captivity to a distant nation, for the Lord has spoken. The Hebrew word Sabaim (), which Aquila and Symmachus translated as 'captives' according to the written text, was interpreted as 'captivity' in the Septuagint, which better signifies captives. However, the Sabaim people are said to come from India, from which the queen of Sheba also came to hear the wisdom of Solomon (3 Kings 10), about whom Isaiah also speaks: 'And the Sabaim, men of high rank, will come to you' (Isaiah 43:14). Hence, it is also said that incense (thus) comes from there, as Virgil says: 'From Sabaim, a wealthy kingdom, come the gift of frankincense' (Aeneid, Book I).
. . . And a hundred altars burn with Sabean incense: though some suspect that they are Arabian. Therefore, the Jews promise to themselves, or rather dream, that in the last days they will be gathered by the Lord and brought back to Jerusalem. Not content with this happiness, they assert that God himself will deliver into their hands the sons and daughters of the Romans, so that the Jews may sell them, not to the Persians, Ethiopians, and other neighboring nations, but to the Sabaeans, a very distant people: because the Lord has spoken and will avenge the injury to his people. And to them and to our Jewish followers who promise for themselves a thousand-year kingdom in the borders of Judea, and a golden Jerusalem, and the blood of sacrifices, and sons and grandsons, and incredible delights, and gates adorned with a variety of gems. But we say that the Lord raised them up after his coming, and continues to raise them up daily, and will raise up those whom various errors led astray from their borders. 'I will raise them up beautifully,' he says, 'as if they were lying and falling, so that those who were lying in heresy may stand in the Church, giving to heretics what they did: That he may deliver their sons and daughters, whom they had instructed in the mysteries and in the fleshly things, into the hands of the sons of Judah, into the hands of those who became rulers of the Churches; and they are instructed in the armor of the Apostle, and they have the shield and spear of the Old and New Testament.' So when they capture them, they sell their sons and daughters to the Sabaeans, and make them slaves, so that they are far away from their borders; and when they are converted to better things, they begin to be subject to Ecclesiastical teachings.
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SUMMARY
Joel 3:7 declares God's unwavering commitment to justice and the restoration of His people, promising a divine reversal of fortunes. It serves as a direct oracle from Yahweh, condemning the nations that have exploited and enslaved His chosen people, Judah and Jerusalem. God explicitly states His intention to retrieve those who were sold into bondage and to return the exact recompense for their wicked deeds upon the heads of the perpetrators, demonstrating His sovereignty over human affairs and His ultimate fairness in judgment.
CONTEXT
Literary Context: Joel 3:7 is situated within a powerful prophetic oracle concerning the "Day of the Lord," specifically detailing God's judgment against the nations (Joel 3:1-8, or Joel 4:1-8 in some translations). The preceding verses (Joel 3:4-6) directly accuse maritime nations like Tyre, Sidon, and the Philistines of plundering the temple's treasures, selling the people of Judah and Jerusalem into slavery, particularly to the Grecians, and profiting from their suffering. This verse, therefore, is not an isolated statement but God's direct, emphatic response to these specific acts of injustice, promising a swift and precise divine retribution that mirrors their offenses. It sets the stage for the broader theme of God's vindication of His people and the ultimate establishment of His kingdom.
Historical & Cultural Context: The historical backdrop for Joel's prophecy is debated, but many scholars place it in the post-exilic period, possibly after the return from Babylonian captivity, given the emphasis on the dispersion and sale of Judah's people. The practice of selling conquered peoples or those in debt into slavery was a common, albeit brutal, aspect of ancient Near Eastern society. The mention of "Grecians" (or "Javanites") indicates a sophisticated slave trade network extending to the Aegean world, highlighting the extensive reach of these injustices. Tyre, Sidon, and Philistia were prominent coastal trading powers, notorious for their commercial activities, including the trafficking of human beings. God's declaration in Joel 3:7 directly challenges the perceived impunity of these powerful nations, asserting His moral authority and judicial oversight over all peoples, regardless of their economic or military might.
Key Themes: This verse powerfully contributes to several overarching themes in Joel and the broader prophetic literature. First, it underscores Divine Retribution and Justice, asserting God's commitment to righting wrongs and ensuring that perpetrators face consequences commensurate with their actions. The principle of "recompense upon your own head" is a clear articulation of the lex talionis (law of retaliation), emphasizing that the punishment will fit the crime, a theme echoed in passages like Obadiah 1:15. Second, it highlights the Restoration of God's People, promising deliverance for those who have been oppressed and scattered. "I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them" speaks to God's covenant faithfulness and His unwavering commitment to gather and restore His chosen people, a promise frequently found in prophetic books such as Jeremiah 30:3. Finally, the verse powerfully affirms God's Sovereignty over all nations and human history. Despite the heinous acts of injustice committed by powerful empires, God remains in ultimate control, capable of intervening directly to overturn human schemes and execute His righteous will, demonstrating that no act of oppression escapes His notice or His ultimate judgment.
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Joel 3:7 employs several powerful literary devices to convey its message of divine justice. The most prominent is Divine Oracle, as the verse presents a direct declaration from God ("I will raise them... I will return"). This immediate, first-person divine speech imbues the prophecy with absolute authority and certainty, emphasizing God's personal involvement in the events. Another key device is Retribution in Kind, often referred to as lex talionis or the "measure for measure" principle. The nations sold God's people, and God promises to "return your recompence upon your own head," implying that they will experience a reversal of fortune or suffering that mirrors the injustice they inflicted. This is reinforced by the use of Antithesis, contrasting the nations' act of selling God's people with God's act of raising them and returning the consequences upon the nations. Finally, the phrase "upon your own head" functions as an Idiom or Metonymy, where "head" stands for the entire person, emphasizing the personal and inescapable nature of the judgment.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Joel 3:7 is a profound declaration of God's righteous character, revealing Him as a God who actively intervenes to uphold justice and deliver the oppressed. It underscores the biblical principle that all actions, whether good or evil, have consequences, and that ultimately, God is the supreme Judge who will ensure that justice prevails. This verse speaks to God's unwavering commitment to His covenant people, promising their restoration even in the face of severe oppression. It also serves as a solemn warning to all who exploit or harm others, reminding them that divine retribution is certain and proportional to the offense. The "recompence" is not arbitrary punishment but a just return of what is due, highlighting God's moral order in the universe. This divine commitment to justice provides hope for the downtrodden and a clear standard for ethical conduct among nations and individuals.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Joel 3:7 offers profound comfort and a sobering warning. For those who have experienced injustice, oppression, or betrayal, this verse is a powerful reminder that God sees, God knows, and God will act. It assures us that our suffering is not unnoticed and that ultimately, a righteous God will bring about justice and restoration. This should cultivate a deep trust in God's sovereignty and His perfect timing, even when justice seems delayed. For those in positions of power or influence, or even in our daily interactions, the verse serves as a stark warning against exploitation, greed, and any form of injustice. It reminds us that every action has a consequence in God's economy, and that we will be held accountable for how we treat others, especially the vulnerable. It calls us to live justly, to advocate for the oppressed, and to participate in God's work of righteousness in the world, knowing that our God is a God of perfect recompense.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Who are "them" that God promises to "raise" and "return"?
Answer: "Them" refers to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, God's chosen covenant people, who had been sold into slavery and dispersed by the nations, specifically mentioned in the preceding verses (Joel 3:4-6) as Tyre, Sidon, and Philistia, who sold them to the Grecians. God's promise is to liberate these specific individuals and bring them back from their captivity, reversing the injustice they suffered. This is a promise of restoration for His covenant people, demonstrating His unwavering faithfulness to them, even when they face severe oppression.
What does "recompence upon your own head" truly mean in this context?
Answer: The phrase "recompence upon your own head" signifies a precise and personal divine retribution. "Recompence" (Hebrew gᵉmûwl) means a deserved return or repayment, indicating that the punishment will be proportional to the offense. "Upon your own head" emphasizes that the perpetrators themselves will directly experience the consequences of their actions, rather than the punishment falling on others or being avoided. It underscores the principle of divine justice where the wicked deeds committed by the nations against God's people will be returned to them in kind, a direct reversal of their fortunes and a just consequence for their exploitation. This concept is found throughout Scripture, such as in Psalm 7:16 and Obadiah 1:15.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
While Joel 3:7 speaks of a historical judgment and restoration for Israel, its ultimate fulfillment and deeper theological significance are found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Christ is the ultimate "raiser" and redeemer, not merely from physical captivity but from the bondage of sin and death. He is the one who liberates His people from the "place whither ye have sold them" – the spiritual slavery to sin and the dominion of darkness that humanity willingly entered (Romans 7:14). Through His atoning sacrifice on the cross, Jesus bore the "recompence" for humanity's sin, taking upon Himself the just wrath of God that was due "upon our own head" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Furthermore, Christ is the righteous Judge who will, at the end of the age, return to execute perfect justice, bringing recompense upon all who have oppressed His people and rejected His rule (Matthew 25:31-46; Revelation 20:11-15). Thus, Joel 3:7 foreshadows not only God's immediate justice but also the final, comprehensive justice and restoration ushered in by the Lamb of God, who will ultimately wipe away every tear and establish a new heaven and new earth where righteousness dwells (Revelation 21:4).