Joel: Your Sons and Your Daughters

At a Glance

Who wrote it: Joel son of Pethuel. Nothing else is known about him.

When: Unknown. Guesses range from the 800s to the 300s BC. Many scholars place it after the exile.

Where it fits: Joel names no king, so the history books cannot place him. If, as many scholars think, he wrote after the exile, he belongs with Ezra and Nehemiah, when the rebuilt Temple was in use again (Ezra 6:15–18).

Where I quote it: Never directly. Peter quoted it at Pentecost, about fifty days after I died (Acts 2:17–21).

If you only read three chapters: It has only three. Read all of it.

Words to Know

Locusts — grasshoppers that swarm in the millions and strip every green thing.

Day of the LORD — the coming day when God acts to judge and to set things right.

Spirit — God’s breath and power, poured out like water.

The Book in Brief

Joel is a short poem in three chapters. The book names the prophet only as the son of Pethuel. He speaks to the priests, the elders and everyone in the land.

Chapter 1 describes a plague of locusts that strips the fields bare, followed by drought. Joel calls the priests, the elders and all the people to fast and cry out to God, because the disaster is a sign that the day of the LORD is near.

In chapter 2 Joel describes a vast army, like the locusts, advancing on the city. He calls everyone to come back to God with all their heart. God answers with pity and promises to restore the harvest. Then God promises to pour out his Spirit on all people, sons and daughters, old men and young men, servants and handmaids. Signs will appear in the sky, and all who call on the LORD’s name will be saved.

Chapter 3 is a vision of God gathering the nations in the valley of Jehoshaphat to judge them for what they did to his people. It ends with Judah restored, a spring flowing from the LORD’s house, and the LORD living in Zion.

Joel begins with a disaster you can still see in parts of the world. Locusts come, wave after wave, and eat everything. What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten. What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten (Joel 1:4). Then drought. The grain offerings stop because there is no grain.

Joel sees the locusts as an army, and the army as a warning of the day of the LORD.

Go deeperHow big a locust swarm can be

Joel names four kinds of insect: the swarming locust, the great locust, the grasshopper and the caterpillar (Joel 1:4). The four Hebrew words may name four kinds, or four stages in a locust’s growth from wingless young to flying adult, or simply four ways of saying that nothing was left. Scholars are not sure.¹

Whatever Joel meant, a real swarm of desert locusts is enormous. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says that one square kilometer of swarm can hold 40 to 80 million adult locusts, that such a swarm can eat in a day as much food as about 35,000 people, and that swarms can travel up to about 150 kilometers in a day with the wind.²

That is why Joel pictures them as an army. They march in ranks, they climb the wall, and nothing turns them aside (Joel 2:7–9). My people had known the danger since their days in Egypt, where locusts covered the whole land and left nothing green (Exodus 10:12–15).

Tear your heart

Then he calls the people back, and he gives them a line many churches read every year on Ash Wednesday:

Yet even now, says the LORD, turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. Tear your heart, and not your garments, and turn to the LORD, your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness (Joel 2:12–13).

Tearing your clothes was how my people showed grief. Joel says God does not want the gesture. God wants the heart. And the reason to come back is the description of God that God gave Moses in Exodus: a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth (Exodus 34:6).

All flesh

Then comes the passage this book is known for.

I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions. And also on the servants and on the handmaids in those days, I will pour out my Spirit (Joel 2:28–29).

Look at who is on that list. Daughters. Old men. And servants, male and female. In a world where prophecy usually belonged to a few men, Joel said God’s spirit would fall on everyone, starting with the people at the bottom.

About fifty days after I died, my friends were gathered in Jerusalem at the festival of Pentecost, and something happened to them that they could only describe as wind and fire. Peter stood up and explained it with Joel: This is what has been spoken through the prophet Joel (Acts 2:16–18). The servants were included in his quotation, though in Acts they became God’s own: on my servants and on my handmaidens (Acts 2:18).

Swords, again

Joel has one line that turns another prophet upside down.

Isaiah and Micah both promised that the nations would beat their swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3). Joel, calling the nations to a final battle, says: Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears (Joel 3:10).

Same words, reversed. My scriptures held both. There are times people are called to war and times they are called to peace, and the prophets did not always agree about which time it was. I knew which one I was preaching.

Go deeperWhy nobody can say when Joel was written

Other prophets open by telling you when they spoke (Hosea 1:1; Amos 1:1). Joel does not. He names no king and no year, so scholars have to date the book from clues.

The clues for a late date. The Temple is standing, with priests serving and daily offerings that have just been cut off by the locusts (Joel 1:9, 13). No king is mentioned, only priests and elders. My people have been scattered among the nations and the land divided (Joel 3:2), and the children of Judah have been sold to the Greeks (Joel 3:6). Ezekiel names the Greeks as slave traders with Tyre in the 500s BC (Ezekiel 27:13). And Joel echoes many other writers, among them Isaiah and Micah, Obadiah, Amos, and the words about a God who is gracious and relents, which also appear in Jonah (Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). A writer who echoes so much was probably late. For these reasons many scholars place Joel after the exile, around 400 BC.³

The clues for an early date. In the Hebrew scroll of the Twelve, Joel stands second, between Hosea and Amos, and some scholars have followed that order and put him in the 800s BC. But the Greek Bible puts Joel fourth, after Micah, so the order was not fixed. Joel 3:16 and Amos 1:2 begin with the same words, The LORD will roar from Zion, and that link may explain why the two books stand side by side. Some scholars turn the echoes around and say that Amos and Obadiah borrowed from Joel.⁴

Nobody has settled it. The book teaches the same thing either way.

The moon turned into blood

Joel also says that before the great day, the sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood (Joel 2:31).

When I spoke on the Mount of Olives about the end of the Temple, I used pictures like these, drawn from Isaiah and Joel: the sun darkened, the moon not giving its light, the stars falling (Mark 13:24–25). They were the language prophets used for the fall of empires.

In 2014 and 2015, a series of total lunar eclipses made the moon look red four times, and a popular preacher sold a bestselling book claiming it was a sign from Joel.⁵ Nothing happened. Red moons come and go. The prophets were not giving you an astronomy calendar.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Joel 2:28–29, then Acts 2:14–18.

You will find: God’s spirit promised to daughters and servants, and Peter quoting it at Pentecost.

Then compare Joel 3:10 with Isaiah 2:4.

The Short Version

• Joel saw a locust plague as a warning of the day of the LORD.
• “Tear your heart, and not your garments”: God wants the heart, not the gesture.
• God promises to pour out the spirit on all flesh, including daughters and servants. Peter quoted it at Pentecost.
• Joel reverses Isaiah: plowshares into swords.
• A moon turned into blood is the prophets’ language, not an eclipse schedule.