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This tiny book is a favorite among the "end of the world" crowd. It has a fair amount of material about God closing down shop and settling all accounts with those he considers "bad." I found a few rather interesting items to comment upon.
Joel 1:13 - Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests; wail, you
ministers of the altar. Come, pass the night in sackcloth, you
ministers of my God! Grain offering and drink offering are withheld
from the house of your God.
Here again, we see that those who were in
charge of running this religion were dependent for their lives and
meals on the support of the people. Instead of telling the priests to
earn their food, an attempt is made here to shame the people into
handing over their tithes more faithfully.
Joel 2:12-14 - Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all
your heart, with fasting and weeping, and with mourning; rend your
hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD your God, for he is
gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast
love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn
and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a
drink offering for the LORD your God?
Well, this starts out pretty much the way many
orders to "repent of sins" that you see in the Bible. But the last
sentence is truly odd, saying that there's merely a POSSIBILITY that
God will be affected by the repentance of the people! I wonder what
this author thought the odds were?
Joel 2:30,31 - I will show portents in the heavens and on the
earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned
to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day
of the LORD comes.
Now, this sounds impressive at first, but what
sort of "portents" are these? We're talking about wars, which there
have always been rather a surfeit of, and eclipses. There was a solar
eclipse just back in August 1999, and they happen pretty regularly.
During most lunar eclipses, the moon turns dark red, so that's not
much of a sign. I would have thought God could come up with better
signs than stuff that always happens anyway!
Joel 3:18-21 - In that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
the hills shall flow with milk, and all the stream beds of Judah
shall flow with water; a fountain shall come forth from the house of
the LORD and water the Wadi Shittim. Egypt shall become a desolation
and Edom a wilderness, because of the violence done to the people of
Judah, in whose land they have shed innocent blood. But Judah shall
be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations.
Well, it's only natural to daydream about your
homeland being made "perfect" in the future. I think it's
interesting, though, that the only enemies this says will be punished
for harming Israel are Egypt and Edom. What about all the others who
were going to harm Israel in the future as Joel saw it- like Babylon,
Rome, Spain and Germany? And what's this deal of condemning them for
the shedding of "innocent blood?" Weren't those enemies doing what
God made them do? Why should it be OK for Israel to shed blood under
God's orders, but no one else? Of course, there are plenty of Bible
verses that state that there are NO innocents, so we must remain
puzzled by the questions here, I suppose.
