Joel 1:1

The prophets also spoke with one voice and with the highest authority. Take the first of them: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken" (Isa. 1:2). The minor prophets begin with "The word of the LORD that came to Hosea." Joel, Jonah, Micah, and Zephaniah open with almost the same words. Amos says five times over in his first chapter, "Thus says the LORD." Peter says of them all, "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21).

Joel means "Jehovah is God." This name comes up often in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 8:2; 1 Chronicles 4:35, 5:4, 8, 12, etc.). The prophet Joel was the son of Pethuel. People have guessed a great deal about who he was… Some Jewish writers say that Pethuel was Samuel, because Samuel had a son named Joel. But the sons of Samuel were evildoers, so this is wrong. The book itself does not give a single hint about his personal history.

There have been many guesses as to when Joel lived. Some scholars date the book around 400 BC or even later. Other writers think Joel lived in the 9th century BC, perhaps in the days of king Jehoash in Judah… Scripture is silent about the time of writing, and we ought to respect that silence.

The occasion of the book and prophecy of Joel was a terrible disaster that swept over the land of Israel. Swarms of locusts had fallen on the land and stripped it of everything green. There was also a great drought. All of it was a chastisement from the Lord. So in the first chapter we hear old and young, priests and people, mourning and turning back to God.

The ruin all around them matched the ruin that sin had worked inside them. The people had wandered far from the LORD, and their condition was such that He could take no pleasure in them.

Like Hosea, Joel is one of the earliest prophets, earlier even than Jonah. But he differs in one basic way. Hosea looks at the whole people. God led Joel to keep to that part of them which outwardly clung to the house of David and to the ordinances of the law. This gives us a much smaller field. For that very reason it makes what he does notice clearer and sharper, and his vivid style helps too.

The great subject of our prophet is the day of the LORD… Like all the prophets, Joel takes some present fact, or something close at hand, as the groundwork for what was still future… No prophecy of Scripture explains itself on its own; it is built so that it cannot. To limit it to the past would be an oversight. To set the future aside would destroy the most important purpose God has in it.

I believe it is the blessed Lord, in the spirit of prophecy, identifying Himself with His people in their sorrow. He Himself feels the pressure that is on them. He gives voice to the feelings that the Spirit of God would produce in them through the trial.