Joel 3:1-21
And now we reach Joel 3. The Lord comes with a recompence. Other scriptures speak of this, and tell of the Lord’s recompence of the controversy of Zion—the recompence, too, of His temple. But the same idea fills the mind on reading this chapter. Now, as the end is contemplated, things are changed. The last are first. The captive is the spoiler. Israel is the head, and not the tail, as was pledged in the patriarchal age of the nation, when Abraham was sought by the Gentile, and he, in the presence of the king of Gerar, the chief man of the earth in that day, prepared the sacrifice, made the covenant, and gave the gifts (Gen. 21).
God has taken the whole of the interests of His people upon Himself. He is summoning the hosts of the nations to the battle, as once He did the host of Sisera, captain of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitudes, to the river Kishon, (Judg. 4) to meet their doom. The plowshare must become a sword, the pruning-hook a spear (Joel 3:10), until the Gentiles, in the height of their pride, and in the strength of their resources, like Egypt at the Red Sea, meet the day of the Lord—the judgment of God in the valley of Jehoshaphat, (Joel 3:11-12) at the hand of his descending mighty ones. And the sun and the moon and the stars shall then be in darkness—not in the light, for which they were formed, and by which they were filled; and the heavens and the earth shall then be shaken, instead of pursuing their even, steady course, in which they had been making their rounds for thousands of years: and all this to witness the terrors of that day (Joel 3:15).
For the end is come. Judgment is to clear the scene (Joel 3:9-17) and then glory to fill it (Joel 3:18-21). The Lord is to dwell in Zion, and Judah and Jerusalem to be at rest and in safety. The days of Solomon the peaceful are to be realized in their millennial fullness, and the earth itself be a quiet habitation.