Joel 3: Judgment Clears Then Glory Fills

From: Minor Prophets

Narrator: Mike Genone

Joel 3 • 2 min. read • grade level: 9

Joel 3:1-21¹For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, ²I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. ³And they have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink. ⁴Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me a recompence? and if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head; ⁵Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things: ⁶The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. ⁷Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your own head: ⁸And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it. ⁹Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: ¹⁰Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. ¹¹Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. ¹²Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ¹³Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. ¹⁴Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. ¹⁵The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. ¹⁶The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. ¹⁷So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more. ¹⁸And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim. ¹⁹Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land. ²⁰But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. ²¹For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed: for the Lord dwelleth in Zion. (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 3:10¹⁰Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. (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 3:11-12¹¹Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. ¹²Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. (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 3:15¹⁵The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. (Joel 3:15)).