“THE day of the Lord,” a well-known and familiar Jewish expression, denoting Judgment, is the burden of this solemn book. Judah and Jerusalem are in the foreground of the prophecy.
Chapter 1 refers to one of those truly terrible and greatly-dreaded locust incursions so common in the East We can have but little idea how dreadful such a plague must be in a land wholly agricultural, and to a people almost entirely dependent upon the produce of the soil.
Our prophet then refers to an actual visitation of this character in his own day, using it, however, as warning and pledge of a more awful and desolating judgment, when the day of Jehovah at hand would sweep the land with the besom of destruction.
Chapter 2 transports into the future crisis for Israel. The Assyrian, or great northern invader of Israel―at least of Judah, when restored to her land―is here pointed out. The march, numbers, warlike appearance, devastating power and ferocity of Israel’s latter-day enemies, are here graphically portrayed. But the trumpets are sounded of alarm, for the battle is the Lord’s (verse 1), and also for true national humiliation before Jehovah (verse 15). Then the northern army is driven off (Sennacherib’s invasion of Judea type of all this), and the land and people rejoice, for Jehovah dwells in the midst. The Holy Ghost will then be poured out upon “all flesh,” of which Pentecost was a pledge, and not fulfillment (Act 2).
Chapter 3. Judah and Jerusalem are specially remembered in the day of Jehovah, but remembered in richest grace; that day will overwhelm in judgment the whole earth. The haughty Gentiles are summoned to the conflict. They assemble in Judea, which then becomes the battlefield of the nations. Jehovah roars and utters His voice, and the people melt away in judgment; but “Judah shall dwell forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.”