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A painting of a wheat harvest under a blue sky with drifting cloud: a woman in a pink headscarf bends low to cut the standing grain with a sickle, while a young man in white stands behind her whetting the blade of his scythe.
Jules Breton, The Harvest, 1865. Public domain.

Joel 2:18 to 27 · Passage · Failure and Restoration

The Years the Locusts Ate

Joel 2:18 to 27 is the LORD's answer to Judah after a plague of locusts stripped the land.

The verb of “I will repay” in Joel 2:25 is the verb the law of Exodus 22 uses for the full restitution owed for a field burned by fire.

Joel 2:25 BSB
I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts—the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust—My great army that I sent against you.
The passage
Joel 2:18 to 27, Joel 1:1 to 20, Joel 2:1 to 17
Book
Joel
When
between 875 and 845 BC (proposed)
Hold in memory
Joel 2:13

Summary

Joel 1 records swarms of locusts and a drought that stripped Judah of grain, wine and oil. The prophet calls the people to fast and weep and come back to the LORD. Then the LORD takes pity on His land and His people. He drives the invader off, sends the rains and fills the threshing floors again, and He pledges to make good the years the swarms consumed.

  • The ruin Joel records came on a whole people as the LORD's discipline, sent by His hand.
  • S. R. Driver and C. F. Keil read the locusts as insects, and Jerome and Albert Barnes as an army under their figure; Keil dates Joel under Joash of Judah, and Driver after the exile.
  • The LORD's restoring answers a people called to return to Him, and the restoring itself is His work alone.

A Land Stripped Bare

The prophet's lament and his call to the priests stand before the reply.

The Years the Locusts Ate studies Joel 2:18 to 27 in the setting of the whole book. It belongs to the trial of failure and restoration, because Joel's people lost their harvests and were promised them again. Its question is what God promised to give back in Joel 2:25, and to whom He promised it.

It sets the losses of Joel 1 beside the gifts of Joel 2 and reads the verb of repayment. It asks whether a believer may take the promise of repaid years for his own life. It gives the readings of the commentators on two disputed matters.

Joel 1:4 names four kinds of locust, each eating what the one before it had left.

The prophet calls the priests to put on sackcloth, proclaim a fast and cry out to the LORD, because the Day of the LORD is near (Joel 1:13 to 15). In Joel 2:12 the LORD Himself says, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning.”

So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. And He relents from sending disaster.
Joel 2:13BSB

The verse stands here because it rests the call to return on the LORD's own character, gracious, compassionate and ready to relent.

The verb of “return” in Joel 2:12 and Joel 2:13 is shuv, and Joel 2:14 uses the same verb of the LORD Himself: “Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him.”

What the Plague Took and What the LORD Gives

The reply uses the lament's own words of field, vine and granary.

Every gift of Joel 2:19 to 24 answers a loss named in Joel 1 or Joel 2:17.

What was lostThe loss in the Berean wordsThe answer in the Berean words
Grain, new wine and oilJoel 1:10, “For the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, and the oil fails.”Joel 2:19, “Behold, I will send you grain, new wine, and oil, and by them you will be satisfied.”
The vine and the fig treeJoel 1:12, “The grapevine is dried up, and the fig tree is withered”Joel 2:22, “the trees bear their fruit, and the fig tree and vine yield their best.”
WaterJoel 1:20, “Even the beasts of the field pant for You, for the streams of water have dried up”Joel 2:23, “He sends you showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before.”
The stores of grainJoel 1:17, “the storehouses are in ruins; the granaries are broken down, for the grain has withered away.”Joel 2:24, “The threshing floors will be full of grain, and the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.”
JoyJoel 1:12, “Surely the joy of mankind has dried up.”Joel 2:21, “Do not be afraid, O land; rejoice and be glad, for the LORD has done great things.”
Standing among the nationsJoel 2:17, “do not make Your heritage a reproach, an object of scorn among the nations.”Joel 2:19, “I will never again make you a reproach among the nations.”
A table of six matched rows, the lament's words in the second column and the reply's in the third, each in the Berean text.

Barnes read the answer as one sentence of judgment undone point by point, from the land to the beasts to the people.

“The reversal of the whole former sentence is continued up to man. The beasts of the field ‘groaned, were perplexed, cried’ unto God; now they are bidden, ‘be not afraid;’ before, ‘the pastures of the wilderness were devoured by fire;’ now, they ‘spring’ with fresh tender life; before, ‘the fig tree’ was ‘withered, the vine languished;’ now, they should ‘yield their strength, put out their full’ vigor. For God was reconciled to His people; and all things served them, serving Him.”

Albert Barnes · Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869) · on Joel 2:22Evangelical

The LORD Answers His People

The reply runs from the LORD's pity to the food and thanks of His people.

Then the LORD became jealous for His land, and He spared His people.
Joel 2:18BSB

The verse stands here because it is the hinge of the book, where the lament gives way to the LORD's reply.

The northern army I will drive away from you, banishing it to a barren and desolate land, its front ranks into the Eastern Sea, and its rear guard into the Western Sea. And its stench will rise; its foul odor will ascend. For He has done great things.
Joel 2:20BSB

The verse stands here because it names the enemy the reply removes and the seas where it will perish.

Strong's Concordance glosses shalam, the verb of repayment in Joel 2:25, “to be safe (in mind, body or estate)”. It stands 116 times in the Old Testament, and the King James Version renders it repay, restore and make restitution, among other words.

The promise of Joel 2:26 is plain food and thanks: “You will have plenty to eat, until you are satisfied. You will praise the name of the LORD your God, who has worked wonders for you.”

Can Lost Years Come Back?

Teachers have asked what Joel 2:25 promises to a believer who has lost or wasted years.

C. F. Keil, in his commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets (English edition 1868), took “the years” to mean “the produce of the years”, which God would repay through bountiful harvests.

Charles Spurgeon preached on the verse in 1886 and said that lost years “can never be restored literally”. He reasoned that “the locusts did not eat the years”, only “the fruits of the years' labor”. Yet he held that “The fruits of wasted years may yet be yours”.

Matthew Henry records how some expositors read the chapter's promises.

“Some expositors understand these promises figuratively, as pointing at gospel-grace, and having their accomplishment in the abundant comforts that are treasured up for believers in the covenant of grace and the satisfaction of soul they have therein.”

Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Joel 2:26Puritan

A believer who takes Joel 2:25 for his own lost years reads it by analogy, as Spurgeon did. The analogy rests on the LORD who restores, and the verse gives no pledge that each loss returns in the same form.

Readings of the Locusts and of Joel's Date

The readings come from the church fathers and from later commentaries and reference works.

Real locusts, described as a poet describes themS. R. Driver; C. F. Keil

S. R. Driver, in The Books of Joel and Amos (Cambridge Bible, 1897), held that Joel describes real locusts. He called most of the arguments for allegory “very inconclusive”. Keil listed Rufinus, Jarchi, Ibn Ezra and Kimchi among those who read the plague literally. He found in the description “an ideal character surpassing the reality”.

Against it, the northern army of Joel 2:20 suits an invader, and Driver granted that “Locusts, as a rule, invade Palestine from the South”. He wrote that “A difficulty remains, however, unquestionably in the term ‘the northerner’”.

An invading army under the figure of locustsJerome; Theodoret; Hengstenberg; Albert Barnes

Keil reports this reading in the Aramaic Targum at Joel 2:25 and in Ephrem the Syrian, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret and Jerome. He adds that Hengstenberg and Hävernick took the four swarms as Chaldea, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. Albert Barnes, in his note on Joel 2:20, argued that “the Northern is no name for the locust which infested Palestine, since it came from the south”.

Against it, Driver quoted W. Robertson Smith that the comparison of the swarms to an army “would be inconceivably lame, if a literal army was already concealed under the figure of the locusts.”

An early date, under Joash of JudahC. F. Keil; W. Volck

Keil placed Joel before Amos, in the first thirty years of Joash of Judah, while Jehoiada the high priest advised the king. He argued that “even Amos (Amos 1:2) commences his prophecy with a passage from Joel”. W. Volck, in the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, wrote that most scholars placed Joel “between 875 and 845 B.C.”

Against it, J. F. McCurdy's note to the same article answered that “It is more likely that Joel” borrowed from Amos than Amos from Joel.

A date after the exileS. R. Driver; J. F. McCurdy

Driver judged that the book “may be placed most safely shortly after Haggai” and the first eight chapters of Zechariah, about 500 B.C., and he allowed that it may be later still. McCurdy wrote that “recent critics almost unanimously place it in the fourth century B.C.”

Against it, Volck noted that the peoples Joel names include neither Syrians, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians nor Assyrians, and that the book stands among the early prophets in the Hebrew and Greek canon.

The LORD in the Midst of His People

The last verse of the reply names its purpose.

Then you will know that I am present in Israel and that I am the LORD your God, and there is no other. My people will never again be put to shame.
Joel 2:27BSB

The verse stands here because its first words, “Then you will know”, show what the harvests are for.

The next promise of the book, “I will pour out My Spirit on all people” (Joel 2:28), is the text Peter quoted at Pentecost (Acts 2:16 to 17).

Read The Three Pentecosts

Sources

Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.

  1. STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
  2. STEP Bible TBESH lexicon (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the glosses of James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890)
  3. S. R. Driver, The Books of Joel and Amos, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1897; stereotyped edition 1901), Introduction, sections 3 and 4.
  4. C. F. Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets, trans. James Martin (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1868), introduction to Joel and on Joel 2:24 to 27.
  5. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 6 (Funk and Wagnalls; the Baker Book House reprint of 1953), article Joel by W. Volck, with a note by J. F. McCurdy.
  6. Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Joel 2:22.
  7. Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Joel 2:20.
  8. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Joel 2:26.
  9. Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2081, “Truth Stranger Than Fiction” (1886)

Every cited work: the sources registry →

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