Joel3chapter 3

The valley's name is its meaning: Jehoshaphat means the LORD judges. No valley of that name is known from the geography of the period, and the text pairs it with a second name, the valley of decision, which suggests the name is a description of what happens there rather than a map reference.

The specific charge against Tyre, Sidon, and Philistia is slave trading, and it was a real business. Phoenician merchants ran the Mediterranean carrying trade, and selling captives from inland wars to buyers overseas was a standard part of it. The buyers named are the Greeks, far to the west, and the sellers are told their own children will be sold to the Sabeans, the caravan traders of southern Arabia — the far end of the other trade road.

The famous line about beating plowshares into swords is a deliberate reversal of the promise in Isaiah and Micah. The tools named are the working iron of a village: a plough point and a pruning hook, both reforged by the same smith who made them. Joel tells the nations to mobilise every scrap of metal they have, and it will not be enough.

The harvest images at the end are two ways of saying the same thing. The sickle is put in because the grain is ripe, and the winepress is trodden because the vats overflow — treading was done barefoot in a rock-cut basin, and the juice ran through a channel into a lower vat.