The word of the Lord that was with Joel son of Petuel.

Hear this, elders, and listen, all inhabitants of the land. Was this in your days, or in the days of your fathers? Have such grave misfortunes, like those which I am about to describe, ever been witnessed in history?

Because of the powerful impression it will leave behind, you will speak about these events and pass down the account from one generation to the next: Tell your children about it, and your children will tell it to their children, and their children to another generation.

A tremendous swarm of locusts will descend upon the land and consume all its crops: The remnant from the caterpillar [gazam], the desert locust[arbeh] ate; and the remnant from the desert locust, the migratory locust [yelek] ate; the remnant from the migratory locust, the Moroccan locust [h·] ate. The gazam, arbeh, yelek, and ĥasil are various species of locusts that together will destroy all that grows from the ground. Alternatively, these are not distinct species of locusts but different stages in the life of a single type of locust. In any case, the verse means that the swarm of locusts will remain in the land for a substantial period of time.

Awaken from your inebriation, drunkards, and weep; wail over the nectar, all drinkers of wine, for it is eliminated from your mouths. All the wine is spent. Even drunkards, who are not fully lucid, will be unable to ignore the immense damage caused by the locusts.

For a people has come up upon my land, mighty and without number. The prophet compares the colossal swarm of locusts to an enormous military offensive. Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has the canines, or molars, of a young lion.

Locusts eat not only soft crops; they have the extraordinary ability to devour almost anything: They have rendered my vine a desolation and my fig tree an outrage; they have stripped it bare and cast it away. Rather than consuming the trees themselves, locusts gnaw at the bark until the wood of the vines and fig trees is exposed, and as a result its branches have turned white. Alternatively, the verse means that the trees will become so dry that they will turn white.

The tragedy will be so terrible that Israel will have no recourse but to wail. Lament like a young woman girded with sackcloth who mourns for the husband of her youth.

Meal offerings and libations, which are produced from vegetation, have been eliminated from the House of the Lord; the priests, servants of the Lord, mourn. In general, people would bring to the Temple storehouses anything they could afford. Due to the plague of locusts, the Temple’s reserves will be entirely depleted, as available crops will become so scarce that people will stop bringing meal offerings and libations.

Rather than attacking the soil, locusts settle upon the crops in the field. Consequently, after such an enormous swarm of locusts ravages all the vegetation, the field itself is plundered, the land forlorn; as the grain was plundered, the new wine dried up, the oil ill-fated.

Farmers, be dismayed, vintners, wail, over wheat and over barley that have died out; because the harvest of the field is lost.

The vine has become dry and withered and the fig tree is ill-fated; the pomegranate tree, as well as the date palm and apple tree, all the fruit-bearing trees of the field have withered, because gladness has withered from the children of man.

Gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament, priests; wail, servants of the altar; come, sleep in sackcloth, servants of my God, for meal offerings and libations are withheld from the House of your God.

Set, establish, a fast, convene an assembly of the people, gather elders, all the inhabitants of the land to the House of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord over the impending calamity. A fast day is observed not merely by refraining from food and drink; it is also a day on which the community gathers together to hear speeches of admonishment, and it is also a day for crying out.

Alas for the day on which the locusts will arrive! As the day of the Lord is apparently near, when God will carry out His judgment and punish the people with a plague of locusts. Alternatively, here the phrase “day of the Lord” refers to the Day of Judgment at the End of Days. The impending plague of locusts renders us fearful of the even more terrible ultimate judgment before God. And as rapine will arrive from the Almighty.

Is it not food eliminated before our eyes, have not joy and exultation ceased even from the House of our God?

The seeds grew moldy and rotted, even the ones buried under their mounds of earth; storehouses became desolate, silos for storing crops were destroyed, because the grain withered.

How fiercely the animals groan, herds of cattle are confused, because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep, which are more mobile than cattle, are damaged and made desolate. The locusts will obliterate the pastures for herd and cattle.

I call to You, Lord, for this is not a blow that affects a limited area alone, but a fire that has consumed the oases of the wilderness, and a flame that has seared all the trees of the field. The locusts’ voracious appetites and tremendous expansion are like an unstoppable fire.

The animals of the field bellow to You, for the water courses have dried up, and fire has consumed the oases of the wilderness. Apparently the Land of Israel also suffered from a severe drought at that time.

Sound the shofar in Zion and sound a blast on My holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, as the day of the Lord is coming, as it, the day on which God will smite the land with locusts, is near.

It will be a day of darkness and gloom, a day of cloud and fog, the swarm of locusts will be like the dawn darkness spread over the mountains; it, the locusts, will be like a numerous and mighty people; never has there been its like on this scale, and there will never be again for the years of generation upon generation.

Before it a fire consumes, and after it a flame sears. The locusts will devour everything, as though the swarm were both preceded and followed by a fire. The land was like the Garden of Eden before it, before the appearance of the locusts, and after it, it will be a desolate wilderness; indeed, there was no escape from it.

Its appearance is like the appearance of horses. Indeed, the shape of a locust’s head and back resemble those of a horse. And like a stampede of horsemen, that is, men on horseback, so they run; they charge forward in that same manner.

Rather than emitting sounds from vocal chords as human beings do, locusts create sound through their movements. The movement of a swarm of locusts is like the sound of chariots; on mountaintops they leap. The rustle of millions of locusts moving in unison can be heard across great distances. And it, the sound, is like the popping and crackling sound of a flame of fire consuming straw, like a mighty people arrayed for war.

Before it peoples will be terrified; out of this tremendous fear all faces will be gathered to a cauldron. All faces will be shriveled and lose their vitality as if cooked in a cauldron. Alternatively, all faces will be blackened like the sides of a cauldron.

They will run like the valiant; like men of war they will scale the wall. Locusts are capable of climbing walls due to their hard protective coating, known as the cuticle; each will go in his own way and they will not twist their paths. Each locust follows its own path, and the swarm thereby covers an enormous area, like a large encampment.

One will not jostle another; each will proceed on his own track. Locusts do not seem to act as mindless creatures. The steady progress of millions of locusts eating and eradicating everything in their path is truly impressive. They will fall upon weapons. Weapons do not deter them at all; they settle upon them, but they will not be wounded. Even in modern times, mankind has failed to develop effective defenses against a swarm of locusts; certainly in the days of the prophets there was nothing that could halt their devastation.

The locusts advance at a steady, unstoppable pace. They stomp in the city; all hear the flapping of their wings; they run on the wall; they go up and into the houses; they enter through the windows like a thief and devour everything inside.

The earth shook before it; the heavens quaked. When millions of locusts flew en masse, the sun and the moon were darkened and the stars withdrew their shining, as though the locusts gathered in the light of the heavenly bodies or removed their light. The swarm of locusts is similar to a thick cloud of darkness that arrives from afar and blots out the daylight.

The Lord projected His voice before His army, the locusts that He sends forth, for His camp is very great, for the executor of His word is mighty; for the day of the Lord, on which He brings the locusts upon you is great and very awesome; who can bear it? Alternatively, the day of the Lord refers to the Day of Judgment at the End of Days, and the verse means that the plague of locusts serves as a prelude to that awesome day. One who has faced this plague can understand something of the overwhelming fear that people will experience at the End of Days.

Even now, although disaster has already struck and there is no end in sight – the utterance of the Lord – return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with lamentation.

Rend your hearts but not your garments; rending garments is the customary expression of mourning. Witnesses to the land’s utter destruction by locusts will certainly mourn, but the prophet stresses that they should rend their hearts in sincere repentance rather than perform the superficial gesture of tearing their garments. And return to the Lord your God, as He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and reconsiders harm.

Who knows? Perhaps, after you repent, He will relent and reconsider His decree, and leave a blessing of some produce after it, the locusts, from which it will be possible to bring a meal offering or a libation to the Lord your God. Then you will be able to bring a thanks offering to God, which includes meal offerings and libations.

Sound the shofar in Zion, set the day as a fast, convene an assembly;

gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble elders, gather children and babes who suck at breasts. Bring together a large gathering of all the people. Let even the groom emerge from his chamber, and the bride from her canopy. Everyone must share in the communal grief.

Let the priests, servants of the Lord, weep between the Hall and the altar, and let them say: Pity your people, Lord, and do not give over Your inheritance to disgrace to have the nations rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples: Where is their God? Since the land will be completely emptied of its produce, it will be vulnerable to conquest by foreign nations. Even if there were storehouses where a portion of the produce had somehow been protected from the locusts, this would not be enough to sustain the needs of the entire nation. Consequently, after suffering the severe blow delivered by the locusts, the weakened nation will be unable to defend itself from invading peoples.

The prophet describes what will occur if the people repent: However, due to Israel’s disgrace among the nations, the Lord was zealous for His land after its destruction by the locusts, and He had compassion for His people.

The Lord answered the prayer of the priests and said to His people: Behold, I am once again sending you the grain and the wine and the oil, and you will be satisfied with it. I assure you that since you had to request the assistance of the surrounding nations due to the severe famine, I will not render you a disgrace among the nations. This is referring specifically to the disgrace Israel felt because they required the produce of other nations to survive.

I will distance the northerner, the northern locusts, from you. Although locusts originate on the African continent and generally approach the Land of Israel from the west or the south and spread out from there, in exceptional cases locusts arrive from the north after following an irregular path. And I will banish him from you, to an arid and desolate land, its face toward the eastern sea, the Dead Sea, and its rear toward the western sea, the Mediterranean Sea. The prophet informs the people that a wind will sweep the locusts in the direction of the arid desert to the south of the Dead Sea. As a result, the locusts will begin to perish; its stench will arise, because it has performed great, terrible, actions in the land. Millions of dead insects will produce a tremendously powerful and foul odor that will extend over great distances.

Fear not, land; exult and rejoice, for the Lord has exceeded in His actions to counter the devastation wrought by the locusts.

Fear not, animals of the field, the shortage of produce caused by the locusts, for the oases have grown grass, for the tree has borne its fruit, the fig tree and the vine have yielded their riches.

Children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God, as He has given you the early rain in charity, as a gift, an act of kindness. And He brings down for you the early rain and the later rain in the first month. The plague of locusts will apparently occur during a drought, and they will obliterate the few crops that are left in the fields. But when spring arrives a sudden change will take place: There will be an abundance of rainfall in the month of Nisan, and new crops will grow.

The threshing floor will be full of grain, and the vats will overflow with wine and oil.

I will repay you for the years that were eaten by the desert locust, the migratory locust, the Moroccan locust, and the caterpillar, various types of locusts or different stages of a locust’s growth (see commentary on 1:4), that constituted My great army that I sent among you.

You will eat, eating to satisfaction, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has acted with you wondrously, and My people will not be ashamed again, forever. Following the devastating blow of the locusts, a redemption will begin that will be greater than anything that came before it.

You will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God and there is no other, and My people will not be ashamed forever.

Thereafter it will be, when everything returns to its proper state, that I will pour My spirit upon all flesh. I will reveal My glory to all, and I will bestow divine inspiration upon them. And your sons and your daughters will prophesy; your elders will dream prophetic dreams, despite the fact that elderly people are usually settled in their minds and ways, and your young men will see visions.

I will pour My spirit also upon the slaves and upon the maidservants in those days. The world will be full of prophets.

In preparation for the day of God, I will set wonders in the heavens and on the earth: blood, fire, and pillars of smoke.

The sun will be transformed into darkness, so that it will not be visible, and the color of the moon will turn into that of blood. On rare occasions, atmospheric conditions on Earth cause the moon to appear red. All of this will occur before the advent of the great and terrible day of the Lord.

It shall be that anyone who proclaims the name of the Lord will escape, as on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be a refuge, as the Lord said, and this salvation will be among the remnant, the few whom the Lord calls.

For behold, in those days and at that time, when I will bring back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,

I will gather all the nations and I will take them down to the Valley of Yehoshafat; I will execute justice with them about My people, My inheritance, Israel, whom they dispersed among the nations, and they divided My land.

They cast lots over the captives among My people, and they gave the boy for the harlot. The bigger and stronger the captive, the greater his worth. Consequently, a young boy, who could not fetch a high price, would be sold for an encounter with a harlot. And they sold the girl for wine, and drank.

I will also execute judgment upon certain peoples: Indeed, what value are you for Me, Tyre and Sidon, and all the districts of Philistia? Do you offer me any benefit? Are you benefitting me? Speedily I will return your benefit upon your head.

This will be your just punishment, for you took My silver and My gold, and you brought My precious valuables to your palaces.

You sold the captured children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem to the children of the Hellenes, the Greeks, in order to distance them from their border. Tyre, Sidon, and the Philistine cities all engaged in extensive maritime commerce. Captives from Judah were taken there and sold to places as far off as the Greek city-states of the Aegean, which the prophet regards as remote.

Behold, I will rouse them from the place where you sold them and return them to their land, and I will return your retribution upon your head.

Then the tables will be turned: I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah and they will sell them to the Sheva’ites, the men of the kingdom of Sheba, located either at the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula or in East Africa, to a distant nation, for the Lord has spoken.

The prophet issues a call to arms: Proclaim this among the nations, prepare war, rouse the valiant, let all men of war approach and come up.

Break your plowshares and beat the iron of your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; even the weak will say: I am valiant, as all of you will come to the battlefield.

Hasten and come, all the surrounding nations, and gather yourselves in one place; the Lord will take down your valiant ones, the mighty ones of your enemies, there.

Let the nations rouse and go up to the Valley of Yehoshafat, as there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.

The prophet provides a metaphoric description of the war: Extend the scythe to harvest, as the harvest is already ripe; come, come down, as the winepress is full of grapes; the vats overflow, as their, the nations’, evildoing is great. All necessary preparations have been made, and the time has come to exact retribution from the nations.

Hordes, hordes are to arrive in the cleft valley, the Valley of Yehoshafat (see commentary on 4:12). Perhaps the name alludes to the decisive judgments that will be issued there. As the day of the Lord is near, in the cleft valley.

The sun and the moon darkened on the day of the Lord, and the stars withdrew their shining. On that day, the heavenly bodies will provide no light.

The Lord will roar from Zion, and from Jerusalem will project His voice; the heavens and the earth will quake. There will be utter confusion, as everything will be dark and the entire world will tremble. But nevertheless, the Lord will be a shelter for His people and a stronghold for the children of Israel. The nation of Israel should therefore be confident in its salvation.

You will know that I am the Lord your God, who dwells in Zion, My holy mountain; Jerusalem will be holy in her sons’ possession, and strangers will not pass through it anymore.

It shall be on that day, that the mountains will drip nectar and the hills will flow with milk; all the streams of Judah, which are currently dry, will flow with water, and a spring will emerge from the House of the Lord, and it will turn into a large river and it will irrigate the Shitim Ravine.This was probably the lower portion of the Kidron Valley, in whose drainage basin the Temple was located. This river will flow east through the Judean Desert all the way to the Dead Sea.

Unlike Judah, which will be an especially fertile land, Egypt will become a desolation, and Edom, which is not known as a particularly fruitful area even in modern times, will become a desolate wilderness. This will be God’s vengeance due to the villainy against the children of Judah, that they, the nations, have shed innocent blood in their land, the land of Judah.

But Judah will be inhabited forever and Jerusalem from generation to generation.

As for all those who were killed or persecuted by the nations, even if I will cleanse the nations, hold them innocent of other transgressions, nevertheless, for their blood, the blood of the people of Judah, who died in My name and for My honor, I will not cleanse them; and the Lord dwells in Zion. When God will reign in Zion, retribution will be visited even upon those who perpetrated acts of murder long ago.