Joel 1:19

"O Jehovah, to thee do I cry; for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field. Yea, the beasts of the field pant unto thee; for the water brooks are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness."

We do not see any need whatever to understand "fire" and "flame" in these verses as a metaphorical reference to the locusts and the drought; the danger of fire increases in direct proportion to the dryness of the vegetation and the atmosphere, as any forest ranger knows; and with the extended devastation and drought already described, the breakout of terribly destructive fires would have been certain. If nothing else was available to set them off, a stroke of lightning would have been sufficient. For that reason, we feel it necessary to disagree with Keil, who wrote:

"Fire and flame are the terms used by the prophet to denote the burning heat of the drought, which consumes the meadows and even scorches the trees. This is very obvious from the drying up of the water brooks.[34]

Summarizing what the chapter reveals about the cataclysmic disaster: it resulted from wave after wave of devouring locusts who ate up every green thing, and was made more complete by the ravages of a drought so severe that the very watercourses became dry, and then was climaxed by forest and dry-grass fires which raged out of control in the super-dry "trees of the field" and the "pastures of the wilderness." No greater calamity could be imagined in a society predominantly agricultural and pastoral.

"O Jehovah, to thee do I cry ..." In the last analysis, there is none other, except God, to whom the helpless and the hopeless may appeal. Even the rabbit cries out in the clutches of the hawk! Man instinctively cries to his Creator in the face of death and destruction.