Joel 3:5

"Forasmuch as ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly precious things, and have sold the children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem unto the sons of the Grecians, that ye may remove them far from their border; behold, I will stir them up out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head; and I will send your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the men of Sheba, to a nation far off: for Jehovah hath spoken it."

This is merely an elaboration of the ancient divine principle that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap"; and it applies to states and nations as well as to individuals. There is no hint in a passage like this of any divine approval of such things as slavery; Joel was merely citing some well-known examples of "retribution in kind" as prophecy of the way it would always be under the government of God. When a nation was victorious, they sold their captives as slaves; but, in turn, when they were defeated, their citizens were likewise sold into slavery. David took the sword of Goliath and hung it up in the temple (or tabernacle); and when Babylon took the Israelites captive, they looted the treasures of the temple and placed them in the temples of pagan deities. The prophecy is presented in the imagery of such things which were well known and understood by the ancients. Adonibezek is a classical example of the retribution in kind that marked pre-Christian societies. He had his thumbs cut off and was compelled to grovel for food under the king's table, because he had inflicted similar atrocities upon others. There is no need to multiply examples of such things nor to attempt any specific detail of exactly what events Joel used here as the source of his imagery, as they were very many indeed. The selling into slavery here, "would not be literal or physical selling, but an avenging by divine judgment of the shameful treatment inflicted upon the people of the Lord."[16]