Read & Study the Bible Online - Bible Portal

Verse 31

Joel 2:31. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, &c. Particular judgments upon kings and nations are often described in such terms as properly belong to the general judgment and conflagration of the heavens and the earth, as has been observed on Joe 2:10 th of this chapter. The expressions here used, in their literal sense, import the failing of light in the sun and moon, whether by eclipses or any other cause, such as perhaps, at the time here referred to, by the prodigious quantity of smoke arising from the burning of cities, towns, and villages on every side, and also of Jerusalem itself, which undoubtedly was sufficient to obscure the heavenly luminaries for some time. Or, the expression in this verse may be interpreted figuratively of the dark and melancholy state of public affairs before and at the destruction of the Jewish nation by the Romans, and of the utter overthrow of their state and government: see note on Isaiah 13:9-10. The last destruction of Jerusalem, the desolation of Judea, and the prodigious slaughter made of the Jews, might with great propriety be called, as it is here, The great and terrible day of the Lord; since the divine justice was then executed with a severity which had never been used before toward the Jewish people. The calamities of those times were indeed dreadful, almost beyond description, and seem to have exceeded any thing that any other nation had ever suffered; which was agreeable to what Moses, in the very beginning of their state, had foretold should happen to them, if ever, by their disobedience to God’s commands, and their other crimes, they should fill up the measure of their iniquity: see notes on Deuteronomy 28:0.

Be the first to react on this!

Scroll to Top

Group of Brands