Joel 1:11-12 - Exposition

Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen . The verb from בּושׁ (formed from יַבֵשׁ ), to be or feel ashamed, or turn pale with shame; חָפֵר is "to blush or turn red with shame." It is written defectively, to distinguish it from הוֹבִישׁ , which occurs in the tenth verse and again in the twelfth, and which is the Hiph. of יָבֵשׁ , to be parched or dried up. Their hope was disappointed through the destruction of their wheat and barley—their most serviceable and valuable cereals; while disappointment of hope causes shame; hence we read of a "hope that maketh not ashamed, because it never disappoints as empty hopes do. Howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the harley; because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth . There is a transposition here which is a species of the figure chiasmus , so called from the form of the Greek letter chi ( χ ). The husbandmen are put to shame on account of the destruction of the wheat and barley—the entire failure of their field crops and ruin of their harvest; while the vinedressers have reason to howl because of the loss of their vines and the languishing of their fig trees. The prophet, after particularizing the vine and fig tree, proceeds with the enumeration of other important fruit trees that had perished by the teeth of the locusts. The pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered . The pomegranate, though abundant in that region, had shared the fate of the fig and vine; even the palm tree, the date palm, though a vigorous tree and little subject to injury, having no juice in the leaves or fresh greenness in the rind, ceased to flourish; and the apple tree—the medicinal apple, as Virgil terms it—suffered in like manner. Nor was it the fruit trees only that were injured; the hardier forest or timber trees—all the trees of the field—shared in the calamity. Thus Jerome represents the prophet as asking, "Why should I speak of the corn, wine, oil, and barley? when even the fruits of the trees have been dried up, the fig trees have languished, with the pomegranate and palm and apple; and all trees, whether fruit-bearing or not, are consumed by the devastating locusts." Because joy is withered away from the sons of men . This clause is connected by" because" with "howl," the intermediate words being treated parenthetically or passed over. Joy here is either