Joel 1:2-4 - Homiletics

A retrospect and a prospect.

The former was sufficiently gloomy, the latter might prove salutary in its tendency. The oldest are challenged to look back on the past and recall all the years that had been, and then say if they could find any parallel for the disasters of the calamitous time through which they had just passed or were passing. The prophet did not need to name or specify the calamity; somewhat indefinitely or abruptly he asks, "Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?" He knew well that the thought then uppermost in every heart was the calamity that had pressed so sorely, or was probably still pressing upon them.

I. THE DUTY OF COMMEMORATION IS TAUGHT US HERE . Why should a tale so doleful be put upon record and transmitted to children and children's children, that is, grand-children (for which there is no corresponding word in Hebrew), and onward still to great-grandchildren, and from them yet forward to another generation? We car easily understand why the memory of God's mercies should be kept up; but why keep a record of miseries so crushing and cruel? Obviously not for the purpose of distressing posterity. The object, there can be no reason to doubt, was to perpetuate a standing memorial of those great and grievous calamities, in order by such memorial to set up a solemn warning against the great and heinous sins that had entailed those calamities.

II. THE DESPICABLE THINGS THAT PROVIDENCE MAY MAKE THE MEANS OF DESTRUCTION . These locusts—"gnawer," "licker," "devourer"—whether different species of locusts, or different stages of their development, or merely poetical epithets rhetorically to characterize the destructive processes or modes of operation, were weak and mean instrumentalities by themselves and in their individual capacity.