Joel 1:8

8. Lament Hebrews ‘alah; only here, but the meaning is clear from the Aramaic and Syriac. The form is feminine; this and the comparison with the bereaved virgin indicate that a feminine is addressed, perhaps “my land” (Joel 1:6); at any rate, the whole community.

Like a virgin Heb, bethulah; literally, one who is separated, that is, one who is separated from all others to cleave to one, and also one who has not “been known by any man” (Genesis 24:16); always a virgin in the strictest sense of the term.

Girded with sackcloth Sackcloth is a coarse material woven from goats’ and camels’ hair, used for sacks, tent covers, etc. The wearing of this cloth around the loins was one of the symbols of mourning, both in cases of private bereavement (Genesis 37:34; 2 Samuel 3:31) and in lamentations over public calamities (Amos 8:10; Jeremiah 48:37). What the origin of the custom and what the form of the garment worn is uncertain. (See article “Sackcloth,” Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible.)

The husband of her youth The word rendered “husband” means literally possessor, owner (Exodus 21:28; Isaiah 1:3), so also the verb connected with the noun (Isaiah 26:13; 1 Chronicles 4:22); but it is used very frequently in the sense of husband, the usage being due undoubtedly to the earlier conception of the marriage relation, when the wife was considered the property of the husband. But, since bethulah is apparently always used of a young woman who has not yet entered into actual marital relations, the word ba’al is used here in all probability in the sense of “betrothed” (ag. Nowack and Wellhausen whose explanations do not remove the difficulty but simply transfer it to bethulah); and in the light of the marriage customs of the ancient Hebrews such a use of the word is perfectly legitimate. The first important step in the betrothal procedure was the settlement of the amount of the mohar, the so-called dowry, and the payment or part payment of the same. The mohar was not a dowry in the modern sense of that term, that is, a portion brought by the bride into the husband’s family, but a price or ransom paid to the father or brother of the bride. (See article “Marriage,” Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible; W.R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia; Tristram, Eastern Customs.) “After the betrothal the bride was under the same restrictions as a wife. If unfaithful, she ranked and was punished as an adulteress (Deuteronomy 22:23-24); on the other hand, the bridegroom, if he wished to break the contract, had the same privileges, and also had to observe the same formalities, as in the case of divorce. The situation is illustrated in the history of Joseph and Mary, who were on the footing of betrothal (Matthew 1:19).” The grief of the community is to be like the intense, bitter grief of one whose brightest hopes and most joyful anticipations have been shattered by the death of her loved one before she was ever led to his home. The comparison of the land with a virgin was especially appropriate, since in Hebrew the land, or city, or their inhabitants, are often personified as daughter, or, virgin (Amos 5:2; Isaiah 1:8; Lamentations 1:1).

Joel 1:9 gives the justification for the call to universal lamentation. The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of Jehovah. These offerings must of necessity cease, as a result of the general devastation described in Joel 1:10.

Meat offering Better, R.V., “meal offering”; Hebrews minhah; literally, gift, present; therefore, perhaps, the oldest word for offerings in general. It is used in the Old Testament to designate the cereal or meal offerings, consisting of fine meal or of unleavened bread, cakes, wafers, or of ears of roasted grain, always with salt and, except in the sin offering, with olive oil (Leviticus 2:1; Leviticus 2:4; Leviticus 2:13-14; Leviticus 5:11). The meal offering might be offered by itself; if so, part might be offered upon the altar while the rest would go to the priests, or the whole might be consumed on the altar, as in the case of the burnt offering. The meal offering might also be an accompaniment of other offerings; then again it might be either wholly consumed, or part might be burned and the rest be given to the priests (Amos 5:22).

Drink offering Heb, nesekh. Not an independent offering; a libation made with the meal offering usually accompanying a burnt offering (Numbers 15:5; Numbers 28:7-8). Wine was the common material used; sometimes oil was substituted (Genesis 35:14), in a case of necessity perhaps even water (1 Samuel 7:6; 2 Samuel 23:16). In this verse the reference is undoubtedly to the meal offering which, according to Exodus 29:38-41; Numbers 28:3-8, accompanied the daily morning and evening burnt offerings.

The house of Jehovah The temple. According to Joel it is the only place where Jehovah is worshiped. Whether the bringing of the offerings had already ceased or was only threatened we cannot say; even the possibility of such serious calamity might call for loudest lamentation, for these daily offerings were a bond between heaven and earth; to discontinue them would be a breaking of the bond, a severing of the covenant relation between Jehovah and his people, and so would mark the utter rejection of the people by their God. This symbolic meaning of the daily sacrifice accounts for the determination of the priests, during the siege of Jerusalem by Pompey, to continue the daily sacrifice at all costs: “And anyone may hence learn how very great piety we exercise toward God,… since the priests were not at all hindered from their sacred ministrations,… but did still twice each day… offer their sacrifices on the altar; nor did they omit those sacrifices if any melancholy accident happened by the stones that were thrown among them; for although the city was taken… and the enemy then fell upon them, and cut the throats of them that were in the temple, yet could not those that offered the sacrifices be compelled to run away, neither by the fear they were in of their own lives, nor by the number that were already slain, as thinking it better to suffer whatever came upon them, at their very altars, than to omit anything that their laws required of them” (Josephus, Antiquities, xiv, 4:3). The terror of the Jews at the interruption of the daily sacrifice during the siege of the city by Titus is also described by Josephus ( Wars of the Jews, vi, 2:1 .)

The priests The priests received a part of the meal offerings as a means of support; their grief might be due to the fear that their income would be cut off (Wuensche); but the additional thought seems to be in the mind of the prophet, that as the religious leaders they would feel more intensely the disaster and understand more fully its significance.

Jehovah’s ministers Not the ordinary word for servant, but meshareth, the word commonly used in later times for a minister at the sanctuary; in New Hebrew the term for priestly service is derived from the same root. The ancient translations of this verse differ from the Hebrew, the Septuagint reads “the servants of the altar,” and one manuscript (B) adds, “of Jehovah.” It also takes the first two words of Joel 1:10 to Joel 1:9, connecting them with what precedes by “because.” The Arabic reads, “Grieve, ye priests, who minister at the altar, for it (the altar) is in need”; the Syriac, “the kings and princes sit in sorrow.”

Joel 1:10 explains why the daily offerings must be discontinued. The fields are wasted, the prospects for harvest gone. The real force of the original cannot be brought out in a translation; “Joel loads his clauses with the most leaden letters he can find, and drops them in quick succession, repeating the same heavy word again and again, as if he would stun the careless people into some sense of the bare, brutal weight of the calamity which has befallen them.” G.A. Smith translates the verse:

The fields are blasted, the ground is in grief,

Blasted is the corn, abashed is the new wine, the oil pines away.

The field is wasted A play upon words in the original.

The land mourneth Land and field are practically synonymous, but when used together a distinction may be noted: sadheh, “field,” is in a narrower sense the cornfield, as distinguished from orchards and vineyards; ‘adhamah “land,” all cultivated land, be it corn-fields, or orchards, or vineyards. The land is endowed with powers of personality (Jeremiah 12:4; Jeremiah 12:11; Jeremiah 23:10; Isaiah 33:9; in a similar way, Psalms 65:13, “The valleys… shout for joy, they also sing”). The calamity is so great that even the lifeless ground is touched by it and participates in the lamentation. The loss is complete.

Corn… new wine… oil The three principal products of Palestine, frequently mentioned as blessings from Jehovah which he may withdraw as a punishment (Numbers 18:12; Deuteronomy 7:13; Deuteronomy 11:14; Hosea 2:8). “The words, though they may be used with reference to the corn in the ears, and the juice in the grapes and in the olives, denote more particularly these products after they have been adapted partially for the food or use of man.” Corn (Hebrews daghan) signifies the grain of wheat after it has been threshed; new wine (Hebrews tirosh), the grape juice after it has passed the stage of ‘asis (Joel 1:5) and has become partly fermented (see Driver, Joel and Amos, p. 79); oil (Hebrews yishar), the freshly made juice of the olive. Along with corn and wine, oil may be regarded as one of the indispensable necessities of life to the Oriental. Oil was used for illumination (Exodus 25:6; Matthew 25:3), for food (Ezekiel 16:13), for baking (1 Kings 17:12; Leviticus 2:1-7), for medicinal purposes (Isaiah 1:6), for anointing the body, especially after a bath (2 Samuel 14:2), for the anointing of the king (1 Samuel 10:1). (See, further, Van Lennep, Bible Lands, pp. 124ff.; Nowack, Archaeologie, pp. 237ff.)

Dried up Margin, “ashamed.” It is not quite certain whether the verb is from a root “to be ashamed,” or from one “to dry up”; as far as the form is concerned, either is possible. The latter is the meaning adopted by the ancient versions, but the former is more probable in the sense of “be frustrated,” “fail.” The verb taken with the first word of Joel 1:11 may indicate an intentional play upon words.

Languisheth Used of plants in the sense of “to wither” (Joel 1:12; Isaiah 16:8; Isaiah 24:7); in a secondary sense of a city (Jeremiah 14:2); of a childless woman (1 Samuel 2:5; compare Jeremiah 15:9); of persons disappointed in their hopes (Isaiah 19:8; compare Hosea 4:3). The sense of the verse is clear: the locusts have wasted the grain, so that there will be no harvest; the vineyards, so that they can bear no grapes; and the olive orchards, so that they can bear no olives for oil.