[ [2]] J. D. Michaelis remarks: "In the present captivity they do not, indeed, worship idols, but nevertheless they do not know, nor worship, the true God, since they reject the Son, without whom the Father will not be worshipped, John xvii. 3; 1 John ii. 23; 2 John 9."
[ [3]] The "priest" here corresponds with the "Ephod" in Hosea.
[ [4]] In 1 Kings xii. 16, also, David stands for the Davidic dynasty.
[THE PROPHET JOEL]
[PRELIMINARY REMARKS.]
The position which has been assigned to Joel in the collection of the Minor Prophets, furnishes an external argument for the determination of the time at which Joel wrote. There cannot be any doubt that the Collectors were guided by a consideration of the chronology. The circumstance, that they placed the prophecies of Joel just between the two prophets who, according to the inscriptions and contents of their prophecies, belonged to the time of Jeroboam and Uzziah, is thus equivalent to an express testimony that he also lived, and exercised his ministry, during that time.
By this testimony we have, in the meanwhile, obtained a firm standing-point; and it must remain firm, as long as it is not overthrown by other unquestionable facts, and the Collectors are not convicted of an historical error. But, as regards the latter point, there is the greater room for caution, because all the other statements which they have made are, upon a careful examination, found to stand the test; for none of the other Minor Prophets is found to occupy a place to which he is not entitled. But no such facts are to be found; on the contrary, everything serves to confirm their testimony.
It will not be possible to assign the prophecies of Joel to a later period; for Amos places at the head of one of his prophecies one of the utterances of Joel (compare Amos i. 2 with Joel iv. 16 [iii. 16]), as the text, as it were, on which he is to comment. That we are not thereby precluded from considering the two prophets as contemporaneous, is shown by the altogether similar case of Isaiah, in his relation to Micah. Isaiah, too, borrows, in chap. xiii. 6, a sentence from Joel i. 15, the peculiarity of which proves that the coincidence is not accidental. Such verbal repetitions must not be, by any means, considered as unintentional reminiscences. They served to exhibit that the prophets acknowledged one another as the organs of the Holy Spirit,—to testify the ἀκριβῆ διαδοχήν, the want of which in the times after Ezra and Nehemiah is mentioned by Josephus as one of the reasons why none of the writings of that period could be acknowledged as sacred. (See the Author's Dissertations on the Genuineness of Daniel, p. 199.) Further,—The description of the threatening judgment in chap. i. and ii. is, in Joel, kept just in that very same generality in which we find it in the oldest prophecies that have been preserved to us, viz., in Amos, in the first chapters of Isaiah and of Hosea; whilst in later times, the threatening is, throughout, particularized by the express mention of the instruments who were, in the first instance, to serve for its fulfilment, viz., the Assyrians and Babylonians. That which Judah had to suffer from the former was so severe, that Joel, in chap. iv. 4 ff.—where he mentions, although, as it were, only in the way of example, nations with which Judah had hitherto already come into hostile contact—would scarcely have passed them over in silence, in order to mention only the far lesser calamity inflicted by other nations.
But just as little can we think of an earlier period. It is certainly not accidental, that among all the prophets whose writings have been preserved to us, no one appeared at an earlier period; any more than it is accidental, that no prophecies are extant of the distinguished men of God in earlier times, of whom the historical books make mention, especially Elijah and Elisha. It was only when the great divine judgments were being prepared, and were approaching, that it was time, through their announcement, to waken from the slumber of security those who had forgotten God, and to open the treasures of hope and consolation to the faithful. Formerly, the living, oral word of the prophets was the principal thing; but now that God opened up to them a wider view,—that their calling had regard not only to the present, but also to the future time, the written word was raised to an equal dignity. Nothing, then, but the most cogent reasons could induce us to make, in the case of Joel only, an exception to so established a rule.
But we cannot acknowledge as such, what Credner (in his Comment. on Joel, p. 41 sqq.) has brought forward to prove that Joel committed to writing his prophecies as early as under the reign of Joash, i.e., about 870-65 B.C., or from seventy to eighty years earlier than any of the other prophecies which have come down to us. If we do not allow ourselves to be carried away by the multitude of his words, we shall find that the only remaining plausible argument is—that the Syrians of Damascus are not mentioned among the enemies of the Covenant-people, as they are in Amos. From this, Credner infers that Joel must have prophesied before the first inroad of the Syrians on Judea, which, according to 2 Kings xii. 18 ff.; 2 Chron. xxiv. 23 ff., took place under Jehoash. But we need only look at that passage, in order to be convinced that the mention of that event could not be expected in Joel. The expedition of the Syrians was not directed against Judea, but against the Philistines. It was only a single detached corps which, according to Chronicles, incidentally, and on their return, made an inroad on Judah; but Jerusalem itself was not taken. This single act of hostility could not but be soon forgotten in the course of time. It was of quite a different character from that of the Phœnicians and Philistines mentioned by Joel, which were only particular outbreaks of the hatred and envy which they continually cherished against the Covenant-people, and which, as such, were preeminently the object of punitive divine justice. But on what ground does the supposition rest, that Joel must necessarily mention all those nations, with which the Covenant-people came, at any time, into hostile contact? The context certainly does not favour such an idea. The mention of former hostile attacks in chap. iv. (iii.) 4-8 is altogether incidental, as Vitringa, in his Typ. Doctr. Proph. p. 189 sqq., has admitted: "The prophet," says he, "was describing the heavy judgments with which God would, after the effusion of the Spirit, successively, and especially in the latter days, visit the enemies of the Church, and overthrow them, on account of the injuries which they had inflicted upon it. And while he was doing so, those injuries presented themselves to his mind, which in his own time, and in the immediate past, were inflicted upon the Jewish people—a portion of the universal Church—by the neighbouring nations, the Tyrians, Sidonians, and Philistines. To them he addresses his discourse in passing (in transitu), and announces to them, in the name of God, that they themselves also would not remain unpunished." The correctness of Vitringa, with his "in transitu," is proved by the וגם, as well as by the circumstance, that vers. 9 ff. are closely connected with ver. 3; so that vers. 4 ff. form a real parenthesis. How entirely out of place would here have been any mention of the Syrians! There was necessarily something required which was very striking, and which, having but recently occurred, was still vividly remembered. But the matter was altogether different in the case of Amos. Joel has to do with the enemies of Judah only; Amos, with those of the kingdom of Israel also, among whom the Syrians were the most dangerous. Hence, he begins with them at once. The crime with which he charges them in chap. i. 3, that they had threshed the inhabitants of Gilead with threshing instruments of iron, concerns the kingdom of Israel only. The same applies to the Ammonites and Moabites also, who, in like manner, are mentioned by Amos, and not by Joel. The Ammonites are charged in Amos i. 13 with ripping up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border; and the crime of the Moabites, rebuked in chap. ii. 1, occurred, very probably, during the time of, or after, the expedition against them, mentioned in 2 Kings iii.—the real instigator of which was the king of Israel.