And fire has devoured the pastures of the steppes.
Here, with the close of chap. i., Joel’s discourse takes pause, and in chap. ii. he begins a second with another call to repentance in face of the same plague. But the plague has progressed. The locusts are described now in their invasion not of the country but of the towns, to which they pass after the country is stripped. For illustration of the latter see above, p. [401]. The horn which is to be blown, ver. 1, is an alarm horn,[1208] to warn the people of the approach of the Day of the Lord, and not the Shophar which called the people to a general assembly, as in ver. 15.
Blow a horn in Zion,
Sound the alarm in My holy mountain!
Let all inhabitants of the land tremble,
For the Day of Jehovah comes—it is near!
Day of darkness and murk, day of cloud and
heavy mist.[1209]
Like dawn scattered[1210] on the mountains,
A people many and powerful;