According to the prophet Joel, the only thing that can save people from certain destruction on the great and terrible Day of the Lord is a sincere turning of the heart to God. ‘Rend your hearts, not your garments,’ the prophet cries out to the people. It is precisely these words that are continued by...
According to the prophet Joel, the only thing that can save people from certain destruction on the great and terrible Day of the Lord is a sincere turning of the heart to God. ‘Rend your hearts, not your garments,’ the prophet cries out to the people. It is precisely these words that are continued by the promise he proclaims in verse 18: ‘Then the Lord will be zealous for His land and will have pity on His people. And the Lord will answer...’ Joel's prophecy, like the book of Job, written at approximately the same time, says that God responds when a heart turns sincerely to Him—a heart that truly suffers and therefore has no artifice or deceit. This answer from God itself becomes for people an abundant outpouring of life, overflowing into the world.
God's response to people's turning to Him, of which Joel prophesies, cannot be contained within the bounds of theological discourse. God answers, but what matters is not even what He says: the very fact that He answers brings people life. Thus, to Job, whose story reflects the spirit of the age no less than the book of Joel, God actually addresses a rebuke: ‘Who is this who darkens Providence with words without meaning?’ Yet it is in these very words that Job finds life and consolation, and all his tormenting questions disappear. In the same way, Joel says that if we cry out to God with all our heart, He will answer, and this answer will change everything. The prophet describes this gift in contrast to the devastating invasion of locusts: grain, wine and oil are given in abundance, enemies disappear, the pastures will grow grass, and the tree will bear fruit. God grants the early and the late rains, which ensure the annual harvest, through His response to the human turning towards Him; He makes up to people for every suffering and satisfies all their former hunger. In all this, God's greatness and glory will be revealed to people, and so the prophet speaks in His name: ‘And you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God.’
Yet even this is not what the prophet sees as the greatest gift of God's response. The relief of sorrow merely accompanies it, as a visible sign of deeper realities. God answers the turning towards Him, and in that answer His Spirit is poured into the human heart that has opened to Him. In the canon for the Day of the Holy Spirit, St Theophanes the Branded († after 843) calls Him ‘the Source of life, in whom we believe, a stream of goodness, O Holy Spirit of God’. This is what Joel proclaims to us: the Source of life Himself enters the heart that has turned to Him, worn out by death's terrible dominion. The world is transfigured as it undergoes a terrible catastrophe; the sun turns to darkness and the moon to blood, but everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. For Joel, two sayings—the call and the promise—are inseparably linked: ‘Rend your hearts...’ and ‘I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh...’ The prophet sees that turning to God and His response deliver people from the common fate of perishable matter and make them participants in divine being.
Thus Joel's prophecy speaks not only of the outpouring of the Spirit that took place on the day of Pentecost, but also of what the Church Fathers called the deification of the human being. And this gift of salvation, like every gift of God, infinitely exceeds every measure available to our understanding and explanation. That is why the prophet says that salvation is granted not only to Zion and Jerusalem, but also to the others whom the Lord will call.
2 A farther description of the desolation of the land, Joe 2:1-11.
An earnest call to repentance, Joe 2:12-17.
A promise of all good things to the penitent, Joe 2:18-27.
A prophecy of the Messiah's kingdom, Joe 2:28-32.
2:28 Afterward - After the return out of Babylon, after the various troubles and salvations by which these may know that I am the Lord.I will pour - In extraordinary gifts on the first preachers of the gospel, and in various graces to all believers. Upon all flesh - Before these gifts were confined to one particular nation; but now they shall be enlarged to all nations, and all that believe.Shall prophesy - This was in part fulfilled according to the letter in the first days of the gospel; but the promise means farther, by pouring out of the spirit on your sons and your daughters, they shall have as full a knowledge of the mysteries of God's law, as prophets before time had. Shalt dream dreams - This also was literally fulfilled in the apostles days. But it may mean farther, the knowledge of God and his will, shall abound among all ranks, sexes and ages in the Messiah's days, and not only equal, but surpass all that formerly was by prophesy, dreams, or visions.