NOTES for Joe 2:1

The Lord's Day, whose approach the prophet Joel discerns in the calamity that befell Israel, was from deep antiquity a central theme of prophetic preaching. Joel's words, like the words of the prophets before him, about the Lord's Day speak at the same time of two essentially important things: terror and hope. Both experiences are equally connected for the prophets with the coming arrival of God into the world, and both are inseparable from each other.

"Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble!" Joel exclaims, and he says that that day is a day of darkness and gloom, terrible for every living thing. The contact of God with this world in the prophet's eyes is like a consuming fire from which no one has escape. Joel sees a kind of global catastrophe in which the earth is shaken, the heavenly lights grow dark, and the whole visible world familiar to us collapses. "Who can endure this day?" the prophet exclaims in trembling.

This terror is a very exact and important experience, rooted in the prophet's deep awareness of the sinfulness of the world, its failure to correspond to the designs of the Almighty. The prophet Isaiah expresses it very vividly when describing the vision of God granted him in the Temple: "Woe is me! I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people also of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isa. 6:5). Only a creature unharmed and free from opposition to God can stand before His face, for everything lifeless disappears, unable to meet the manifestation of Divine Life. The prophets find the awareness of human unworthiness and terror before God's inevitable coming inseparably connected with each other.

Of course, one can consider the prophet's words exaggerated, referring to the Last Day of the world's existence, when "a new heaven and a new earth" will be created (Rev. 21:1). One can think that in describing terrible destruction the prophet pays tribute to human emotionality. Most likely, however, this is not so. When we think of God's coming, we have first of all Christmas in mind, and the angels glorifying God and announcing peace to people of good will. And therefore Joel's despair seems strange to us. But the prophet forefeels something quite different. The whole intensity of Joel's prophecy proves absolutely adequate at the moment of the Sacrifice on the Cross, when the Lord Himself dies for us. Joel's word about the darkening of the heavenly lights and the earthquake was fulfilled exactly on the Day of the Cross, and only because of spiritual dullness are we unable to share his feelings. For the world there is nothing more terrible than this sacrifice, when "He who hung the earth upon the waters hangs upon the Tree," and this is precisely what the prophet is trying to convey to us. All creation, nature and people, lose meaning and become ghosts when people do not accept God and kill Him. This is the catastrophe foreseen by Joel.

But, as to the other prophets, the Lord reveals to Joel that in this inevitable and just destruction of the world there is an unexpected and incomprehensible hope for people. "Turn to Me with all your heart... turn to God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents over disaster." Despite all the prophet's pessimism about the fate of the world and all the limitation of his human ideas, this word breaks through, because with his heart the prophet sees the Invisible One. This mysterious pity of the Creator is opened to him, the pity proclaimed by the prophet Hosea: "My heart is turned within Me; all My compassion is kindled!" This pity of God is our only trust, the only thing that gives us a chance to survive our meeting with God. But for this, with all one's heart, with the whole depth of one's person, one must turn to God.

It is important that Joel, for whom the Temple, ritual, and the most detailed fulfillment of the Law mean so much, says that outward veneration is not conversion with the whole heart. "Rend your hearts and not your garments!" he says on the Lord's behalf. How sorrowful these words sound, whose meaning is that God needs us ourselves, not what we do or what we possess. And yet they alone point out to us the way to be saved from the coming fire. This word of the prophet anticipates Christ's call: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

Joel himself is still afraid to believe the mystery of hope opened to him and clearly understands how undeserved it is. "Who knows," he says, "whether He will relent?" These words very precisely convey what tension is required by trust in God's goodness, how following Him is truly like walking on water. And the prophet ends this part of the book with a call to do everything in our power: to appoint a fast, gather the people, infants and priests, bridegrooms and brides, and to weep in hope, so as sincerely to make the saving effort of trust.