The Day and the Creator

In Joel the sky goes dark. A locust army comes in waves, and wave after wave strips the land bare to the bark, until nothing is left of the vine and the fig tree is a bleached branch. The prophet sees in it a foretaste of something far greater: "Alas for that day, for the day of YHWH is near, and it comes as destruction from the Almighty" (Joel 1:15). Whoever listens closely hears Who is marching at the head of that army: "YHWH raises His voice before His army [...] great is the day of YHWH and greatly to be feared, who can endure it?" (2:11). The judgment comes from God Himself, and for that reason there is a way out. A God who sends the judgment can also take it back.

In the middle of that darkness a call goes out that appeals to Who God is: "Tear your heart and not your garments, and return to YHWH your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, patient and rich in steadfast love, and relents from harm" (2:13). It is the Name of the mountain, and Joel attaches one line to it: who knows, He may turn and relent (2:14). The text has no "He will"; it says "who knows." It is the fearful, hopeful gamble of one who throws himself on a grace he cannot compel. The priests lie weeping between the porch and the altar and plead: spare Your people (2:17).

Already in the first chapter you can hear how God looks at that land. "A nation has come up against My land [...] it has laid waste My vine and stripped My fig tree bare" (1:6–7). My vine. The branches of a farmer in Judah God calls His own. Bare trunks, a bleached fig branch, weeping priests, and over that land a God who can no longer bear to look on. To the pleading of the priests comes the sentence that turns everything around: "Then YHWH became jealous for His land and had pity on His people" (2:18). To be jealous is the verb of the Name God proclaimed on the mountain beside compassionate, Jealous, and here that fire burns for a stripped field. He drives the army off into a parched land. The fig tree and the vine yield their strength again, the threshing floors fill with grain, and He promises: "I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten" (2:25). Whoever thought God stood by watching the devastation now sees Him rush to the land's aid Himself. "I am YHWH, your God, and there is no other" (2:27). After that He will pour out His Spirit on all flesh (2:28), the promise that would burst open on the day of PentecostPentecostThe feast occurring 50 days after the Feast of Firstfruits, also called Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks). The day on which the Spirit was poured out in 31 AD (weighed) and the Church was born as the wheat firstfruits (Acts 2). Treated in chapter 2. in Jerusalem.

Joel ends with a roar: "YHWH roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem, and heaven and earth tremble; but YHWH is a refuge for His people" (3:16). The next prophet on the scroll opens with the same line (Amos 1:2), and Amos knows what a roar is. He is a herdsman and a dresser of wild figs in Tekoa, no professional prophet (7:14). He has spent nights in the open field, on the edge of the wilderness of Judah, with the Pleiades and Orion over his flock. He has heard the lion roar in the dark, and he knows what is left of a sheep the next morning: two legs and a piece of an ear (3:12). "The lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord YHWH has spoken, who can but prophesy?" (3:8).

With that roar in his ears he goes to the prosperous north, where people lounge on beds of ivory while the poor are sold for a pair of sandals (6:4; 2:6). There he speaks his heaviest word, and it opens with a declaration of love: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit all your iniquities upon you" (3:2). Known is the word yada from chapter 1, the word for the intimacy of husband and wife. Of all the families on earth, God chose one to come that close to. That "therefore" sounds illogical at first. Should it not say: therefore I will spare you? So speaks a lover, not a judge at a distance. A stranger's unfaithfulness can leave you indifferent; the unfaithfulness of the woman you share your life with cannot. The closer God comes to a people, the deeper its unfaithfulness wounds Him. What roars from Zion is a wounded love.

Meanwhile in Samaria they long for the day of YHWH. They count on Him to defeat their enemies on that day. Amos turns it around: "What will the day of YHWH be to you? It is darkness, and not light. It is as if a man flees from a lion, and a bear meets him; he goes into the house, leans his hand against the wall, and a snake bites him" (5:18–19). That day does not come unannounced. Five times God had knocked, with hunger, drought, blight in the grain, plague, and overthrow, and five times Amos closes with the same refrain: "and yet you did not return to Me, declares YHWH" (4:6–11). It is the refrain of a God who after every blow kept looking to see whether anyone was coming back.

The herdsman himself cannot bear it either. In a vision he sees a swarm of locusts rising over the young grass, then a fire that devours the great deep, and twice he cries out, first "forgive, please," then "cease, please," with the same argument: "Lord YHWH, how can Jacob stand, small as he is?" (7:2, 5). Twice God lets Himself be moved: "YHWH relented concerning this. It shall not be" (7:3, 6). Joel's "who knows" here gets a face. A herdsman pleads for a people that will not listen to him, and the Maker of Orion gives way. Only at the third vision does God hold a plumb line beside the wall and say: "I will never again pass him by" (7:8).

Yet this book too does not end at the plumb line. Between the threats Amos had already signed with the Name of the One he saw standing over his flock: "He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns deep darkness into morning [...] YHWH is His Name" (5:8). The same One who hung Orion in place made a covenant with a handful of slaves, and He does not let it go. The fallen booth of David is raised up again, the plowman overtakes the reaper, the mountains drip sweet wine, just as they did in Joel (Amos 9:11–13; Joel 3:18), and "they will never again be uprooted out of their land" (9:15).

In the middle of that promise falls the name Edom (9:12), and the next scroll is about nothing else. Obadiah is the shortest book of the Old Testament, 21 verses, and it carries a wound that never healed in Israel (Ps 137:7). Jerusalem is burning. Refugees stumble down the roads to the south, and at the crossroads stand men from Edom, descendants of Esau, Jacob's twin brother. They look on, they laugh, they join in the looting, and whoever escapes, they cut off and hand over. God saw it, and He lists it, line after line, the way only someone does who was there and remembers every face: "You should not have gloated over the day of your brother [...] You should not have stood at the crossroads to cut off his fugitives" (Obad 12–14). For "the violence done to your brother Jacob" (10) the day of YHWH now turns against Edom: "As you have done, it shall be done to you" (15). The book ends at the same horizon as Amos. Saviors go up to Mount Zion, "and the kingdom shall be YHWH's" (21).

A farmer in Judah stands at the edge of his field, which a year earlier was stripped bare to the bark. Now the grain stands there again, and on the vine God called His own hang clusters. He did not earn it and did not force it; he tore his heart and hoped on a "who knows." The God who took that year from him gives him back the years. Such is the Maker of Orion: a Judge from Whom no one can hide, who forgets no face at the crossroads and no vine on the hillside, and who is jealous for what is His. The power you cannot escape is the power that will not let you go.

*A note on the source text. The locusts and the Day: Joel 1:4, 15; "My land," "My vine": 1:6–7; God at the head of His army: 2:11; the call with the grace-formula and "who knows": 2:13–14; the priests between porch and altar: 2:17; cf. Exodus 32:12; the jealousy and the pity (wayeqanne', wayachmol): 2:18; cf. Exodus 34:14; the restored years: 2:25; "I am YHWH, your God, and there is no other": 2:27; the outpouring of the Spirit: 2:28–29; Acts 2:16–21; YHWH roars from Zion: Joel 3:16; Amos 1:2; the mountains dripping sweet wine: Joel 3:18; Amos 9:13. The middle word of Joel 2:12–14 is חַנּוּן, "gracious." The variant with "relents from harm": Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; cf. Exodus 32:14; the order "gracious and compassionate": Psalm 111:4; 145:8. Amos as herdsman and dresser of wild figs: Amos 1:1; 7:14; the poor sold for sandals: 2:6; the beds of ivory: 6:4; "You only have I known": 3:2; the roaring lion: 3:8; the shepherd who rescues two legs and a piece of an ear: 3:12; the fivefold "and yet you did not return": 4:6–11; the Creator-doxologies with "YHWH is His Name": 4:13; 5:8; 9:5–6; the day of YHWH as darkness: 5:18–20; the intercession and God's relenting: 7:1–6; the plumb line, "I will never again pass him by": 7:7–8; Edom and the restoration of the fallen booth of David: 9:11–15. Edom at the fall of Jerusalem: Obadiah 10–14; cf. Psalm 137:7; "as you have done": Obadiah 15; "the kingdom shall be YHWH's": Obadiah 21. The divine Name as YHWH; the quotations in a modern working translation.*