In Joel the sky goes dark. A locust army comes in waves — the cutting locust, the swarming locust, the hopping locust, the destroying locust — 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. And 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). And then comes the revelation that turns the whole plague on its head: this army is not a mere natural disaster. It is His army. "YHWH raises His voice before His army, for His camp is very great, mighty is he who carries out His word; yes, great is the day of YHWH and greatly to be feared — who can endure it?" (2:11). The Covenant God executes with His own hand the curses He once bound to the covenant. The judgment comes not despite God but from God — and precisely for that reason there is a way out, for a God who sends the judgment can also take it back.
That is why, in the middle of the darkness, the call goes out, and the call pleads not on desperation but on the very nature of God: "Tear your heart and not your garments, and return to YHWH your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in devotion, and relents from harm" (2:13). It is the Name of the mountain, and Joel adds one line to it that is the core of his whole preaching: who knows — He may turn and relent (2:14). Not: He will. But: who knows — the fearful, hopeful gamble of one who throws himself on a grace he cannot compel. And God bends down: He grows jealous for His land, drives out the army, gives the early and the late rain, and — almost in passing, but it is a jewel — "a teacher for righteousness" (2:23), Someone who will teach the people how to live with God and for God again. And then the promise that would burst open on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem: "I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh" (2:28). The God who sent the judgment stands, in the end, not far off but in the midst of His people: "I am YHWH, your God, and there is no other" (2:27).
In Amos the tone turns hard as stone. Amos is a shepherd from Tekoa, not a professional prophet, and he comes to the prosperous north with a message like a whip crack — about a land that sells the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals, that lounges on beds of ivory and eats the choicest calves while trampling justice in the city gate. Five times the refrain sounds, each time heavier: "and yet you did not return to Me, declares YHWH" (4:6-11). I gave you hunger, and you did not come; I withheld the rain, and you did not come; I struck you with plagues, and you did not come. And then falls the line that lands like an axe: "prepare to meet your God, Israel" (4:12) — not as an invitation but as the announcement that the Judge stands at the door.
And right there, among the threats, three short hymns break open, and they sing not of God's judgment but of His creating power: "Behold, He who forms the mountains and creates the wind, who declares to man His thoughts, who makes the dawn into darkness and treads on the heights of the earth — YHWH, God of hosts, is His Name" (4:13); "He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into morning … who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth — YHWH is His Name" (5:8). The Judge you are about to meet is the Maker of the stars. That is a threat — who can escape the God who forms the mountains? — but it is also a ground, for the same hand that hung Orion in the sky can restore a broken people. And that is what Amos promises at the end, after the judgment: "On that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David … I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel … I will plant them in their land, and they will never again be uprooted" (9:11-15). God sifts His people — He shakes them like grain in a sieve, until all the chaff is gone (9:9) — but He sifts to preserve, not to destroy.
And then the shortest voice on the scroll, Obadiah, a single chapter, about Edom — the brother nation, the descendants of Esau, who stood by and even laughed when Jerusalem fell, and who caught the fleeing refugees at the crossroads and handed them over. Here too the Day: "the day of YHWH is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; what you deserve will return upon your own head" (Ob. 15). It is the law of the Day: what you sow, you reap, and the God who sees everything does not let the wrong lie. But the very last line lifts it above vengeance: "and the kingdom will belong to YHWH" (Ob. 21). Behind all the days of judgment lies one Day on which it will again be as it was meant to be — God as King, and no one else.
Who is a God like You? In Joel, Amos, and Obadiah the answer sounds from the thundercloud: incomparable as the Creator who is also the Judge, who makes the stars and avenges the wrong, and from whose Day no one can hide. But that same incomparable Judge tears His own cloud open with a call — tear your heart, return — and whoever does discovers that the Maker of Orion gives a teacher for righteousness, pours out His Spirit, and comes to dwell in the midst. The power you cannot escape is the power that will not let you go.
DossierGracious, in the middle
The call to return in Joel (2:12-14), counted from the first word to the last, has as its exact middle word חַנּוּן(channun), "gracious." The heart of the grace-formula stands at the heart of the call to return — just as in Hosea "and we shall live" lay at the middle. The Twelve keep laying their grace precisely in the geometric middle of their call to return.
ExpertThe formula quoted, and bent
Joel and Jonah are called "learned scribal prophets" for their dense allusions to Scripture, and both quote the grace-formula of Exodus 34 almost verbatim (Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). But both bend it at exactly the same two points. First, they reverse the order: where Exodus says rachum we-channun ("compassionate and gracious"), they say channun we-rachum ("gracious and compassionate"). Second — and this is the heart of it — they replace "faithfulness" (emet) with "and relents from harm" (we-nicham ʿal ha-ra'ah), and they drop the punishing half of the formula altogether. That addition is the core of both their preaching, and it comes straight out of Exodus 32, which says that "YHWH relented of the harm He intended to do to His people" (32:14). So in Joel and Jonah the formula stands at the hinge: YHWH's very nature is the reason the disaster comes, and the reason He takes it back when people repent. Joel even ties himself verbally to Exodus 32 by echoing "why should the nations say" (2:17) from Moses' "why should the Egyptians say" (Ex. 32:12).
ExcursusThe Name is His Name
The three doxologies of Amos all end with the same signature: יְהוָה שְׁמוֹ(YHWH shemo), "YHWH is His Name" (Am. 4:13; 5:8; 9:6). It is not a closing formula but a claim. The God who forms the mountains and makes the stars and pours the water of the sea out over the earth is not some anonymous creative force but this One, with this Name, the God of the covenant with Israel. Creation and covenant carry the same signature. The same One who hung Orion in place made a covenant with a handful of slaves — and that turns the Creator-praise in the middle of the judgment into more than a threat: the Maker of everything is the God who swore faithfulness, and so the power that judges can also be the power that restores.
In Joel the sky goes dark. A locust army comes in waves — the cutting locust, the swarming locust, the hopping locust, the destroying locust — 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. And 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). And then comes the revelation that turns the whole plague on its head: this army is not a mere natural disaster. It is His army. "YHWH raises His voice before His army, for His camp is very great, mighty is he who carries out His word; yes, great is the day of YHWH and greatly to be feared — who can endure it?" (2:11). The Covenant God executes with His own hand the curses He once bound to the covenant. The judgment comes not despite God but from God — and precisely for that reason there is a way out, for a God who sends the judgment can also take it back.
That is why, in the middle of the darkness, the call goes out, and the call pleads not on desperation but on the very nature of God: "Tear your heart and not your garments, and return to YHWH your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in devotion, and relents from harm" (2:13). It is the Name of the mountain, and Joel adds one line to it that is the core of his whole preaching: who knows — He may turn and relent (2:14). Not: He will. But: who knows — the fearful, hopeful gamble of one who throws himself on a grace he cannot compel. And God bends down: He grows jealous for His land, drives out the army, gives the early and the late rain, and — almost in passing, but it is a jewel — "a teacher for righteousness" (2:23), Someone who will teach the people how to live with God and for God again. And then the promise that would burst open on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem: "I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh" (2:28). The God who sent the judgment stands, in the end, not far off but in the midst of His people: "I am YHWH, your God, and there is no other" (2:27).
In Amos the tone turns hard as stone. Amos is a shepherd from Tekoa, not a professional prophet, and he comes to the prosperous north with a message like a whip crack — about a land that sells the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals, that lounges on beds of ivory and eats the choicest calves while trampling justice in the city gate. Five times the refrain sounds, each time heavier: "and yet you did not return to Me, declares YHWH" (4:6-11). I gave you hunger, and you did not come; I withheld the rain, and you did not come; I struck you with plagues, and you did not come. And then falls the line that lands like an axe: "prepare to meet your God, Israel" (4:12) — not as an invitation but as the announcement that the Judge stands at the door.
And right there, among the threats, three short hymns break open, and they sing not of God's judgment but of His creating power: "Behold, He who forms the mountains and creates the wind, who declares to man His thoughts, who makes the dawn into darkness and treads on the heights of the earth — YHWH, God of hosts, is His Name" (4:13); "He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into morning … who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth — YHWH is His Name" (5:8). The Judge you are about to meet is the Maker of the stars. That is a threat — who can escape the God who forms the mountains? — but it is also a ground, for the same hand that hung Orion in the sky can restore a broken people. And that is what Amos promises at the end, after the judgment: "On that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David … I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel … I will plant them in their land, and they will never again be uprooted" (9:11-15). God sifts His people — He shakes them like grain in a sieve, until all the chaff is gone (9:9) — but He sifts to preserve, not to destroy.
And then the shortest voice on the scroll, Obadiah, a single chapter, about Edom — the brother nation, the descendants of Esau, who stood by and even laughed when Jerusalem fell, and who caught the fleeing refugees at the crossroads and handed them over. Here too the Day: "the day of YHWH is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; what you deserve will return upon your own head" (Ob. 15). It is the law of the Day: what you sow, you reap, and the God who sees everything does not let the wrong lie. But the very last line lifts it above vengeance: "and the kingdom will belong to YHWH" (Ob. 21). Behind all the days of judgment lies one Day on which it will again be as it was meant to be — God as King, and no one else.
Who is a God like You? In Joel, Amos, and Obadiah the answer sounds from the thundercloud: incomparable as the Creator who is also the Judge, who makes the stars and avenges the wrong, and from whose Day no one can hide. But that same incomparable Judge tears His own cloud open with a call — tear your heart, return — and whoever does discovers that the Maker of Orion gives a teacher for righteousness, pours out His Spirit, and comes to dwell in the midst. The power you cannot escape is the power that will not let you go.
DossierGracious, in the middle
The call to return in Joel (2:12-14), counted from the first word to the last, has as its exact middle word חַנּוּן (channun), "gracious." The heart of the grace-formula stands at the heart of the call to return — just as in Hosea "and we shall live" lay at the middle. The Twelve keep laying their grace precisely in the geometric middle of their call to return.
ExpertThe formula quoted, and bent
Joel and Jonah are called "learned scribal prophets" for their dense allusions to Scripture, and both quote the grace-formula of Exodus 34 almost verbatim (Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). But both bend it at exactly the same two points. First, they reverse the order: where Exodus says rachum we-channun ("compassionate and gracious"), they say channun we-rachum ("gracious and compassionate"). Second — and this is the heart of it — they replace "faithfulness" (emet) with "and relents from harm" (we-nicham ʿal ha-ra'ah), and they drop the punishing half of the formula altogether. That addition is the core of both their preaching, and it comes straight out of Exodus 32, which says that "YHWH relented of the harm He intended to do to His people" (32:14). So in Joel and Jonah the formula stands at the hinge: YHWH's very nature is the reason the disaster comes, and the reason He takes it back when people repent. Joel even ties himself verbally to Exodus 32 by echoing "why should the nations say" (2:17) from Moses' "why should the Egyptians say" (Ex. 32:12).
ExcursusThe Name is His Name
The three doxologies of Amos all end with the same signature: יְהוָה שְׁמוֹ (YHWH shemo), "YHWH is His Name" (Am. 4:13; 5:8; 9:6). It is not a closing formula but a claim. The God who forms the mountains and makes the stars and pours the water of the sea out over the earth is not some anonymous creative force but this One, with this Name, the God of the covenant with Israel. Creation and covenant carry the same signature. The same One who hung Orion in place made a covenant with a handful of slaves — and that turns the Creator-praise in the middle of the judgment into more than a threat: the Maker of everything is the God who swore faithfulness, and so the power that judges can also be the power that restores.