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Temple to gather the people for fasting and lamentation. From the situation of unrelieved woe thus occasioned, he goes on in the second chapter to reveal its meanings: it is the sign of the day of Jehovah, "great and very terrible” (ii, 11). The locust invasion is then described realistically, but with details which apply to invading armies as well as locusts; thus intimating in what way Israel's trial is to come. It is a veiled prediction of the coming of Assyrian hosts, who had already made repeated invasions of pillage and conquest as far west as Damascus, and had laid many of the smaller kingdoms under tribute. The plague of locusts, coming at this time, thus gave realism to a calamity which a political as well as spiritual insight would see must sooner or later fall upon Jehovah's people.

From this attitude of unrelieved dejection the prophet makes a brave transition to a tone of hopefulness and The Contrite promise. With an exhortation to his people to Response turn to Jehovah in sincere penitence, "rending their hearts and not their garments" (ii, 13), he bids them make trial of his disposition of mercy, to see if he will not turn away the evil. From this experimental stage he passes to a confident tone of promise, predicting a later restoration of fruitfulness and plenty, in which "the northerner" (ii, 20) 1 will be removed far off, and the people, the losses from the locust scourge fully made up, will no longer be a reproach among the nations. It is a description of the first stage in a truly spiritual service of Jehovah, and its immediate result. A greater result, however, is yet to come. After the people are reinstated in the joy of restored comfort and prosperity, there will come an era of spiritual new energy in which all classes will share; "your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams,

1 It will be noted that the word "army," being in italics, indicates thus that it is supplied by the translators; the word "northern," in fact, stands alone, implying any scourge that comes by way of the north; cf. Jer. i, 14.

your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit" (ii, 28, 29). This prophecy, it will be remembered, was cited by St. Peter as coming to fulfillment at Pentecost after the ascension of Jesus (Acts ii, 16–18). Such is the inner enlightenment and strength by which the prophet will fortify his people to bear the portents of the day of Jehovah; and a deliverance will be provided for those who call on him, "and among the remnant those whom Jehovah doth call" (ii, 32).

The Valley of Decision

Then, after Israel has received its destined spiritual quickening and energy, will come a time of reckoning, when all the nations that have ravaged Israel will be gathered together in the valley of Jehoshaphat, called poetically "the valley of decision." Here they shall know of Jehovah's will and of his avenging might; and as they see his gracious favor to his own chosen people, shall see also how their violent and heartless deeds recoil on their own heads. It is the earliest prophetic prediction of a general judgment of the world, a prediction that belongs to the kind of prophecy called apocalyptic. The nations are called upon to prepare for this decisive judgment as if for war, bringing forth their best wisdom and courage to meet the divine ordeal. "Beat your plowshares into swords," the prophet bids them, "and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong" (iii, 10). At this early stage of world prophecy the prophet's vision is only broad enough to see the world tested by war; but the time of more peaceful outlook will soon come, when this proverb will be reversed, and the implements of war will be turned into implements of husbandry (see Isa. ii, 4; Mic. iv, 3).

Thus in this preliminary prophecy of Joel is mapped out in comprehensive terms a kind of chart of the trying experience soon to come, and of the large purpose of Jehovah. The prophecy is uttered in Judah, where are the Temple and

the ordained rites of communal worship; but like all the prophets he thinks of all Israel, in its relation to Jehovah, as one undivided family. The prophecy is unusual in that it does not meet the people with an invective against their sins; it is expressed in terms of pity and mercy.

NOTES. I. The Date of Joel. It is the more prevalent opinion at present that Joel is late among the prophets, being, as is thought, about contemporary with Malachi (cir. 500 B.C.). The opinion is founded on considerations which seem to me inconclusive. From the general tone of the prophetic and apocalyptic ideas, and from the relation of his ideas to the larger situation of the prophetic era, it seems to me rather that he is the pioneer of the literary prophets.

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2. Apocalyptic Elements in Joel. The word "apocalyptic," from the Greek apokalupsis, “reveiation,' disclosure," is a term used by scholars to denote that strain of prophecy which deals with the final aspects of coming events, like the coming of a golden age, or a time of judgment, or the disclosure of heaven; prophecy without definite reference to conditioning circumstances, and without concrete predictions of historical events. The typical apocalyptic book of the Old Testament is the Book of Daniel, which is largely made up of visions, under symbolic forms, of a coming kingdom of heaven. The Book of Revelation, sometimes called the Apocalypse, is a New Testament book in the same vein, and employing some of Daniel's imagery. All the prophets, however, have passages in the apocalyptic consciousness; it belongs to the natural enlargement of their spiritual sense beyond the crises and events of their own immediate time. Instances of such passages may be found in Joel iii, 14-17; Isa. ii, 2-4, and the parallel to this latter, Mic. iv, 1-3; Isa. lxv, 17; lxvi, 22-24.

II. IN THE NORTHERN KINGDOM

Ever since the secession of the ten tribes under Jeroboam I (933 B.C.), prophetic activity had been more prevalent in the northern kingdom than in the southern. Samuel, the father of the prophetic order, was of the northern tribe of Ephraim (1 Sam. i, 1). The so-called "sons of the prophets" (that is, disciples of the prophets) are mentioned only in connection with the affairs of the northern kingdom. In that

kingdom also, besides the minor prophetic persons who came with special errands, lived the great personages Elijah and Elisha.

The reason why the prophets were more active in the northern kingdom than in the southern was because they were more needed there. Conditions were more primitive. Religion and education were less organized and stable; principles of belief and conduct less defined and developed. In the southern kingdom were the temple worship, centralized in Jerusalem, the established priesthood, and the state under the dynasty of the house of David constitutionally committed to the pure service of Jehovah; and hence the people in general had a more established order of ideas to go by. In the northern kingdom, on the other hand, as ideas were less defined and diffused, more dependence had to be placed on direct personal guidance; which the prophets supplied as national emergencies arose, and which the sons of the prophets did much to maintain.1

The work of these prophetic masters and disciples, molding the people's mind in loyalty to Jehovah and cultivating an educated conscience to which later prophets could appeal, was of untold importance. By their personal educative work they prepared the soil, so to say, for the word of the literary prophets; which came to them on the eve of their greatest crisis, a few years before their kingdom was broken up by exile and foreign dominance.

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Amos, and his Prophecy of Judgment. It was not from their own prophets, however, that the first prophetic warning came to the northern kingdom. It would seem that their own prophetic order had become so much a perfunctory and time-serving thing, so subservient to the corrupt public sentiment, that no warning which reproved the 1 See above, pp. 129-132.

nation's iniquity could have any acceptance (ef. Amós v, 10; vii, 12, 13; Hos. iv, 5; ix, 7, 8). Prophets and priests alike were as bad as the people (cf. Hos. iv, 6, 9); and the people themselves, in this prosperous reign of Jeroboam II, were at ease and heedless in civic corruption and sensual life (Amos vi, 1-6; cf. Isaiah's later description, Isa. xxviii, 1-8). So the word of warning and denunciation must needs come from outside; and it came from the neighbor kingdom of Judah, where the moral standards were higher and more authoritative, and where the name "Zion" still counted as a spiritual center for the word of Jehovah (Amos i, 2; cf. Joel iii, 16).

This warning, which was first given orally, we have as it was afterward written out, in what is called, "The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel" (Amos i, 1). Tekoa was an outlying town, or rather region, on the hills of Judah, about twelve miles south of Jerusalem. Amos does not come officially, as if sent by his government or its priests (vii, 14, 15); for he represents that Judah itself is involved in the same apostate tendencies, and has little right to dictate (ii, 4, 5). Still, the word he brings is identified with Jerusalem, the recognized spiritual capital of all Israel (cf. Jer. xxv, 30, 31), whence judgment is decreed for all nations.

His Appearance in Bethel

Amos's prophecy dates from about 754 B.C., some twentyeight years before the fall of the northern kingdom. The specific note of time given is "two years before the earthquake" (Amos i, 1), a disaster which was long remembered for its severity (see Zech. xiv, 5), but which apparently was not taken as a warning from Jehovah (cf. Isa. ix, 9, 10). The prophecy came just when both Israel and Judah were at the height of the greatest prosperity they had ever enjoyed. Thus it was like lightning from a clear sky, uttered while the Assyrian danger

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