Joel’s Locusts
The book of Joel was written in the wake of a devastating locust plague that had struck Israel. The prophet describes the ruin in Joel 1:4:
What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
There was nothing left! Starvation and poverty were sure to come.
Joel uses four terms words to describe different species of locust that had devastated the crops. These terms describe what these destructive insects do:
· Arbeh: “to be many”
· Gazam: “the gnawer”
· Yeleg: “the licker”
· Chasil: “devourer”
Because they’re so devastating, it's not uncommon to find locust plagues in the historical record. William Houghton in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible saw a locust plague for himself and described it in terms of “clouds” which ravaged crops much the same way as “the heaviest hail.” They “filled the whole atmosphere” in an “innumerable quantity.” Their flight was “slow and uniform” and their noise “resembled that of rain.” They “darkened the sky” and “weakened the sun.” “In a moment they completely covered everything,” and in a matter of two days all crops and vegetation were nearly completely devoured. In a short time they disappeared, yet “the fields were covered with their dead bodies.”
However, scholars have long searched for an event matching Joel’s description and have come up with nothing. Clarence McCartney describes one man who conducted painstaking research to find something in history comparable to the damage brought on by the army of locusts described in Joel’s prophecy. Finally, he concluded that the only parallel he could find was within his own heart. “Joel's locusts, I see now and am assured, are not so far away as Arabia or Palestine for all Joel's locusts in all their kinds and in all their devastation are in my own heart.”
Joel pointed to the plague as evidence of God’s sudden and certain judgment and called upon his people to repent. We may not suffer natural disasters that remind us of God’s wrath, but if we allow sin to reign in our lives, we will bring destruction upon ourselves as ruinous to our hearts as a horde of hungry insects is to a farmer's crops.
Some people suffer the consequences of their sin and continue down their destructive path until they are called to judgment. They might even blame God for the troubles they bring on themselves.
Others turned to God in faith. This was the course recommended by Joel, who writes, “’Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster” (Joel 2:12-13).
Within this prophecy filled with devastation, there is hope for the one who will turn back to God.
Has your life been devastated by sin? Have you allowed that devastation to turn your heart against the Lord, or will you return to him and receive the mercy he promises through Jesus Christ?
Drew Kizer