The Book of Joel takes place during the period when Ruth was actually written down, when Judah was a province of the Persian Empire. Joel, like Ruth’s author, is concerned with events that are taking place when he is writing. He is addressing contemporary Jewish issues. But whereas Ruth is recounting a story from the past, Joel is including in his musings a look towards the future.
Joel is one of the so-called classical prophets, the group of religious leaders who has a book written in his name and who deals with the relationship between Israel and the larger Empires that surround her, reflecting upon the significance of that relationship in light of faith in Yahweh. The classical prophets wrote an enormous amount of the Old Testament, and they had good reason to.
Early on, Israel had a strong sense of itself as the center of the world. Yahweh was believed to be the One True God or at least the mightiest god in all of existence, far eclipsing the gods and religion of the other peoples of the Near East. For a long time, it was easy to think this way, as the march of the Israelites went on and on, creating an ever-expanding mini-empire that stretched from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. But as Assyria, Babylon and Persia grew into worldwide empires, it soon became clear that Israel was a relatively small player in a much bigger world.
How could this be? How could Yahweh allow these nations to not only surround but indeed threaten, and eventually exile the people He had adopted as His own? Many Jews simply succumbed to the rising tide of power, and began to see the gods of these other peoples as superior to their own. Many others asserted that this situation was temporary, and that Yahweh would soon usher in an Israelite Empire, that would supplant these others, or at least would ensure that Israel would never fall completely under their power.
There was, however, one group of thinkers who gave an alternative explanation. In their view, Yahweh was indeed the One True God, but His scope of concern was much larger than what the Hebrews had always thought it was. He was as much over the destiny of Babylon as over the destiny of Judea. God had a special concern for the Jews, and the destiny of these other nations all turned on that special concern whether they realized it or not, but God’s hand was behind the life of all peoples. The Classical Prophets taught that the Hebrews had turned against God by worshipping other gods alongside Him. To punish them, God had raised up these mighty nations, who would take the Israelite Nations into exile to punish them and shape them into the people He wanted them to be. Eventually, God would indeed usher in the worldwide empire that some Israelites sought, with Israel and Judah at the center, but not until His righteous punishment had been meted out.
The attitude of these prophets towards the Empires whose destiny everyone was so interested in, varied. Some saw them as evil forces allowed free only to mete out God’s vengeance, who would be destroyed
But in Judah, where the prophetic voice had been stronger, something powerful took root. When they were exiled to Babylon, many were able to maintain their faith even in a very hostile situation. This was no doubt due in large part to the fact that the prophets had provided them with a believable narrative that helped them make sense of their faith in spite of the challenges to it. Truth ha s a way of enduring.
Most of the Classical Prophets’ message was one of judgment and justice. It was a message that whatever suffering one was enduring, was deserved punishment, and the right attitude towards hard situations was to accept it willingly as just, and to use hard times to deepen one’s faith in God. If one did this, one could be assured that hope endured, and that deliverance was inevitable. The general attitude of the prophets was that every situation should push one to deeper faith in Yahweh alone as God and Judge of the world. Any hint of idolatry or of robbing Yahweh of His rightful place as center of all that is was grounds for the most terrible of punishment, and all suffering was a sign that Yahweh had been betrayed.
Joel is a member of this long-standing intellectual tradition. He is writing during a time of relative peace in Israel’s history. Judah was all that was left of the nation David built after the Northern Kingdom called Israel or Ephraim was taken and destroyed by the Assyrians. Judah had been taken captive by the Babylonians and held in captivity for 50 years or so. But the fortunes of the Jews changed quickly, as Persia rose up as a mightier nation than Babylon. Persia’s policy towards captured people was different from Assyria’s or Babylon’s. They let captive people remain on their own land, and simply required tribute or loyalty through provincial governorship. So, the Israelites got to go home to Judah. This was experienced in Isaiah (41-55) as a fulfillment of the promises made to Jeremiah and others, a promise to restore Israel to her former glory. It was thought that once this restoration was complete, God would upend all the empires of the world and establish His Kingdom, with Israel as her center.
But as time went on, it became clear that this was not soon to happen. Israel was successful and peaceful in the Persian Empire, but like all captive peoples its actual situation remained precarious as the Book of Esther makes clear, and there seemed to be little or no chance of Israel supplanted Persia as the great.
power of the world.
Still, life was pretty good in Persia. Israel as a Persian vassal state got relative autonomy, and complete freedom to worship as they saw fit. Life under Persian rule was a sight better than it was under Babylon, and much better than it would later be under Greece and Rome. Many people started to wonder if this is what God had in mind all along, if this was not ‘more or less’ the Kingdom of God. Life was relatively peaceful and secure, and the worship of Yahweh took place without real opposition from the ruling government.
During this time, a plague of locusts hit a large swath of Judah. It was the worst such plague that anyone could remember, and it caused a great fright among the people. They were confused, and afraid, and in that context the prophet Joel rose to prominence. Joel’s message throughout the book is that the locusts are a supernatural army, sent by God to remind the Israelite people that the Kingdom of God has not yet come. Joel reminds the people of the words of Amos, a prophet in the Northern Kingdom who spoke and wrote 300 years earlier. Amos mocked people who looked forward to the “Day of the Lord”, and proclaimed that this day would be a day of judgment, and terror, and plagues. This is roughly Joel’s message as well.
Joel was disgusted by the complacency of the Jewish people. He was hurt by the idea that the Kingdom of God could be instituted by some human political power like Persia. No, the peace enjoyed by the Israelites was not the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God would be accompanied by signs much like the locusts, and would completely transform the world. The very fact that the natural order could turn against the Israelites was taken by Joel as a sign that God’s Kingdom had not yet come. And like the prophets of old, Joel’s book is a call to repentance. People must stop looking at themselves as some special recipients of God’s favor. God remains a God of judgment, and justice, who will allow no competitors whether religious or political. The complacency under Persia is a form of idolatry, to Joel, and God through him means to end it.
And so we enter the Book of Joel, a message of judgment and repentance, but also of hope and transformation. For the terrible day Joel sees coming is but a stepping stone in his mind to the Kingdom of God as it is meant to be: a new world ruled by God alone.
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