Exposition on Joel - Introduction - 2

     Perhaps Joel’s ministry as God’s covenant lawyer (as the prophets were often considered) began sometime between the 6^th and 9^th dynasties of the Northern Kingdom. We do know for certain that it didn’t begin prior to 873, the beginning of the reign of Judah’s 4^th king named Jehoshaphat, due mainly to Joel’s mention of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, but probably sometime before the exile in 586, if you take the pre-exilic position. Even though that period between 873BC and 586 BC appears to be quite ambiguous enough not to draw any criticism, it still remains the minority report among those considering it. It is ones placement of Joel’s ministry on the “wrong” side of the exile which is the debated issue.

As a point of interest, if Joel’s ministry occurred very early on in the Kingdom timeline, then it probably overlapped the ministries of other prophets such as Elijah and Elisha. I’d like to point out here that when one goes looking, you can find some discrepancy in the years of the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah, but much more variance in the ministries of the prophets, so take these associations loosely, just as a means of placing their lives in time, hopefully making them less abstract. So if Joel’s ministry occurred very early on, he could have ministered to monarchs like: Athaliah, queen of the South, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah and Jotham. Whereas if one favors the later pre-exilic dating, then Joel would have enjoyed a time with contemporaries such as Zephaniah, Nahum, and perhaps even Isaiah and Jeremiah. And this later dating places Joel under the reign of kings like: Ahaz, Hezikiah, Manasseh, Amon and Josiah. But if the post-exilic dating proved true, then Joel would have shared his time of ministry with the likes of Daniel, Ezekiel (in the North), Habakkuk, and Malachi, who ministered to no kings because at that time the Jews had been exiled.

All of that information just to say that Joel mentions no king under which he prophesied, unlike Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Amos, who provided relatively great detail concerning their place in the kingdom and the kings to which the Lord gave His word through those prophets.  ¹The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: Joel also gave no information about his vocation. It is however a general speculation that he may have been a temple priest due to the emphasis he places on the responsibilities of that office and how they suffered the lack and grain and drink offerings and how the priests mourned. Secondly, most agree that his ministry was concerned primarily with Judah, based partly on his mention of God’s holy mount Zion.

Joel, among other OT prophets, is considered an apocalypticist. In other words, among his writings are words of forth-telling that include a final end to the age of the world or cosmos as we know it. This is understood as God’s just and merciful act of judgment and of the final rewarding of His people. Another stylistic element to consider is that Joel’s prophecy in 2:1-11 bears a striking resemblance to that Isaiah’s in chapter 13. They share some vocabulary, themes, and the aspect of an invading foe. This comparison seems to support an early date for Joel rather than a later, because both portions of literature appear to be Pentateuchal in origin (Lev. and Deut.). Being established in Deut., Joel employs the justice of the covenantal curses for disobedience as the reasoning for the judgment of God on the nation that He called His own. He took well known historical events like the locust plague of Exodus and provided a new perspective in order to illustrate his prophesy. Note also that the presence of invasion, drought and desolation (three of the types of God’s judgment directed against the rebellious nation) are major punishments for infidelity to the Mosaic Covenant, and they were all precursors leading ultimately to physical exile from the Promised Land.

Like the majority of prophetic books, with the exception of much of the structure of Isaiah and Hosea, Joel follows the standard “woe-then-weal” format. It’s fairly easy to classify the first portion of the prophecy as distress, causing woe, and the second part as deliverance. Whereas the prophesies of Isaiah and Hosea, which of course are quite a bit larger, follow a format characterized by woe-weal-woe-weal, etc.

Though the final chapter of the book almost appears to be a completely separate prophecy, it seems more reasonable to conclude that the book is one cohesive prophecy possibly delivered at one time, but likely delivered in the span of a week or a month at most, due in part to the relative compression of the book: within 3 chapters there are tightly woven themes and ideas that cohere by similar word usage sprinkled over the course of the prophesy. Though the book has been traditionally broken into 3 chapters, there is reason to believe that it is structured in four different oracles medium in length, and if not given to the people at one time, perhaps in four separate revealings over a period of time, like I said, probably not spanning more than a month.