Exposition on Joel - 15 - Verses 5-10

I want to begin the following section with a brief explanation of the meaning of verses 5-10 then I will expound on each verse in greater detail. Wake up you idolaters for you’ve lost your wine and oil and the very ground mourns!—Verse 9 is the direct result of v. 7.—The offerings are cut off, why? They are cut off because of the large and powerful nation which has splintered the fig tree, stripped its bark. So, you priests, you who minister to the Lord, mourn like a young woman who has lost the husband of her youth.

Verse 5, Joel appeals to the overindulgent to lament their circumstances, caused by their sin.—Verse 5 in particular addresses the drunkards and the drinkers of wine. Wake up, Joel says, because one of the effects of drunkenness is drowsiness. The idea here is that Joel is calling the people to attention by specifically addressing those abusers of substance. So we could, without doing damage to the text, we can make a useful application is especially in light of the availability of intoxicating substances today. But Joel mentions wine in particular because of the effect the invasion would have had on the landscape. Obviously, a swarm of locusts would have ruined the vines, but an army of men would have effected a similar devastation by stealing the already fermented juice, and also by trampling thevines of the countryside underfoot. They would have likely ruined any hope of grape production in the immediate future. I don’t believe there is any evidence that suggests that the two separate identifications of alcohol consumers here is an indication of two different types of people, but seems to be a parallel statement both describing the one who has embraced their drunkenness more than they have embraced God; people who had grown calloused to God’s nudging having it destroy their sensitivity to God’s Spirit. And it’s clear that the nation asa whole, drunk on wine or not, had become calloused in the same way. Joel’s plain intention in this verse is to capitalize on the distress of those whoenjoy wine. When there is none to enjoy the drunkard and the drinker of winewill mourn its absence. An absence brought on by their sin of abusing it.