Eastern rhetoric, there is no occasion to seek in this section anything else than literal locusts. Nay, the allegorical interpretation, which takes the locusts to be hostile invaders, breaks through the laws of all reasonable writing; for the poetical hyperbole which compares the invading swarms to an army (ii. 4 seq.) would be inconceivably lame if a literal army was already concealed under the figure of the locusts. Nor could the prophet so far forget himself in his allegory as to speak of a victorious host as entering the conquered city like a thief (ii. 9). The second part of the book is Yahweh’s answer to the people’s prayer. The answer begins with a promise of deliverance from famine, and of fruitful seasons compensating for the ravages of the locusts. In the new prosperity of the land the union of Yahweh and his people shall be sealed anew, and so the Lord will proceed to pour down further and higher blessings. The aspiration of Moses (Num. xi. 29) and the hope of earlier prophets (Isa. xxxii. 15, lix. 21; Jer. xxxi. 33) shall be fully realized in the outpouring of the Spirit on all the Jews and even upon their servants (Isa. lxi. 5 with lvi. 6, 7); and then the great day of judgment, which had seemed to overshadow Jerusalem in the now averted plague, shall draw near with awful tokens of blood and fire and darkness. But the terrors of that day are not for the Jews but for their enemies. The worshippers of Yahweh on Zion shall be delivered (cf. Obad. v. 17, whose words Joel expressly quotes in ch. ii. 32), and it is their heathen enemies, assembled before Jerusalem to war against Yahweh, who shall be mowed down in the valley of Jehoshaphat (“Yahweh judgeth”) by no human arm, but by heavenly warriors. Thus definitively freed from the profane foot of the stranger (Isa. lii. 1), Jerusalem shall abide a holy city for ever. The fertility of the land shall be such as was long ago predicted in Amos ix. 13, and streams issuing from the Temple, as Ezekiel had described in his picture of the restored Jerusalem (Ezek. xlvii.), shall fertilize the barren Wādi of Acacias. Egypt and Edom, on the other hand, shall be desolate, because they have shed the blood of Yahweh’s innocents. Compare the similar predictions against Edom, Isa. xxxiv. 9 seq. (Mal. i. 3), and against Egypt, Isa. xix. 5 seq., Ezek. xxix. Joel’s eschatological picture appears indeed to be largely a combination of elements from older unfulfilled prophecies. Its central feature, the assembling of the nations to judgment, is already found in Zeph. iii. 8, and in Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning Gog and Magog, where the wonders of fire and blood named in Joel ii. 30 are also mentioned (Ezek. xxxviii. 22). The other physical features of the great day, the darkening of the lights of heaven, are a standing figure of the prophets from Amos v. 6, viii. 9, downwards. It is characteristic of the prophetic eschatology that images suggested by one prophet are adopted by his successors, and gradually become part of the permanent scenery of the last times; and it is a proof of the late date of Joel that almost his whole picture is made up of such features. In this respect there is a close parallelism, extending to minor details, between Joel and the last chapters of Zechariah.
That Joel’s delineation of the final deliverance and glory attaches itself directly to the deliverance of the nation from a present calamity is quite in the manner of the so-called prophetic perspective. But the fact that the calamity which bulks so largely is natural and not political is characteristic of the post-exile period. Other prophets of the same age speak much of dearth and failure of crops, which in Palestine then as now were aggravated by bad government, and were far more serious to a small and isolated community than they could ever have been to the old kingdom. It was indeed by no means impossible that Jerusalem might have been altogether undone by the famine caused by the locusts; and so the conception of these visitants as the destroying army, executing Yahweh’s final judgment, is really much more natural than appears to us at first sight, and does not need to be explained away by allegory. The chief argument relied upon by those who still find allegory at least in ch. ii. is the expression haṣṣephōnī, “the northerner”[1] [if this rendering is correct], in ii. 20. In view of the other points of affinity between Joel and Ezekiel, this word inevitably suggests Gog and Magog, and it is difficult to see how a swarm of locusts could receive such a name, or if they came from the north could perish, as the verse puts it, in the desert between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. The verse remains a crux interpretum, and no exegesis hitherto given can be deemed thoroughly satisfactory; but the interpretation of the whole book must not be made to hinge on a single word in a verse which might be altogether removed without affecting the general course of the prophet’s argument.
The whole verse is perhaps the addition of an allegorizing glossator. The prediction in v. 19, that the seasons shall henceforth be fruitful, is given after Yahweh has shown his zeal and pity for Israel, not of course by mere words, but by acts, as appears in verses 20, 21, where the verbs are properly perfects recording that Yahweh hath already done great things, and that vegetation has already revived. In other words, the mercy already experienced in the removal of the plague is taken as a pledge of future grace not to stop short till all God’s old promises are fulfilled. In this context v. 20 is out of place. Observe also that in v. 25 the locusts are spoken of in the plain language of chap. i.
See the separate commentaries on Joel by Credner (1831), Wünsche (1872), Merx (1879). The last-named gives an elaborate history of interpretation from the Septuagint down to Calvin, and appends the Ethiopic text edited by Dillmann. Nowack and Marti should also be consulted (see their respective series of commentaries); also G. A. Smith, in The Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. i. (1896), and S. R. Driver, Joel and Amos (1897). On the language of Joel, see Holzinger, Z. A. T. W. (1889), pp. 89-131. Of older commentaries the most valuable is Pocock’s (Oxford, 1691). Bochart’s Hierozoïcon may also be consulted. (W. R. S.; T. K. C.)
JOEL, MANUEL (1826–1890), Jewish philosopher and preacher.
After teaching for several years at the Breslau rabbinical seminary, founded by Z. Frankel, he became the successor of Abraham
Geiger in the rabbinate of Breslau. He made important contributions
to the history of the school of Aqiba (q.v.) as well as
to the history of Jewish philosophy, his essays on Ibn Gabirol
and Maimonides being of permanent worth. But his most
influential work was connected with the relations between
Jewish philosophy and the medieval scholasticism. He showed
how Albertus Magnus derived some of his ideas from Maimonides
and how Spinoza was indebted to the same writer, as well as to
Hasdai Crescas. These essays were collected in two volumes
of Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie (1876), while another
two volumes of Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte (1880–1883)
threw much light on the development of religious thought in the
early centuries of the Christian era. Equally renowned were
Joel’s pulpit addresses. Though he was no orator, his appeal to
the reason was effective, and in their published form his three
volumes of Predigten (issued posthumously) have found many
readers.
(I. A.)
JOFFRIN, JULES FRANÇOIS ALEXANDRE (1846–1890),
French politician, was born at Troyes on the 16th of March 1846.
He served in the Franco-German War, was involved in the
Commune, and spent eleven years in England as a political exile.
He attached himself to the “possibilist” group of the socialist
party, the section opposed to the root-and-branch measures of
Jules Guesde. He became a member of the municipal council
of Paris in 1882, and vice-president in 1888–1889. Violently
attacked by the Boulangist organs, L’Intransigeant and La
France, he won a suit against them for libel, and in 1889 he contested
the 18th arrondissement of Paris with General Boulanger,
who obtained a majority of over 2000 votes, but was declared
ineligible. Joffrin was only admitted to the Chamber after a
heated discussion, and continued to be attacked by the nationalists.
He died in Paris on the 17th of September 1890.
- ↑ It has been suggested that Ṣaphon, which is often rather troublesome if rendered “the north,” may be a weakened form of ṣibʽōn, a current popular corruption of shimoʽn = Ishmael. In Ezek. xxxviii. 15 it is distinctly said that Gog is to come from the recesses of Ṣāphōn. “Meshech” and “Tubal” are no hindrance to this view, if the names of the so-called “sons of Japheth” are critically examined. For they, too, as well as Ṣāphōn, can be plausibly shown to represent regions of North Arabia. See Cheyne, Traditions and Beliefs of Anc. Israel, on Gen. x. 2–4.
