Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/739

JOEL 70,5 large measure the fruit of literary culture. The absence of allusion to a hostile or oppressing empire may be fairly taken in connexion with the fact that the prophecy gives no indication of political life at Jerusalem. When the whole people is mustered in chap, i., the elders or sheikhs of the municipality and the priests of the temple are the most prominent figures. The king is not mentioned, which on Credner s view is explained by assuming that the plague fell in the minority of Joash, when the priest Jekoiada held the reins of power, and the princes, councillors, and warriors necessary to an independent state, and so often referred to by the prophets before the exile, are altogether lacking. The nation has only a municipal organization with a priestly aristocracy, precisely the state of things that prevailed under the Persian empire. That the Persians do not appear as enemies of Jehovah and His people is perfectly natural. They were hard masters but not invaders, and under them the enemies of the Jews were their neighbours, just as appears in Joel. 1 Those, however, who place our prophet in the minority of King Joash draw a special argument from the mention of Phoenicians, Philistines, and Edomites (iii. 4 sq., 19), pointing to the revolt of Edom under Joram (2 Kings viii. 20) and the incursion of the Philistines in the same reign (2 Chron. xxi. 16, xxii. 1). These were recent events in the time of Joash, and in like manner the Phoenician slave trade in Jewish children is carried back to an early date by the reference in Amos i. 9. This argument is rather specious than sound. Edom s hostility to Judah was incessant, but the feud reached its full intensity only after the time of Deuteronomy (xxiii. 7), when the Edomites joined the Chaldseans, drew profit from the overthrow of the Jews, whose land they partly occupied, and exercised barbarous cruelty towards the fugitives of Jerusalem (Obad. passim; Mai. i. 2 sq.; Isa. Ixiii.). The offence of shedding innocent blood charged on them by Joel is natural after these events, but hardly so in connexion with the revolt against Joram. As regards the Philistines, it is impossible to lay much weight on the statement of Chronicles, unsupported as it is by the older history, and in Joel the Philistines plainly stand in one category with the Phoenicians, as slave dealers, not as armed foes. Gaza in fact was a slave emporium as early as the time of Amos (i. 6), and continued so till Roman times. Thus, if any inference as to date can be drawn from chap, iii., it must rest on spseial features of the trade in slaves, which was always an important part of the commerce of the Levant. In the time of Amos the slaves collected by Philistines and Tyrians were sold en masse to Edom, and presumably went to Egypt or Arabia. Joel complains that they were sold to the Grecians (Javan, lonians). 2 It is probable that some Hebrew and Syrian slaves were exported to the Mediterranean coasts from a very early date, and Isa. xi. 11 already speaks of Israelites captive in these districts as well as in Egypt, Ethiopia, and the East. But the traffic in this direction hardly became extensive till a later date. In Deut. xxviii. 68 Egypt is still the chief goal of the maritime slave trade, and in Ezek. xxvii. 13 Javan exports slaves to Tyre, not conversely. Thus the allusion to Javan in Joel better suits a later date, when Syrian slaves were in special request in Greece. 3 And the name of Javan is not found in any part of the Old Testament certainly older than Ezekiel. In Joel it seems to stand as a general repre sentative of the distant countries reached by the Mediterranean (in contrast with the southern Arabians, Salseans, chap. iii. 8), the furthest nation reached by the fleets of the Red Sea. This is pre cisely the geographical standpoint of the post-exile author of Gen. x. 4, where Javan includes Carthage and Tartessus. 1 On the Authorized Version of ii. 1 7 it appears that subjection to a foreign power is not a present fact but a thing feared. But the par allelism awl ver. 19 justify the now prevalent rendering, "that the heathen should make a mock of them." 2 The hypothesis of an Arabian Javan, applied to Joel iii. 6 by Credner, Hitzig, and others, may be viewed as exploded. See Stade, De Populo Javan, Giessen Programme, 1880. 3 Compare Movers, PhiJnizisches Alterthum, III. i. p. 70 sq. Finally, the allusion to Egypt in Joel iii. 19 must on Credner s theory be explained of the invasion of Sliishak a century before Joash. From this time down to the last period of the Hebrew monarchy Egypt was not the enemy of Judah. If the arguments chiefly relied on for an early date are so precarious or can even be turned against their inventors, there are others of an unambiguous kind which make for a date in the Persian period. It appears from chap. iii. 1 , 2 that Joel wrote after the exile. The phrase " to bring- again the captivity " would not alone suffice to prove this, for it is used in a wide sense, and perhaps means rather to " reverse the calamity;" 4 but the dispersion of Israel among the nations, and the allotment of the Holy Laud to new occupants, cannot fairly be referred to any calamity less than that of the captivity. With this the whole standpoint of the prophecy agrees. To Joel Judah "and the people of Jehovah are synonyms ; northern Israel has disappeared. Now it is true that those who take their view of the history from Chronicles, where the kingdom of Ephraim is always treated as a sect outside the true religion, can reconcile this fact with an early date. But in ancient times it was not so ; and under Joash, the contemporary of Elisha, such a limitation of the people of Jehovah is wholly inconceivable. The earliest prophetic books have a quite different standpoint ; otherwise indeed the books of northern prophets and historians could never have been admitted into the Jewish canon. Again, the significant fact that there is no mention of a king and princes, but only of sheikhs and priests, has a force not to be invalidated by the ingenious reference of the book to the time of Joash s minority and the supposed regency of Jehoiada. 5 And the assumption that there was a period before the prophetic conflicts of the 8th century when spiritual prophecy had unchallenged sway, when there was no gross idolatry or superstition, when the priests of Jerusalem, acting in accord with prophets like Joel, held the same place as heads of a pure worship which they occupied after the exile (comp. Ewald, Propheten, i. 89), is not consistent with history. It rests on the old theory of the antiquity of the Levitical legislation, so that in fact all who place that legislation later than Ezekiel are agreed that the book of Joel is also late. In this connexion one point deserves special notice. The religious significance of the plague of drought and locusts is expressed in chap. i. 9 in the observation that the daily meat and drink offering are cut off, and the token of new blessing is the restoration of this service, chap. ii. 14. In other words, the daily offer ing is the continual symbol of gracious intercourse between Jehovah and His people and the main office of religion. This conception, which finds its parallel in Dan. viii. 11, xi. 31, xii. 11, is quite in accordance with the later law. But under the monarchy the daily oblation was the king s private offering, and not till Ezra s reformation did it become the affair of the community and the central act of national worship (Neh. x. 33 sq.). s That Joel wrote not only after the exile but after the work of Ezra and Nehemiah may be viewed as confirmed by the allusions to the walls of Jerusalem in chap. ii. 7, 9. Such is the historical basis which we seem to be able to lay for the study of the exegetical problems of the book. The style of Joel is clear, and his language presents little difficulty beyond the occurrence of several unique word?, which in part may very well be due to errors of the text. 4 See Ewald on Jer. xlviii. 47, and Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschrift, 1873, p. 519 sq. 5 Stade not unreasonably questions whether 2 Kings xii. 1-3 implies the paramount political influence of Jehoiada. Op. cit., p. 17. 6 See Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels, p. 78 sq. XIII. 89