The Book of Joel: What the locust swarm has left... Other locusts have eaten.

The Prophet Joel, in the Sistine Chapel

The book of Joel is, according to Chapter 1 Verse 1, The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethual.  It is only three chapters long, and it stands out as a pretty good read. If you squint, it’s something like a horror story.  It even starts by telling us what an extreme a prophecy it’s going to be. The elders are asked if they’ve ever heard about something like this happening in the past.  Everyone is assured that they’ll be telling the grandchildren about this amazing and horrifying event that's going to happen (or is perhaps already happening).

The amazing and horrifying event is a swarm of locusts. Now, when I was a kid and liked chasing grasshoppers, I always wondered why the Bible takes such a hard line on locusts, but the problem is of course that they come in great numbers and, although each little bug doesn’t eat too much by itself, in the aggregate they eat, well, everything. So, if you are a desert agricultural society without much in the way of a surplus, watching the locusts go through comes with a sinking realization that your family may well be starving to death pretty soon. It’s pretty grim.

What the locust swarm has left
The great locusts have eaten
What the great locusts have left
The young locusts have eaten;
What the young locusts have left
Other locusts have eaten. (1:4)

Not much fun.

Amid the scenes of environmental devastation in the first chapter and a half, there is this imagery:

 They charge like warriors;
they scale walls like soldiers.
They all march in line,
not swerving from their course.
 They do not jostle each other;
each marches straight ahead.
They plunge through defenses
without breaking ranks.
 They rush upon the city;
they run along the wall.
They climb into the houses;
like thieves they enter through the windows. (2:7-9)

These are some really spooky locusts, sweeping  across the land with a remorseless implacability. Ultimately, though, this is a prophecy with a relatively happy ending, for in the second half of Chapter 2 Joel offers a way out:

Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity. (13)

If the people “rend their hearts,” God will turn away troubles and restore prosperity:

 I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm —
my great army that I sent among you.
 You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the LORD your God,
who has worked wonders for you. (25-26)

And indeed, Chapter 2 ends, after a brief return to apocalyptic visions of the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, on a singularly triumphant note:

And everyone who calls
on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said,
even among the survivors
whom the LORD calls. (32)

OK. So, one question here is: are we really talking about locusts? As we have been seeing, much of Biblical prophecy is couched in political-cartoon metaphor, and for all I know Joel may well be making references to invading armies of Moabites or Babylonians or Egyptians that would have been perfectly transparent to a contemporary audience. It could be a story about how the destruction and disruption of war is bad for farming – which it really, really is.

Then too, if it’s a story about locusts, is it a reference to an actual locust swarm that was really happening? Or is it a locust storm of the imagination, a kind of bronze age dystopian piece, a concrete metaphor to represent the many more subtle possible manifestations of God’s wrath? Who knows!

And finally, unfortunately in a way, it’s always interesting to check the footnotes. For just as you have formed your vision of the vast wave of locusts – the great locusts, the young locusts, the locusts beyond number – you will see that “the precise meaning of the four Hebrew words used here for locusts is uncertain.” So, not only might the locusts be metaphorical, they might not be locusts. This could be a vision of an unstoppable wave of alligators, seagulls, trout, and walking trees, and we'd be none the wiser. I imagine that the Biblical scholars have made a pretty good guess with locusts, but you can’t rule out the possibility that there is a truly bizarre prophecy hidden right here in plain sight, if only we knew those words.

Chapter 3 is a little different. Labelled “The Nations Judged,” it is a promise of revenge against Tyre and Sidon and all you regions of Philistia, all of the peoples who have opposed Judah and the Israelites. All of the nations are told to get ready for war, to beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears, and to come to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which might be the gully just to the east of Jerusalem, or might be a mythic location. There, they will get their comeuppance, and subsequently (17-21) God will bless and protect Jerusalem and Judah eternally.

Let’s take a look at the “comeuppance” verses:

“Let the nations be roused;
let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
for there I will sit
to judge all the nations on every side.
 Swing the sickle,
for the harvest is ripe.
Come, trample the grapes,
for the winepress is full
and the vats overflow—
so great is their wickedness!”
 Multitudes, multitudes
in the valley of decision!
For the day of the LORD is near
in the valley of decision.
 The sun and moon will be darkened,
and the stars no longer shine.
 The LORD will roar from Zion
and thunder from Jerusalem;
the earth and the heavens will tremble.
But the LORD will be a refuge for his people,
a stronghold for the people of Israel. (12-16)

I read this as a rather florid account of a military ambush. The people of Tyre and so on, overconfident with their recently repurposed weapons, all flood in to attack Jerusalem and are caught in a classic low-ground trap. The Israelites will be able to cut them down like ripe grain, to trample them like grapes, and generally put them to rout, God will preside over the day with supernatural gravitas.

But not everybody reads it that way. When I looked up “Valley of Jehosaphat,” I learned that many people read this passage as a prediction of an actual final-judgement event to be held at the end of the world, or at least at the end of this phase of the world’s existence. Some feel that God will actually sit in the little valley to the east of Jerusalem, issuing judgements. This is, of course, the literal meaning of the words in Verse 12, but it hardly needs pointing out that cherry-picking this passage for literal interpretation is a pretty fanciful way of approaching the text.

The end of Joel 2 can also be read as an “end times” sort of prophecy, now that I go back and look at it – but only if you already expect it to read that way. As written, these passages are very much in the context of “present times.” God will help us turn back the locusts, and then Jerusalem will be OK. God will help us defeat our military enemies (which, again, may well be what the locusts are supposed to be understood as), and then Jerusalem will be OK. It’s a prediction of the future from the time frame of the prophet-narrator, but on the scale of “we will get through this bad year and be all right, as long as we keep the faith.” To regard this as a prophecy that is still “live,” that is still referring to things in our own future, the future relative to 2018, is almost to say that nothing written in the future tense can ever really happen, because it will always remain in the future.

But whatever our thoughts on end times, I think we can all agree that a vast swarm of robots advancing over the land in a relentless, unswerving synchronized mass is one heck of an apocalyptic vision.