Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Joel · About this commentary
Sanctify a Fast
Joel 1:13-15
13 Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God’s house. · WEB
The priests are told to lie all night in sackcloth and to call the nation in — and the reason given moves past the locusts entirely.
Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests. The instruction is to the men whose ministry has been interrupted, and it is unusually physical: come, lie all night in sackcloth. They are not told to explain the disaster or to resume the offerings. They are told to spend the night on the ground.
Verse 14 gives the public order in four imperatives — sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants, and cry to Yahweh. Everyone is included, and the destination is the house whose altar has nothing to put on it. The verse will be repeated almost word for word at Joel 2:15, which is how the book marks that the second call is the same call, made again with more urgency.
Then verse 15 changes the subject without warning. Alas for the day! For the day of Yahweh is at hand, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Until now the trouble has been insects. Here the prophet names what he thinks he is looking at, and the locusts become a smaller instance of something else.
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