Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Joel · About this commentary
Even the Animals Pant
Joel 1:16-20
16 Isn’t the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? · WEB
The chapter ends with the prophet praying, and with creatures who cannot pray doing the only thing they can.
Isn't the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? Two losses are named as one — the table and the temple — and the phrase before our eyes insists that nothing here is theoretical.
Verses 17 and 18 stay at ground level. Seeds rotting under their clods, granaries desolate, barns broken down because there is nothing to keep in them. Then the livestock: herds bewildered for lack of pasture, flocks made desolate. The verb for the cattle describes confusion rather than pain, and it is exactly right — animals that do not understand what has been taken from them.
Verse 19 turns to prayer, and the prophet goes first: Yahweh, I cry to you. He does not summon others to do what he has not done.
And verse 20 gives the chapter its last image. The animals of the field pant toward God, because the water brooks have dried up. They cannot repent, fast, or assemble. They lift their heads toward the source of rain, and Joel records it as though it counted — which the psalm also does, where young lions seek their food from God Psalms 104:21.
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