Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Joel · About this commentary
Blow the Trumpet in Zion
Joel 2:1-3
1 Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of Yahweh comes, for it is close at hand: · WEB
The alarm is sounded for an army, and the ground it crosses goes from Eden to wilderness in a single verse.
Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain. The instrument is the shofar, used to warn of an approaching army, and the location is the temple mount — so the alarm is raised at the place people would normally run to for safety.
The reason is stated twice for weight: the day of Yahweh comes, it is close at hand. Then verse 2 describes it in the vocabulary Zephaniah would stack up — darkness and gloominess, clouds and thick darkness Zephaniah 1:15 — and adds an image that cuts against the gloom: like the dawn spreading on the mountains. What is coming arrives the way morning does, along the ridgelines, unstoppable and visible from a long way off.
Verse 3 gives the sentence that measures the destruction. Before them the land is as the garden of Eden; behind them, a desolate wilderness. The comparison is with the one landscape Scripture describes as perfect Genesis 2:8, and the swarm crosses it in the time it takes to read the verse. Nothing escapes them, and the chapter has not yet said who they are.
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