Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Joel · About this commentary
The Years the Locusts Ate
Joel 2:25-27
25 I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the great locust, the grasshopper, and the caterpillar, my great army, which I sent among you. · WEB
God promises to repay time itself — and in the same breath calls the locusts his own army.
I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten. The four insect words of Joel 1:4 are listed again in this verse, and what is promised back is not the crops but the years. That is a strange thing to offer, since lost time is the one loss with no ordinary remedy — grain can be regrown, and a season cannot be relived.
The clause that follows is the harder one: my great army, which I sent among you. God claims the swarm as his own force, which chapter 2 had already implied by putting him at its head Joel 2:11. The disaster is not explained away as an accident he then repaired; it is owned, and the same hand that sent it undertakes the repayment.
Verse 26 gives the result as plenty and praise together, and verse 27 states what the whole exercise was for: you will know that I am among Israel, and that I am Yahweh your God, and there is no one else. Both verses end with the identical promise — my people will never again be disappointed — and the repetition is the book's signature at the close of its restoration.
settled What this mark means