Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Joel · About this commentary
Whoever Calls Will Be Saved
Joel 2:30-32
30 I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth: blood, fire, and pillars of smoke. · WEB
Signs in heaven and earth precede the day — and the way through it is stated in the widest terms the Old Testament uses.
I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth: blood, fire, and pillars of smoke. The signs are given before the day rather than as part of it, and the sun darkened and the moon turned to blood repeat the pattern of Joel 2:10 on a larger scale.
Then verse 32, which is the book's summit and the verse the New Testament reaches for twice. Whoever will call on Yahweh's name shall be saved. The scope is deliberately unrestricted — no nation, office, or lineage is specified — and Paul builds an argument on exactly that unrestrictedness, that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek Romans 10:12–13. Peter quotes it at Pentecost as the close of the same passage Acts 2:21.
The verse then narrows and widens in one movement. In Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape — and the phrase as Yahweh has said attaches a citation, since that promise of escape on Zion stands in Obadiah Obadiah 1:17. One prophet quoting another inside Scripture, and marking the quotation.
The last clause keeps both halves true: among the remnant, those whom Yahweh calls. Whoever calls, and whom he calls, in a single verse.
settled What this mark means