Gioele 3:4 Commento

In the close of the foregoing chapter we had a gracious promise of deliverance in Mount Zion and Jerusalem; now this whole chapter is a comment upon that promise, showing what that deliverance shall be, how it shall be wrought by the destruction of the church's enemies, and how it shall be perfected in the everlasting rest and joy of the church. This was in part accomplished in the deliverance of Jerusalem from the attempt that Sennacherib made upon it in Hezekiah's time, and afterwards in the return of the Jews out of their captivity in Babylon, and other deliverances wrought for the Jewish church between that and Christ's coming. But it has a further reference, to the great redemption wrought out for us by Jesus Christ, and the destruction of our spiritual enemies and all their agents, and will have its full accomplishment in the judgment of the great day. Here is a prediction, I. Of God's reckoning with the enemies of his people for all the injuries and indignities that they had done them, and returning them upon their own head (Joe 3:1-8). II. Of God's judging all nations when the measure of their iniquity is full, and appearing publicly, to the everlasting confusion of all impenitent sinners and the everlasting comfort of all his faithful servants (Joe 3:9-17). III. Of the provision God has made for the refreshment of his people, for their safety and purity, when their enemies shall be made desolate (Joe 3:18-21). These promises were not of private interpretation only, but were written for our learning, "that we, through patience and comfort of this scripture, might have hope."

INTRODUCTION TO JOEL 3 This chapter, which some make the fourth, contains a prophecy of God's judgments on all the antichristian nations at the time of the Jews' conversion, and the reasons of them, Joe 3:1; a threatening of Tyre and Zidon, by way of retaliation, for carrying the riches of the Jews into their temples, and selling their persons to the Greeks, Joe 3:4; an alarm to prepare for the battle of Armageddon, or the destruction that shall be made in the valley of Jehoshaphat, Joe 3:9; and after that an account of the happy state of the church of Christ, their safety and security, plenty, prosperity, and purity, to the end of the world, Joe 3:16.

Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine?.... The Tyrians, Zidonians, and Philistines, were near neighbours of the Jews, and implacable enemies to them; and are here put for the enemies of the true church of Christ, the Papists and Turks, and in whose possession those places now are: these are addressed by the Lord, inquiring or demanding the reason of their ill usage of him and his people: "what have ye to do with me?" to be called by my name, or accounted my people? I know you not, nor will I have any fellowship with you: or what have ye to do with my people, to disturb and distress them? what wrong have I or they done you, that you thus use them? will ye render me a recompence? for turning you out of your land, and putting my people into it? do you think to retaliate this? and if ye recompense me; by doing an injury to my people: swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head; bring swift and sudden destruction upon you.

(Verse 4-6.) But what do you want with me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Will you retaliate against me? If you retaliate against me, I will quickly repay you for your actions upon your own heads. For you have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried off my precious treasures into your temples. You have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, in order to remove them far from their own land. LXX: What have I to do with you, Tyre and Sidon, and all the Galilee of the Gentiles? Are you rendering retribution to me, or do you hold anger against me in your heart (for this is what μνησικακείτε means in Greek)? Quickly and swiftly I will repay your retribution upon your heads, because you have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried off my precious treasures into your temples. And you have sold the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem to the Greeks, in order to remove them far from their borders. And the Jews consider these places, Tyre, Sidon, and the borders of Palestine, or Galilee, to be inhabited by foreigners: because during the Jewish captivity, when they were conquered by the Romans, they persecuted the people of God; in fact, they persecuted the very God who presided over the people, according to what is written: 'He who receives you, receives me' (Matt. 10:40). Therefore, on the contrary, whoever persecutes the people of God, persecutes the very God to whom the people belong. I will restore, he says, to you what you have done to my people: for you have taken my silver and gold, that is, the vessels of the temple, and whatever was most precious and beautiful in it, the golden candlestick and the golden table of proposition, and the two golden Cherubim, and the mercy-seat, and the golden bowls and censers, and you have consecrated them to your idols (2 Kings 25). However, the Chaldeans are said to have done these things more, who placed the vessels of the Lord's temple in the temple of Bel: from which afterwards Belshazzar drinks in the vessels, and immediately his kingdom is transferred to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5). But because after the Great and Horrible Day of the Lord, these things are said to happen, which the apostles interpret in the resurrection of the Lord, and the Hebrews differ in the future time of judgment, it is more to be understood about the Romans: that Vespasian and Titus, after the Temple of Peace was built in Rome, consecrated the vessels of the Temple and all its offerings in its sanctuary: which Greek and Roman history narrates. At that time, the sons of Judah and Jerusalem (not Israel, and the ten tribes, which until today live in the cities and mountains of the Medes) were sold to the sons of the Greeks, so that they would exterminate them from their borders, and the whole Jewish world was filled with captivity. They interpret this as referring to the vengeance of the blood of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened by the judgment of God, confirming that it happened against Tyre and Sidon. But according to the intended allegory, we interpret Tyre and Sidon and the Palestinians as those who oppress, afflict, and persecute God's people (for Tyre resonates with our language) and hunt him down (or rather, for them to be hunted down) unto death, which the name Sidon indicates, and they drink blood and fall in the mud, which signifies the Philistines and Galilee. The Lord will quickly and swiftly restore to them what they deserve, because they have persecuted him. And their silver and gold, namely the words of the Scriptures, and their meanings, that is, their ideas and theses, and everything that was beautiful in the Church, they have delivered into the bondage of their errors. Whoever deceives heretics and causes them to worship idols, sells the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem to the Greeks, or to the pagans, and makes them become heathens among the Christians, in order to exterminate them from their borders, in which they were born in Christ, and not in Judea, and in the confession of the truth, but they wander in the error of the nations. All of these things, we can refer to the Day of Judgment, without a differing punishment: although they may seem to differ in time from what the superiors say. For in Hebrew it is written 'Galilaea', which Aquila translated as 'Θῖνας', and Symmachus as 'Terminos'. And 'Θῖνας', which means 'Tumulos Arenarum', let us refer to the shores of Palestine, not to Galilee of the Philistines, which is nothing at all.

GOD'S VENGEANCE ON ISRAEL'S FOES IN THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. HIS BLESSING ON THE CHURCH. (Joel 3:1-21) bring again the captivity--that is, reverse it. The Jews restrict this to the return from Babylon. Christians refer it to the coming of Christ. But the prophet comprises the whole redemption, beginning from the return out of Babylon, then continued from the first advent of Christ down to the last day (His second advent), when God will restore His Church to perfect felicity [CALVIN].

what have ye to do with me--Ye have no connection with Me (that is, with My people: God identifying Himself with Israel); I (that is, My people) have given you no cause of quarrel, why then do ye trouble Me (that is, My people)? (Compare the same phrase, Jos 22:24; Jdg 11:12; Sa2 16:10; Mat 8:29). Tyre . . . Zidon . . . Palestine-- (Amo 1:6, Amo 1:9). if ye recompense me--If ye injure Me (My people), in revenge for fancied wrongs (Eze 25:15-17), I will requite you in your own coin swiftly and speedily.

(Heb. Bib. ch. 4.) Judgment upon the World of Nations, and Glorification of Zion- Joe 3:1, Joe 3:2. "For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall turn the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather together all nations, and bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will contend with them there concerning my people and my inheritance Israel, which they have scattered among the nations, and my land have they divided. Joe 3:3. And for my people they cast the lot; and gave the boy for a harlot, and the maiden they have sold for wine, and drunk (it)." The description of the judgment-day predicted in Joe 2:31 commences with an explanatory כּי. The train of thought is the following: When the day of the Lord comes, there will be deliverance upon Zion only for those who call upon the name of the Lord; for then will all the heathen nations that have displayed hostility to Jehovah's inheritance be judged in the valley of Jehoshaphat. By hinnēh, the fact to be announced is held up as something new and important. The notice as to the time points back to the "afterward" in Joe 2:28 : "in those days," viz., the days of the outpouring of the Spirit of God. This time is still further described by the apposition, "at that time, when I shall turn the captivity of Judah," as the time of the redemption of the people of God out of their prostrate condition, and out of every kind of distress. שׁוּב את שׁבוּת is not used here in the sense of "to bring back the prisoners," but, as in Hos 6:11, in the more comprehensive sense of restitutio in integrum, which does indeed include the gathering together of those who were dispersed, and the return of the captives, as one element, though it is not exhausted by this one element, but also embraces their elevation into a new and higher state of glory, transcending their earlier state of grace. In וקבּצתּי the prediction of judgment is appended to the previous definition of the time in the form of an apodosis. The article in כּל־הגּוים (all the nations) does not refer to "all those nations which were spoken of in Hos 1:1-11 and 2 under the figure of the locusts" (Hengstenberg), but is used because the prophet had in his mind all those nations upon which hostility towards Israel, the people of God, is charged immediately afterwards as a crime: so that the article is used in much the same manner as in Jer 49:36, because the notion, though in itself an indefinite one, is more fully defined in what follows (cf. Ewald, 227, a). The valley of Yehōshâphât, i.e., Jehovah judges, is not the valley in which the judgment upon several heathen nations took place under Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20), and which received the name of Valley of blessing, from the feast of thanksgiving which Jehoshaphat held there (Ch2 20:22-26), as Ab. Ezra, Hofmann, Ewald, and others suppose; for the "Valley of blessing" was not "the valley of Kidron, which was selected for that festival in the road back from the desert of Tekoah to Jerusalem" (see Bertheau on 2 Chronicles l.c.), and still less "the plain of Jezreel" (Kliefoth), but was situated in the neighbourhood of the ruins of Bereikût, which have been discovered by Wolcott (see Ritter, Erdkunde, xv. p. 635, and Van de Velde, Mem. p. 292). On the other hand, the valley of Jehoshaphat is unquestionably to be sought for, according to this chapter (as compared with Zac 14:4), in or near Jerusalem; and the name, which does not occur anywhere else in either the Old or New Testament, excepting here and in Joe 3:12, is formed by Joel, like the name ‛ēmeq hechârūts in v. 14, from the judgment which Jehovah would hold upon the nations there. The tradition of the church (see Euseb. and Jerome in the Onom. s.v. κοιλάς, Caelas, and Itiner. Anton. p. 594; cf. Robinson, Pal. i. pp. 396, 397) has correctly assigned it to the valley of the Kidron, on the eastern side of Jerusalem, or rather to the northern part of that valley (Sa2 18:18), or valley of Shaveh (Gen 14:17). There would the Lord contend with the nations, hold judgment upon them, because they had attacked His people (nachălâthı̄, the people of Jehovah, as in Joe 2:17) and His kingdom ('artsı̄). The dispersion of Israel among the nations, and the division (חלּק) of the Lord's land, cannot, of course, refer to the invasion of Judah by the Philistines and Arabians in the time of Joram (Ch2 21:16-17). For although these foes did actually conquer Jerusalem and plunder it, and carried off, among other captives, even the sons of the king himself, this transportation of a number of prisoners cannot be called a dispersion of the people of Israel among the heathen; still less can the plundering of the land and capital be called a division of the land of Jehovah; to say nothing of the fact, that the reference here is to the judgment which would come upon all nations after the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh, and that it is not till Joe 3:4-8 that Joel proceeds to speak of the calamities which neighbouring nations had inflicted upon the kingdom of Judah. The words presuppose as facts that have already occurred, both the dispersion of the whole nation of Israel in exile among the heathen, and the conquest and capture of the whole land by heathen nations, and that in the extent to which they took place under the Chaldeans and Romans alone.