Joel
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on CD 		"And I will sell your sons and your daughters ... for the LORD hath spoken it." -- Joel 3:8

Joel for Skeptics

Does this quote sound familiar: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks"?

Well it's found in both Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3), not Joel. But there is a verse in Joel that sounds almost the same but says just the opposite: "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears." (Joel 3:10)

Other than that, there's not much to report. God will your burn food and dry up rivers, send locusts and caterpillars to eat your crops, darken the sun, turn the moon to blood, and sell your sons and daughters. But if you've read the earlier books in the Old Testament, you're used that all that by now. The only thing new is that it will all happen soon. Really soon. (It was supposed to have happened soon after Joel was written, so it's a bit overdue.)

Here are the highlights.

  • "The day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand." 1:15, 2:1, 3:14

  • God says he will repay Israel for the damage the locusts caused -- which he sent! And they will "praise the name of the Lord." 2:25-26

  • "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood." These "signs" were a lot more impressive before the causes of solar and lunar eclipses were understood. 2:31

  • "And I will sell your sons and your daughters." 3:8

  • "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears." 3:10