Joel 1:1-20
The Day of the LORD would be an appropriate title for Joel’s prophecy. Evidently it does not refer to a day of 24 hours, but to a period still in the future when the will of God will be accomplished on earth as it is in heaven Matthew 6:10). Ever since the fall, man, led by his passions, has not ceased to do whatever pleases himself. We could say then that we are living in man’s day. That is why, when the Lord intervenes to impose His will, it must be first of all by blows which will break man’s pride. Morally in the lives of each one of us, the day of the Lord dawns at the moment when we recognise His full authority over us.
In contrast to Hosea, a prophet of Israel, Joel’s message is for Judah. He uses the opportunity presented by a series of calamities, namely the successive devastation of the country by different types of locust. Few sights are as impressive as an invasion by migratory locusts in the East. Think of this prodigious army of billions of insects descending on a fertile country and in no time reducing it to a desert!
From this disaster which occurred in his lifetime, Joel turns to a scourge still in the future: the invasion by the Assyrian.