Chapter 25

Jerusalem." Of a similar purport, in the time after Joel, is the passage in Micah, chap. iii. 12.

The words in ver. 15--"Woe, for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as destruction from the Almighty does it come,"--point to something infinitely higher than a mere [Pg 312] desolation by locusts in the literal sense. This appears from a comparison of Is. xiii. 6, where they are taken, almost verbatim, from Joel, and used with a reference to the judgment of the Lord upon the whole earth. This is granted even by _Credner_ himself, when he makes the vain attempt (compare S. 345) to refer them to a judgment different from the devastation by the locust. The same is the case with _Maurer_ and _Hitzig_. How, indeed, is it at all conceivable that a national calamity, so small and transient as a devastation by real locusts would have been, should have been considered by the prophet as the day of the Lord of the people in the city, κατ᾽ ἐξοχῄν, as the conclusion and completion of all the judgments upon the Covenant-people? A conception like this would imply such low notions of God's justice, and such a total misapprehension of the greatness of human guilt, as we find in none of the Old Testament prophets, and, generally, in none of the writers of Holy Scripture. That which the men of God under the Old Testament, from the first--Moses--to the last, announce, is the total expulsion of the people from the country which they defiled by their sins.

The image suddenly changes in vers. 19 and 20: "To thee, O Lord, do I cry. For fire devoureth the pastures of the wilderness, and flame burneth all the trees of the field. Even the beasts of the field desire for Thee; for the fountains of waters are dried up, and fire devoureth the pastures of the wilderness." The divine punishment appears under the image of an all-devouring fire. Now, since we cannot here think of a literal fire, it is certain that, in the preceding verses also, a figurative representation prevails. _Holzhausen_ and _Credner_ (S. 163), and others, attempt to evade this troublesome inference, by asserting that fire and flame are here used instead of the heat of the sun, scorching everything. But this assertion is, at all events, expressed in a distorted and awkward manner. Fire and flame are never used of the heat of the sun. According to this view, it ought rather to be said that the prophet represents the consuming heat, under the image of fire poured down from heaven. But even this cannot be entertained. For the parallel passage chap. ii. 3, "Before him fire devoureth, and after him flame burneth," shows that the fire, being immediately connected with the locusts, cannot be a cause of destruction independent of, and co-ordinate with, them. That the locusts are the sole cause of [Pg 313] the devastation, and that there is not another cause besides them, viz., the heat, is evident also from the words: "As the garden of Eden is the land before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness, and nothing is left by them." The burning anger of God is represented under the image of a consuming and destroying fire, with a reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the divine wrath really manifested itself in that way. Under the image of fire, _war_ also, one of the principal punishments of God, is often represented. Thus, fire means the fire of war in Num. xxi. 28: Amos i. 4, 7, 10, etc.; Jer. xlix. 27; Rev. viii. 8, 10. On the latter of these passages, my Commentary may be compared. If, then, the fire spoken of in this passage mean likewise the fire of war, and the locusts, the heathen enemies, the difficulty presented by the connection of these two things is solved. The comparison of Amos vii. here serves as a key. In vers. 1-3, the divine punishment is represented by the prophet under the image of a great army of locusts laying waste the country, which is just beginning to recover under Jeroboam II. after the former calamities inflicted by the Syrians; and then in ver. 4, under the image of a great fire devouring the sea (_i.e._, the world), and eating up the holy land. This analogy is so much the more important, the more impossible it is to overlook, in other passages also, the points of agreement betwixt Joel and Amos. But the symbolical representation goes still further; it extends even to the details. The beasts of the field are the barbarous, heathen nations. In ver. 19, the desolations are described which the fire of war accomplishes among Israel; in ver. 20, those which it effects among the Gentiles: compare the antithesis between the beasts of the field and the sons of Zion in ii. 22. In Is.