Introduction to the prophet Joel

The 29th book of the Bible, consisting of 4 chapters
A call to repentance and return to God – The “Day of the LORD” is coming

Joel, whose name means “The LORD—YHWH is God,” was the second of the so-called “Minor Prophets” in order of appearance; he succeeded the prophet Obadiah in the southern kingdom of Judah.
His book is also the second in the sequence of the Twelve Prophets.

From Hosea, we go back nearly a century to Joel’s calling.
At the beginning of Joel’s ministry, the prophet Elisha was still active in the Northern Kingdom, and toward the end, the prophets Jonah and Amos appeared there. It is around the second half of the 9th century B.C., and there is great distress in Israel as Joel grows up.

Joel feels with the people – he is, after all, a part of them himself – but he must nevertheless proclaim to them, in God’s name, the coming judgment for all their transgressions.
God is just, and persistent clinging to sin cannot remain without consequences.
In doing so, the prophet Joel calls out with love for repentance—for the people of God to turn back—for only in this—returning to God’s path—lies life and salvation, for every individual but also for entire nations.

The prophet Joel thus proclaims judgment upon Israel—but not upon the Northern Kingdom, where he lived and which was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.
Subsequently, even its inhabitants were taken into exile and “replaced” by foreign peoples. These peoples intermingled, and their respective beliefs blended with the remaining remnants of the 10 tribes of Israel to form the “people” of the Samaritans.

Joel prophesies about his own age and also beyond this “time of the nations.”
In the short book of Joel, we find the announcement of the “outpouring” of God’s Spirit—
the first “Christians” saw a foretaste of this prophecy fulfilled a good eight centuries later.

Nor does Joel have to proclaim judgment upon the entire people of Israel, together with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin—for David’s royal dynasty apparently came to a definitive end with the conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC by the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar, and the time of the nations, the time in which Israel was ruled by foreign peoples, began.

It was the Jewish Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, the origin of our Pentecost, in the year 32 AD, when his disciples gathered in Jerusalem and began to speak in tongues…
This is recounted in the “New Testament,” in the Book of Acts, following the Gospels 🙂

But the judgment on Israel described by the prophet will not take place until the “Great Tribulation,” following this “Time of the Nations.”
The prophet foretells not only another catastrophic drought for the entire land during these three and a half years, but also an invasion.
A literal overrun of Israel by a massive army invading from the north.

He also prophesies deliverance from this great tribulation for our entire planet and its end—the coming “Day of the Lord.”
The Messiah—the Christ—the Savior will come, destroy the enemy, and lead the remnant of Israel, as well as the remaining “remnant” of the world, into the 1,000-year Kingdom of Peace 🙂
This is where Joel’s vision ends.

Outline of the Book of Joel:

Although the Book of Joel is so short that the introduction almost covers it all, I would still like to organize each chapter as a separate section and use the table of contents 🙂

Content of the prophet Joel:

Joel chapter 1
Joel chapter 2
Joel chapter 3