Joel

Joel (Hebrew Yo'el, "the LORD is God") is the name of several men in the Old Testament, but pre-eminently of the prophet Joel the son of Pethuel, whose short but theologically rich book stands among the Minor Prophets. Little is known of his life or precise date — he prophesied in Judah, likely centered on Jerusalem and its temple worship — yet his message of judgment, repentance, and the outpoured Spirit reverberates through the rest of Scripture, above all in the preaching of the apostles.

The occasion of Joel's prophecy was a devastating plague of locusts that stripped the land bare, ruining the harvest and cutting off the grain and drink offerings of the temple (Joel 1:4). Joel reads this calamity as a summons and a warning: it is a foretaste of "the day of the LORD," which he portrays as "a day of darkness and gloom" when an irresistible army advances and "the earth quakes before them" (Joel 2:1–2). Against that terror he issues the great prophetic call to repentance: "Yet even now, declares the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments" (Joel 2:12–13), grounding the appeal in the character of God, who is "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love."

To the people who turn, God promises restoration — to "restore... the years that the swarming locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25) — and then a far greater gift. In the book's most famous oracle the LORD declares, "I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy... even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit" (Joel 2:28–29), with the accompanying promise that "everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved" (Joel 2:32). The book closes with the nations gathered for judgment in the Valley of Jehoshaphat and the secure blessing of God's people, from whose temple a fountain flows (Joel 3:18).

Joel's enduring significance lies in this Pentecost prophecy. On the day the Spirit fell on the church, Peter stood and declared, "this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel," quoting the outpouring text in full (Acts 2:16–21), and Paul echoes Joel's promise that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:13). Thus the prophet of the locust plague becomes a herald of the new-covenant age of the Spirit. The name Joel — a compound of two names for God — is borne by many others in Scripture, including Samuel's firstborn son, a judge at Beersheba who took bribes (1 Samuel 8:2–3), a Reubenite chief (1 Chronicles 5:4), and a Levite singer in David's day (1 Chronicles 15:7) — its frequency reflecting Israel's confession that "the LORD is God."