Joel 2:23-32 includes two segments of the book. The first is Joel 1:2-2:27, a lament around the event of a plague of locusts. The next segment, embracing Joel 2:28-3:32, is a vision of the outpouring of the Spirit of God.
Joel 2: 23-27 is part of a larger segment that began in verse 21, calling for a response from those who benefit from the goodness of the Lord. 21 Do not fear, O soil, reversing the conditions to which Joel refers in 1:6-7, 10-12, and 19-20. Rather, be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things! 22 Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. 23 O children of Zion, occurring only here, Lamentations 4:2, and Psalm 149:2, Zechariah 9:13. Zion is the ancient Jebusite stronghold that David captured that symbolized the chosen quality of the city and the people. Joel, who has described the disaster and calls for the people to repent, has also described an announcement of divine pity and deliverance. Further, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God. Such rejoicing is the appropriate response of these children of Zion. It is worth noting that the expression “the Lord your God” is not an empty rhetorical flourish in its biblical context, as it often strikes modern ears. Rather, it is a reminder that the biblical writers understood Yahweh to be Israel’s God in particular, while recognizing the (inferior but acknowledged) existence of the deities of other nations. Absolute theoretical monotheism was not a major concern for most of the OT writers, especially before its later periods (i.e., Second/Third Isaiah); covenantal fidelity to the Lord, irrespective of the ontological status of other deities, was the overriding object of (especially) the prophets’ attention. For the Lord has given the early rain (moreh[1] from the end of October to the first of December) bringing the drought referred to earlier to an end, for your vindication. Such vindication indicates the close connection between the natural and moral worlds in the minds of the biblical writers. In the ancient Near East (and in the ancient world in general), the chief duty of a patron deity was to provide the natural resources of soil, rain, sun, herbage, etc., on which everything else in an agricultural society depended. They considered failure to do so either (a) divine rejection, (b) divine punishment or (c) divine ineffectuality. The vindication sought in this verse would avoid the humiliation expressed in verse 17 (“[D]o not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations”). The Lord has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. 24 The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. In the ancient world, the chief duty of deity was to provide the natural resources on which an agricultural society depended. Failure to do so meant the divine had rejected the people, had punished the people, or had become weak. 25 I will repay you, thereby healing them from the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you. The Lord is the source of evil, rather than some other malevolent force of which we read in Genesis 3, I Chronicles 21:1, Job 1-2, Zechariah 3:1-12, Matthew 4, and Revelation 12. Especially among those influence by the Deuteronomistic school, as we learn in 11:26-28, 28:15, 45, misfortune is a sign of divine displeasure. Job challenges this view, as does John 9. 26 You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame (as in exile). 27 You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame. The statement reminds us of Exodus 20:2, stressing that restoration means meeting physical needs, genuine worship, and true knowledge.
Joel 2:28-32, part of a segment that extends to 3:21, is a vision of the outpoured Spirit of God. 2:28-32 stresses that God will make the next period better than before. 28 Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. The Spirit will flow without measure. This is life-power. God will shower the Spirit upon all humanity, establishing a new way of life. There will be a new awareness of God in immediacy. Your sons and your daughters (think Deborah in Judges 4:4, Hulda in II Kings 22:14, Noadiah in Nehemiah 6:14, the wife of Isaiah in Isaiah 8:3) shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. We need to pay attention here. As the dawning of the eschatological age draws near, the hope is the outpouring of the Spirit will bring the people of God closer to the anticipated fullness of the rule of God. The New Testament will view the coming of Jesus of Nazareth as the inauguration of the the eschatological age. For those open to see, the outpouring of the Spirit leads to empowering the people of God to live from the perspective of the anticipated future, even if provisionally. As such, if the future means dissolving cultural distinctions of authority, then the people of God will embody that dissolving, even if only in a provisional way. 29 Even on the male and female slaves, reminding us that prophets among slaves would be rarer than among women, in those days, I will pour out my spirit. Joel envisions a universal religious revival unlike anything seen before in Judah, part of the apocalyptic end he is describing. The common image of the biblical prophet is that of the isolated religious genius hurling invective against the religious establishment à la Elijah (e.g., 1 Kings 18) or John the Baptist (e.g., Matthew 3:7). Such prophets were part of the religious establishment in ancient Israel, even while they could challenge it. The vision, far from repudiating prophets, envisions the divine spirit that gives rise to prophecy overflowing to everyone. Jewish hope expected the outpouring of the Spirit of God on the people of God, as we see here. This entire concluding section is an anticipation of the final consummation. The point of this outpouring of the Spirit is the imparting of prophetic inspiration to all members of the covenant people.[2]
Joel 2:30-32 are prose, using apocalyptic imagery in verses 30-31 such as we also find in Ezekiel 32:7-8, Amos 8:9, and Isaiah 13:8-10. Such images indicate the power of the Lord over the natural world as well as the social world humanity has created. 30 I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. Nature is part of the drama of salvation rather than the neutral backdrop of human history that our modern world envisions. Nature is an instrument in the hands of the Lord. 32 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls. The oracle of salvation suggests a righteous remnant.
The hope to which Joel points us is not a natural or automatic response to adverse situations. The Jewish people had already experienced exile and the return from exile. The return was not going so well. Decade after decade, the Jewish people learned to approach their moment in history with little hope and with helplessness. They were small band of people united around their covenant with the Lord but dominated by the military power at that time in the Middle East. They had every right to feel the helplessness of this moment. Yet, Joel points the people toward hope. Such hope did not have its ground in in a vague optimism. Rather, it derived from the promise of the Lord. We can almost feel the tension between a helpless past, an adverse moment in history, and yet, the hope of the Spirit of the Lord overflowing without measure in a way that empowers the people of God toward a new way of life.
I invite you to consider the elusive quality of our experience of time. I am not thinking of the chronological counting of time. You likely know the date of your birth and maybe even its hour. However, how we experience the time allotted to us is of vital importance to how we lead our lives.
We know what lost time is like. Time lost waiting in line, waiting in traffic, or even waiting for good times to return. The Bible keeps holding out hope for renewal. After a time of drought will come a time of abundance. After the devastation of war will come a time of peace. After a time of a drought of the life-giving Spirit will come a time of the overflowing of the Spirit into unexpected places, such as women and slaves. We can feel as if we have squandered life or that adverse situations beyond our control have taken our time from us. Sometimes, we are quite clear that we have squandered our time. These are not pleasant realizations, especially when we ponder the finite boundaries of our lifetime. Lost and squandered time are truly gone. We will not recover them. Yet, we are not helpless today. What we consider "lost time" can be instructive and redemptive. Here is a poem that I would like to think can help us consider this possibility.
I NEEDED THE QUIET
I needed the quiet so He drew me aside,
Into the shadows where we could confide.
Away from the bustle where all the day long
I hurried and worried when active and strong.
I needed the quiet though at first I rebelled,
But gently, so gently, my cross He upheld,
And whispered so sweetly of spiritual things.
Though weakened in body, my spirit took wings
To heights never dreamed of when active and gay.
He loved me so greatly He drew me away.
I needed the quiet. No prison my bed,
But a beautiful valley of blessings instead --
A place to grow richer in Jesus to hide.
I needed the quiet so He drew me aside.[3]
We can learn to live as if we are helpless in particularly adverse situations. In infancy, our lives are utterly helplessness. As we grow and mature, our independence and control of our worlds grow with us. Yet, in adversity, some fall back into learned helplessness. Self-doubt and low self-esteem can become the ways we learn to perceive wrongly that we have no control over the outcome of a situation. We behave helplessly even when the chance to help ourselves is available. We learn that this adverse situation has no hope. Thus, we can give up on voting, dieting, and dating because we have lost hope and feel our helplessness. We need to teach ourselves that failures and negative experiences are one-time occurrences. Generalizing such moments will lead to helplessness. Recognizing their irregularity will help us to lean toward learned optimism. We begin to see hope, even in adverse situations. We learn both helplessness and optimism. When the inevitable difficulties of life come our way, we have preconditioned our reaction as despair or hope.[4]
I would like to offer a bit of practical wisdom to guide us through the adverse situations we face and move toward hope. The first is to identify the types of adverse situations we regularly encounter. Of course, this will require some honesty in our self-examination. We will then need to identify the beliefs about God, self, people, and world that we held in those situations. We then need to reflect upon the consequences of the beliefs we held in the adverse situations we have identified. We can then challenge unhealthy beliefs and consider healthier options. The difficult part is live our lives deeply committed to the new beliefs of which we are aware. We will help ourselves if a trusted friend or spiritual guide is present with us through this journey of renewed discipleship and discovery.
Such wisdom is open to all. However, for the people of God, hope comes to us from the future as a promise of God. Since such hope is life-giving, opening a new way of life, we recognize the gift of hope and possibility in adverse circumstances as gifts of the Holy Spirit. For those open to this significant and meaningful future, the Spirit will truly overflow without measure. Let it be so.
[1] Occurring only here and at Psalm 84. The more common word for early rain, yoreh, occurs in many manuscripts further on in this verse, when the otherwise unknown form moreh occurs again.
[2] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 6, 13.
[3] --Alice Hansche Mortenson, www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/fbf/quiet.html.
[4] Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, New York: Pocket Books, 1998.
No comments:
Post a Comment