Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Joel 1:7
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree - This describes an extremity of desolation. The locusts at first attack all which is green and succulent; when this has been consumed, then they attack the bark of trees. : “When they have devoured all other vegetables, they attack the trees, consuming first the leaves, then the bark.” : “A day or two after one of these bodies were in motion, others were already hatched to glean after them, gnawing off the young branches and the very bark of such trees as had escaped before with the loss only of their fruit and foliage.” : “They carried desolation wherever they passed. After having consumed herbage, fruit, leaves of trees, they attacked even their young shoots and their bark. Even the reeds, wherewith the huts were thatched, though quite dry, were not spared.” : “Everything in the country was devoured; the bark of figs, pomegranates, and oranges, bitter hard and corrosive, escaped not their voracity.” The effects of this wasting last on for many years . He hath made it clean bare - o: “It is sufficient, if these terrible columns stop half an hour on a spot, for everything growing on it, vines, olive trees, and grain, to be entirely destroyed. After they have passed, nothing remains but the large branches, and the roots which, being under ground, have escaped their voracity.” : “After eating up the corn, they fell upon the vines, the pulse, the willows and even the hemp, notwithstanding its great bitterness.” : “They are particularly injurious to the palm trees; these they strip of every leaf and green particle, the trees remaining like skeletons with bare branches.” : “The bushes were eaten quite bare, though the animals could not have been long on the spot. They sat by hundreds on a bush gnawing the rind and the woody fibres.” The branches thereof are made white - o: “The country did not seem to be burnt, but to be much covered with snow, through the whiteness of the trees and the dryness of the herbs. It pleased God that the fresh crops were already gathered in.” The “vine” is the well-known symbol of God’s people Psalms 80:8, Psalms 80:14; Song of Solomon 2:13, Song of Solomon 2:15; Hosea 10:1; Isaiah 5:1-7; Isaiah 27:2; the fig too, by reason of its sweetness, is an emblem of His Church and of each soul in her, bringing forth the fruit of grace Hosea 9:10; Matthew 21:19; Luke 13:6-7. When then God says, “he hath laid My vine waste,” He suggests to us, that He is not speaking chiefly of the visible tree, but of that which it represents. The locusts, accordingly, are not chiefly the insects, which bark the actual trees, but every enemy which wastes the heritage of God, which He calls by those names. His vineyard, the Jewish people, was outwardly and repeatedly desolated by the Chaldaens, Antiochus Epiphanes, and afterward by the Romans. The vineyard, which the Jews had, was, (as Jesus foretold,) let out to other farmers when they had killed Him; and, thenceforth, is the Christian Church, and, subordinately each soul in her. : “Pagan and heretical Emperors and heresiarchs wasted often the Church of Christ. antichrist shall waste it. They who have wasted her are countless. For the Psalmist says, “They who hate me without a cause are more than the hair’s of my head” Psalms 69:4. : “The nation which cometh up against the soul, are the princes of this world and of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, of whom the Apostle Peter saith, “Ou…
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