Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Joel 2:20
A historical reference excerpt for this verse.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.
And I will remove far off from you the northern army - God speaks of the human agent under the figure of the locusts, which perish in the sea; yet so as to show at once, that He did not intend the locust itself, nor to describe the mode in which He should overthrow the human oppressor. He is not speaking of the locust itself, for the Northern is no name for the locust which infested Palestine, since it came from the south; nor would the destruction of the locust be in two opposite seas, since they are uniformly driven by the wind into the sea, upon whose waves they alight and perish, but the wind would not carry them into two opposite seas; nor would the locust perish in a “barren and desolate” land, but would fly further; nor would it be said of the locust that he was destroyed, Because he had done great things . But He represents to us, how this enemy should be driven quite out of the bounds of His people, so that he should not vex them more, but perish. The imagery is from the holy land. The “East sea” is the Dead Sea, once the fertile “vale of Siddim” Genesis 14:3, , “in which sea were formerly Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, until God overthrew them.” This, in the Pentateuch, is called “the salt sea” Genesis 14:3; Numbers 34:3, Numbers 34:12, or “the sea of the plain,” or “desert” (Deuteronomy 3:17; Deuteronomy 4:49; Joshua 3:16; Joshua 12:3; Joshua 15:25; Joshua 18:19; also in 2 Kings 14:25), explained in Deuteronomy and Joshua to be “the salt sea” Deuteronomy 3:0; Joshua 3:0; Joshua 12:0; Ezekiel calls it “the East sea” Ezekiel 47:18, and in Numbers it is said of it, “your south border shall be the salt sea eastward” Numbers 34:3. The utmost, or rather, the “hinder sea” Deuteronomy 11:24; Deuteronomy 34:2 (i. e., that which is behind one who is looking toward the east whose Hebrew name is from “fronting” you) is the Mediterranean, “on whose shores are Gaza and Ascalon, Azotus and Joppa and Caesarea.” The “land barren and desolate,” lying between, is the desert of Arabia, the southern boundary of the holy land. The picture then seems to be, that the “Northern” foes filled the whole of Judaea, in numbers like the locust, and that God drove them violently forth, all along the bounds of the holy land, into the desert, the Dead Sea, the Mediterranean. Jerome relates a mercy of God in his own time which illustrates the image; but he writes so much in the language of Holy Scripture, that perhaps he only means that the locusts were driven into the sea, not into both seas. “In our times too we have seen hosts of locusts cover Judaea, which afterward, by the mercy of the Lord, when the priests and people, ‘between the porch and the altar,’ i. e., between the place of the Cross and the Resurrection prayed the Lord and said, ‘spare Thy people,’ a wind arising, were carried headlong ‘into the Eastern sea, and the utmost sea.’” Alvarez relates how, priests and people joining in litanies to God, He delivered them from an exceeding plague of locusts, which covered 24 English miles, as He delivered Egypt of old at the prayer of Moses . “When we knew of this plague being so near, most of the clerks of the place came to me, that I should tell them some remedy against it. I answered them, that I knew of no remedy except to commend themselves to God and to pray Him to drive the plague out of the land. I went to the Embassador and told him that to me it seemed good that we should make a procession with the people of the land and that it might…
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