Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Joel 2:3
A historical reference excerpt for this verse.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.
A fire devoureth before them ... - Travelers, of different nations and characters, and in different lands, some unacquainted with the Bible words, have agreed to describe under this image the ravages of locusts. : “They scorch many things with their touch.” : “Whatever of herb or leaf they gnaw, is, as it were, scorched by fire.” : “Wherever they come, the ground seems burned, as it were with fire.” : “Wherever they pass, they burn and spoil everything, and that irremediably.” : “I have myself observed that the places where they had browsed were as scorched, as if the fire had passed there.” : “They covered a square mile so completely, that it appeared, at a little distance, to have been burned and strewn over with brown ashes. Not a shrub, nor a blade of grass was visible.” : “A few months afterward, a much larger army alighted and gave the whole country the appearance of having been burned.” “Wherever they settled, it looks as if fire had devoured and burnt up everything.” : “It is better to have to do with the Tartars, than with these little destructive animals; you would think that fire follows their track,” are the descriptions of their ravages in Italy, Aethiopia, the Levant, India, South Africa. The locust, itself the image of God’s judgments, is described as an enemy, invading, as they say, “with fire and sword,” “breathing fire,” wasting all, as he advances, and leaving behind him the blackness of ashes, and burning villages. : “Whatsoever he seizeth on, he shall consume as a devouring flame and shall leave nothing whole behind him.” The land is as the garden of Eden before them - In outward beauty the land was like that Paradise of God, where He placed our first parents; as were Sodom and Gomorrah, before God overthrew them Genesis 13:10. It was like a garden enclosed and protected from all inroad of evil. They sinned, and like our first parents forfeited its bliss. “A fruitful land God maketh barren, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein” Psalms 107:34. Ezekiel fortells the removal of the punishment, in connection with the Gospel promise of “a new heart and a new spirit. They shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden” Ezekiel 36:26, Ezekiel 36:35. And behind them a desolate wilderness - The desolation caused by the locust is even more inconceivable to us, than their numbers. We have seen fields blighted; we have known of crops, of most moment to man’s support, devoured; and in one year we heard of terrific famine, as its result. We do not readily set before our eyes a whole tract, embracing in extent several of our counties, in which not the one or other crop was smitten, but every green thing was gone. Yet such was the scourge of locusts, the image of other and worse scourges in the treasure-house of God’s displeasure. A Syrian writer relates , “1004 a.d., a large swarm of locusts appeared in the land of Mosul and Bagdad, and it was very grievous in Shiraz. It left no herb nor even leaf on the trees, and even gnawed the pieces of linen which the fullers were bleaching; of each piece the fuller gave a scrap to its owner: and time was a famine, and a cor (about two quarters) of wheat was sold in Bagdad for 120 gold dinars (about 54 British pounds):” and again , “when it (the locust of 784 a.d.,) had consumed the whole tract of Edessa and Sarug, it passed to the west and for three years after this heavy chastisement there was a famine in the land.” : “We traveled five days through lands…
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