Joel 1:9 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Bible Comments

The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off - The meat offering and drink offering were part of every sacrifice. If the materials for these, the grain and wine, ceased, through locusts or drought or the wastings of war, the sacrifice must become mangled and imperfect. The priests were to mourn for the defects of the sacrifice; they lost also their own subsistence, since the altar was, to them, in place of all other inheritance. The meat and drink offerings were emblems of the materials of the holy eucharist, by which Malachi foretold that, when God had rejected the offering of the Jews, there should be a “pure offering” among the pagan Joel 1:11. When then holy communions become rare, the meat and drink offering are literally cut off from the house of the Lord, and those who are indeed priests, the ministers of the Lord, should mourn. Joel foretells that, however love should wax cold, there should ever be such. He forsees and foretells at once, the failure, and the grief of the priests. Nor is it an idle regret which he foretells, but a mourning unto their God. : “Both meat offering and drink offering hath perished from the house of God, not in actual substance but as to reverence, because, amid the prevailing iniquity there is scarcely found in the Church, who should duly celebrate, or receive the sacraments.”

Joel 1:9

9 The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD'S ministers, mourn.