Joel 3:11 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Bible Comments

Once more all the enemies of God are summoned together. “Assemble yourselves,” (Others in the same sense render, “Haste ye,) and come, all ye pagan, round about,” literally “from round about,” i. e., from every side, so as to compass and hem in the people of God, and then, when the net had been, as it were, drawn closer and closer round them, and no way of escape is left, the prophet prays God to send His aid; “thither cause Thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord.” Against “the mighty ones” of the earth, or “the weak” who “say” they are “mighty,” (the same word is used throughout,) there “come down the mighty ones of God.” The “mighty ones of God,” whom He is prayed to “cause to come down,” i. e., from heaven, can be no other than the mighty angels, of whom it is said, they “are mighty in strength” Psalms 103:20 (still the same word,) to whom God gives “charge over” Psalms 91:11. His own, “to keep” them “in all” their “ways,” and one of whom, in this place, killed “one hundred and fourscore and five thousand” 2 Kings 19:35 of the Assyrians. So our Lord saith, “The Son of man shall send forth His Angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity” Matthew 13:41.

Joel 3:11

11 Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O LORD.