1. THE RETURN OF PROSPERITY
"And Jehovah answered and said to His people: Lo, I will send you corn and wine and oil, And your fill shall ye have of them; And I will not again make you a reproach among the heathen. And the Northern Foe: will I remove far from you; And I will push him into a land barren and waste, His van to the eastern sea and his rear to the western, Till the stench of him rises, Because he hath done greatly."
Locusts disappear with the same suddenness as they arrive. A wind springs up and they are gone. Nahum 3:17 Exodus 10:19 Dead Sea and Mediterranean are at the extremes of the compass, but there is no reason to suppose that the prophet has abandoned the realism which has hitherto distinguished his treatment of the locusts. The plague covered the whole land, on whose high watershed the winds suddenly veer and change. The dispersion of the locusts upon the deserts and the opposite seas was therefore possible at one and the same time. Jerome vouches for an instance in his own day. The other detail is also true to life. Jerome says that the beaches of the two seas were strewn with putrefying locusts, and Augustine quotes heathen writers in evidence of large masses of locusts, driven from Africa upon the sea, and then cast up on the shore, which gave rise to a pestilence. "The south and east winds," says Volney of Syria, "drive the clouds of locusts with violence into the Mediterranean, and drown them in such quantities that when their dead are cast on the shore they infect the air to a great distance." The prophet continues, celebrating this destruction of the locusts as if it were already realized-"the Lord hath done greatly," Joel 2:21. That among the blessings he mentions a full supply of rain proves that we were right in interpreting him to have spoken of drought as accompanying the locusts.
"Fear not, O Land! Rejoice and he glad, For Jehovah hath done greatly. Fear not, O beasts of the field! For the pastures of the steppes are springing with new grass, The trees bear their fruit, Fig-tree and vine yield their substance. O sons of Zion, be glad, And rejoice in Jehovah your God: For He hath given you the early rain in normal measure, And poured on you winter rain and latter rain as before. And the threshing-floors shall be full of wheat, And the vats stream over with new wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years which the Swarmer has eaten, The Lapper, the Devourer and the Shearer, My great army whom I sent among you. And ye shall eat your food and be full, And praise the Name of Jehovah your God, Who hath dealt so wondrously with you; And My people shall be abashed nevermore. Ye shall know I am in the midst of Israel, That I am Jehovah your God and none else; And nevermore shall My people be abashed."