Joel 3:1-8 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

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Yahweh will Recompense with Punishment the Nations that have Oppressed His People. In that Day, when Yahweh will restore the fortunes of His people, He will bring into the Valley of Jehoshaphat all nations, and there confront them, as defendants in a law-court, with the charge that they have parcelled out His land among colonists and dispersed His people into far countries, selling them into slavery for contemptuously small sums which they have expended upon the satisfaction of their lusts. Especially the Phœ nicians and Philistines are named. Acting thus were they, asks Yahweh, repaying a grudge they had against Him? Or were they injuring Him without provocation? (read mg. in Joel 3:4). In either case swift shall be His vengeance. Not content with robbing His people of their treasures they have sold their persons to the Greek slave-traders. Yahweh will gather again His people from exile, and deliver their oppressors into their power. The Jews will sell them to the Sabeans, who will dispose of them to a nation still more remote: such is Yahweh's pronouncement.

Joel 3:1. bring again the captivity: many more Jews remained in exile in distant lands than came back at the Return; possibly, however, the phrase had become proverbial in the sense restore the fortune.

Joel 3:2. the valley of Jehoshaphat: no actual valley will suit the description, which is largely imaginative; the name is chosen because of its meaning, Yahweh judges. plead with: in the legal sense, maintain a cause against. The word is from the same Heb. root as the latter part of Jehoshaphat.

Joel 3:4. what are ye to me: rather, what were ye for doing to me?

Joel 3:5. temples: the word may equally well be rendered palaces; the reference is not exclusively, if at all, to the vessels of the Temple.

Joel 3:6. that ye might: Heb. delights to represent the inevitable consequence of an action as though it were deliberately designed.

Joel 3:8. sell into the hand of: a regular phrase for deliver into the power of. Sheba: the Sabeans were a wealthy trading people cf. SW. Arabia (1 Kings 10*). to a nation: rather for a nation. The Sabeans, like the Phœ nicians, are middlemen. Observe the exactness of the recompence.

Related Commentaries of Joel 3:1

Joel 3:1-8

1 For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,

2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

3 And they have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.

4 Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me a recompence? and if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head;

5 Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things:

6 The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians,a that ye might remove them far from their border.

7 Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your own head:

8 And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken it.