Joel 3:19 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Egypt: it was in Egypt that the people of God were long kept in bondage, which defiled Israel too with its idolatries, contrived the ruin of Israel by a barbarous and unparalleled cruelty, murdering all the new-born males, and with utmost obstinacy resisted the deliverer who came to fetch Israel out of bondage. By Egypt understand we then all the enemies of the church of Christ, who carry it toward the church as Egypt carried it toward Israel. Shall be a desolation; most desolate, when God shall judge and punish; so shall spiritual Egypt, Revelation 11:8. Edom; the posterity of Esau, of near kin to Israel according to the flesh, whose first father envied Jacob the blessing and vowed his death, and made him flee from his father's house and become a servant in a strange land, and was the first who denied Israel a friendly passage and the common civility of necessaries for their money, and came out in hostile manner to fight them, Numbers 20:18, &c. It was Edom of whom you read in Obadiah, a most bloody, implacable enemy to Judah in his greatest distress. And all who come under Edom's character are here intended, and threatened under this name. Shall be a desolate wilderness; most desolate, and which art cannot repair; desolate houses or vineyards may, but wildernesses cannot, by art be repaired. The children of Judah; the people of God, his churches. They have shed innocent blood in their land; where distressed Jews should have found safety, they met their death; in Egypt and Judea.