CRITICAL NOTES.
Joel 3:4. With me] i.e. my people, with whom God identifies himself. Recompense] “If ye injure me” (my people) “in revenge for fancied wrongs” (Ezekiel 25:15-17), “I will requite you in your own coin swiftly and speedily.”
Joel 3:5. Taken] Not only plundered the temple and its treasury, but palaces and houses of rich, which always followed conquest of towns (1 Kings 14:26; 2 Kings 14:14). Your temples] Spoils of war were often hanged up in heathen temples. They spoiled Jehovah’s temple and profaned their own.
Joel 3:6. Far] Captive Jews cut off from all hope of return.
Joel 3:7-8.] The nations repaid by the lex talionis. God’s people would regain liberty, and sell their enemies as they had been sold by them.
HOMILETICS
RIGHTEOUS RECOMPENSE.—Joel 3:4-8
Before depicting final judgment upon hostile nations of the world, Joel glances at the enmity which the neighbouring peoples displayed towards Israel, and foretells a righteous retribution for sins they had committed against God’s people.
I. The sins of which they were guilty. In their idolatries they grievously sinned; but their greatest offence was insult to God and his people.
1. They sold the people as slaves in captivity. They had scattered them among the nations, and forced them to seek for shelter where they could. (a) It was cruel captivity. They were dispersed and divided for fear of incorporation with the common inhabitants. (b) It was hopeless captivity. “Ye have sold them unto the Grecians that ye might remove them far from their border.” By selling their fighting men they would weaken the Jews, and taking them afar would render more hopeless the return to the land they loved. They displayed great malice, were delighted with the distress of the persecuted, and sought to triumph over God himself. Traffic in the souls of men, slave-dealing and men-stealing, is the worst kind of traffic, branded with infamy, and will bring down the curse of Heaven. What has become of American slave-trade, “State rights,” and secession? God has broken in pieces the oppressor; and well did Abraham Lincoln say: “This is a world of compensations, and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.”
2. They plundered the temple and palaces of the land. “Ye have taken my silver and my gold.” The vessels of the temple and the treasures of the palace were carried away, and the land treated as conquered territory. The Prophet says my gold. All the wealth bestowed upon Israel and upon us, in the providence of God, belongs to him, and should be recognized as the gift of God (Hosea 2:8). If we are his people, what we have we hold from him, and should devote to him. “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of Hosts” (Haggai 2:8).
3. They profaned the sacred things of God. “And have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things.” They dedicated the spoils to their gods, hung up the vessels of the holy sanctuary on the walls of their temples, and attributed victory over God’s people to the power of their idols. The ark was put in the temple of Dagon, the gold and silver adorned Belshazzar’s feast, but God maintained his honour, and defended his cause. Robbery itself is most unjust, but when the spoils are consecrated to idolatry, and given to support cruelty and false religion, this will prove most destructive to the worshipper. “He entangleth his soul in the snares of death who resumeth unto a profane use that which is once consecrated unto God,” says Bishop Hall. “It is a snare to the man who devoureth that which is holy.”
II. Divine recompense upon these sins. “Will ye render a recompense?” &c., indicate that they had no cause to retaliate upon God or his people; that if repayment is the question, God will very speedily settle that for them, and bring back their doings upon their own heads (Isaiah 5:26).
1. Retribution is declared. The life as well as the death of his saints is precious in the sight of God. Those who injure them injure him. He will not suffer them to be insulted and enslaved. He will demand an account for them. Suffering and blood cry to Heaven for justice. Martyred saints and God’s captives will not be forgotten. He will honour, spare, and avenge them. “When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble.”
2. Retribution in kind. “And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the land,” &c. As they had sold and scattered the Jews, so they would “be paid back in their own coin;” they in turn would be sold by the Jews. Here we have the true lex talionis. The rod which men make to smite others, shall smite themselves. “Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.” “As he loveth cursing, so let it come to him” (Psalms 109:17). Dogs licked the blood of Ahab in the vineyard of Naboth. The evil deeds of persecutors will fall upon themselves in this world, or that which is to come. “His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing upon his own pate.”
3. Retribution with certainty. “For the Lord hath spoken it.” This was fulfilled in the time of Alexander the Great and his successors, when Jewish prisoners were set at liberty, and Phœnician territories were under Jewish sway. Sooner or later retribution will come, and there is no escape. No idols can deliver them. The inhabitants of Tyre chained their gods, that they might not forsake them when besieged by Alexander, but the word was spoken, and the city is no more.
4. Retribution with speed. “Swiftly and speedily will I return your recompense.” God threatens these piratical slave-dealers with the vengeance of their captives, whom he redeems. When they pride themselves in triumph and forgetfulness, a sudden change shall come. With ease and speed God will send the punishment and “judge his people.” God seems to delay, but at length unexpectedly does he surprise men. And when once he begins, he hastens on and makes short work in the execution of his judgments. “According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Joel 3:4. What have ye to do with me?
1. The words and also show that there is something additional to the deeds of those spoken of before. Those instanced before were great oppressors, such as dispersed the former people of God, and divided their land. In addition to these, God condemns here another class, those who, without having power to destroy, harass and vex his heritage.
2. The words, what are ye to me? are like that other phrase (Joshua 22:24; Matthew 8:29), what is there to thee and me? i.e. what have we in common?
3. These words, what are ye to me? also declare that those nations had no part in God. God accounts them aliens. What are ye to me? Nothing.
4. But the words convey, besides, that they would have to do with God for harassing his people without cause. They obtruded themselves, as it were, upon God and his judgments; they challenged God; they thrust themselves in, to their destruction, where they had no great temptation to meddle, nothing but inbred malice to impel them. They stand among the most inveterate and unprovoked enemies of God and his people [Pusey].
Joel 3:7. I will raise. I. Deliverance of God’s people. Though carried far away and put under grievous bondage, God will gather them again. Neither former judgment nor present distress shall hinder. Though like men asleep, he will raise or awake them, as the word imports. Though their condition be hopeless as the dead, he can deliver them (Ezekiel 37:11-12). The might of the foe and the wonderfulness of the promise should not impede our faith. “Behold, I will raise.” II. Destruction of God’s enemies. “I will return your recompense.”
1. The agent. God himself, not chance, nor mere change of circumstances. “I will sell.”
2. The instrument. The Church, the people themselves who were persecuted. What wisdom, power, and providence!
3. The measure. God repaid in the same proportion which they gave to his people. The guilt of these nations was great, beyond ordinary persecution, hence the retribution severe, and in kind upon their own heads. History confirms the fact that men get back what they give to others, (a) in quality, good or bad; (b) in quantity, so much, whatever the measure may be. “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
Retributive judgment. I. Often given by men. In society men reap as they sow. Kindness begets love, and cruelty begets hatred. The suspicious are suspected, the dishonest robbed, and the tyrants in turn led into captivity. “There is an important element,” says a writer, “of the judicial action of God in the retributive instincts of men. It is one of his ways of bringing the self-conceited and the censorious to his bar. He whose hand or tongue is against every man, need not wonder that Divine providence should so balance the scales of justice, that every man’s hand or tongue will be ultimately against him. He reaps what he sows.” II. Always administered by God. “The Lord hath spoken it.” All retribution comes from him, given by men or laws of nature. In the present it is true—“With the merciful, thou wilt show thyself merciful; with an upright man, thou wilt show thyself upright; with the pure, thou wilt show thyself pure; with the froward, thou wilt show thyself froward.” But the Bible predicts a retribution, most just, adequate, and terrible. The innocent will then be cleared, and the persecutor condemned.
Oh! blind to truth and God’s whole scheme below,
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Joel 3:4-8. Retribution. Society is like the echoing hills. It gives back to the speaker his words, groan for groan, song for song. Wouldest thou have thy social scenes to resound with music? then speak ever in the melodious strains of truth and love. “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” [Dr Thomas].