Joel 1:5 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Awake, ye drunkards— This character is given to Ephraim, Isaiah 28:1; Isaiah 28:3.; and excessive drinking is assigned as a reason of the captivity of Israel, Amos 6:6-7. Kimchi's commentary on the place, is, "You who accustom yourselves to get drunk with wine; awake ye out of your sleep, and weep night and day; for the wine shall fail you, because the locust shall devour the grape." See Chandler, and Sharpe. The author of the Observations thinks that new wine is a faulty translation; and that it should be rendered sweet wine; sweet as the new-trodden juice of grapes, but old. Wines (says he) of this sort were chiefly esteemed in former times, as appears from the Septuagint; for that which our version of Esther 1:7 renders, Royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king, they read, Much and sweet wine, such as the king himself drank. Dr. Russel observes of the white wines of Aleppo, that they are palatable, but thin and poor, and seldom keep sound above a year. Now the prophet, in chap. Joel 3:18 describes a state of great prosperity, by the mountains dropping down sweet wine; as much as to say, the mountains of Judaea should not produce wine like that of Aleppo, but that which was rich, and capable of being long kept, and by that means of acquiring the greatest agreeableness. The same word עסיס asiis, is very properly translated sweet wine in Amos 9:13 and the same rendering in this place is confirmed and illustrated by an observation of Dr. Shaw's, concerning the wine of Algiers; which, says he, before the locusts destroyed the vineyards, in 1723 and 1724, was not inferior to the best Hermitage, either in briskness of taste or flavour. But since that time it is much degenerated; having not hitherto (that is, in 1732) recovered its usual qualities, Travels, p. 146. It is a desolation of their vineyards by locusts that Joel threatens, which thus injures their produce for many years as to briskness and flavour; and consequently nothing was more natural than to call the drunkards of Israel to mourn on that account. See Isaiah 49:26 and the Observations, p. 195.