Joel 3:3 - John Trapp Complete Commentary

Bible Comments

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.

Ver. 3. And they have cast lots for my people] Impiously and imperiously domineering over them as those rude soldiers that cast the dice upon our Saviour's coat, at his passion. It was ordinary to divide by lots the enemies they had taken in the fight, Nahum 3:10 Oba 1:11 Lam 3:53 Judges 5:30; but at base rates thus to sell God's people ignominiously, and that to satisfy their lewd lusts - this was unsufferable.

And have given a boy for an harlot] Heb. that boy, as afterwards that girl, with an emphasis; a son and daughter of Israel, those earthly angels Angli quasi Angeli, the English boys just as angels, as Gregory the Great once said of the English boys presented to him. "Thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire," said God not without very great indignation, to their idolatrous parents, Ezekiel 16:21. His they were more than theirs, by virtue of the covenant he had made with that people; hence Deuteronomy 14:1, "Ye are the children of the Lord your God," and can he bear with your misusages? "Should he deal with our sister as a harlot?" said they with courage (as the great Zaijn, in Zonah, importeth) Genesis 34:31. So here, should they give a boy such a boy, for a harlot? that is, for the hire of a harlot, and to gratify such abhorred filths? In the reign of Henry II of France, A.D. 1554 many precious sons of Zion were burned there for religion, not without the indignation of honest men, who knew that the diligence used against those poor people was not for any piety or religion, but to satiate the covetousness of Diana Valentina, the king's mistress, to whom he had given all the confiscations of goods made in the kingdom for cause of heresy.

And sold a girl for wine, that they might drink] "The wine of violence," Proverbs 4:17; "drink and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more," Jeremiah 25:27; worthy, therefore, to be served as that drunken Turk was by that severe bashaw who caused a ladleful of boiling lead to be poured down his throat. God will turn a worse cup down their wide gullets one day, Psalms 11:6 Quorum vivere est bibere, and whose profane proverb it is, Bibere et sudare, est vita Cardiaci To drink and to sweat is the life of the heart. But what a heathenish baseness is that of the Papists, besides a horrible abuse of God's holy ordinance, that at Rome a Jewish maid may not be admitted into the stews of whoredom unless she will first be baptized. Espensaeus, a modest Papist, writeth it, not without detestation.

Joel 3:3

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.