Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?
Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land ... Tell ye your children of it. A spirited introduction, calling attention.
Old men - the best judges in questions concerning the past (Deuteronomy 32:7; Job 32:7, "Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom"). The people of the East, when books were scarce, and ages before the use of printing, handed down from generation to generation the traditions of the past, by the help of memory alone.
Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? - i:e., Hath any so grievous a calamity as this ever been before? No such plague of locusts had been since the ones in Egypt. Exodus 10:14 ("Before them there was no such locusts, neither after them shall be such") is not at variance with this verse, which refers to Judea, in which Joel says there had been no such devastation before. But probably Joel, by inspiration, uses language which in its full meaning applies, not to the locusts seem in vision, but to the coming human invaders, the northern army, of which the locusts were but the representatives (Joel 2:20). "This" (Hath this been in your days?) refers not to some devastation of locusts which the inhabitants of the land then saw, but to that awful and unparalleled calamity which Joel is now proceeding to announce to them. A mere plague of locusts was an ordinary visitation for sin; but the peculiarity of this coming judgment is, that plague was to succeed plague, each more desolating than its predecessor.
Verse 3. Tell ye your children - in order that they may be admonished by the severity of the punishments to fear
Verse 3. Tell ye your children - in order that they may be admonished by the severity of the punishments to fear God (Psalms 78:6-8: cf. Exodus 13:8; Joshua 4:6-7).