The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.
The beasts of the field cry also unto thee - i:e., look up to heaven with heads lifted up, as if their only expectation was from God in the general famine (Job 38:41; Psalms 104:21; Psalms 145:15; Psalms 147:9; cf. Psalms 42:1). They tacitly reprove the deadness of the Jews for not even now invoking God.
Remarks:
(1) The word that the prophets spake came not by the will of man, but was "the word of the Lord" sent unto them through the Holy Spirit. Like Joel, they merge their own individuality in their heavenly commission. By this, rather than by their personal history, they desire to be known and remembered among men.
(2) Formerly it was the remembrance of the wonders performed by God in behalf of his people that had been handed down from father to son and from son to grandson. But now, through the sins of Israel and Judah, it is a message of unparalleled woe that the prophet of God has to announce for transmission from generation to generation. The remembrance of God's loving-kindnesses ought to have preserved the people in continued faithfulness and grateful love toward Him. But since grace and love had failed to affect them, awful judgments are announced, that at least these might move them in alarm to flee to God as their only refuge from the wrath to come. It is well if even the terrors of the law and the fear of hell can rouse sinners to seriousness and self-examination, so as to ask, tremblingly, What must I do to be saved?
(3) God has infinite resources at His command for the punishment of transgressors. He can make a small insect like the locust mighty for the prostration of man's pride, power, and even life itself. But the four kinds of locusts here described, injurious as they are, were but symbols of destroyers infinitely worse-the four world-empires, Assyria, Babylon, Macedonia, and Rome-which in succession, each worse than its predecessor, laid waste the Holy Land. Under the fourth and last of these there is yet the Antichrist in his worst manifestation to appear, as the final scourge of both the literal and the spiritual Israel.
(4) The judgments of God are mutually united as the links of a chain, each link drawing on the other; and yet so arranged that at each successive stage time and space are allowed for the averting of the succeeding judgment by repentance. When the sinner will not be moved by one judgment, then another and a worse succeeds; and so on until the last fatal stroke descends, and the hardened transgressor, like Pharaoh at the Red Sea, is given over to hopeless perdition.
(5) The effect of sin is to numb the conscience, intoxicate the imagination, and cast the soul into a kind of drunken sleep or stupor. It is to such, who are drunkards spiritually, having drunk of "the wine of the fornication" of the apostate Church, that the call is here addressed in its ulterior sense, "Awake and weep," lest, if ye repent not, ye should have to "drink of the wine of the wrath of God, poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation" (Revelation 14:8; Revelation 14:10). At the same time, those literally drunkards especially need to "awake:" if no other consideration will rouse them, at least this is well calculated to do so-namely, that soon the materials of their carnal indulgence will forever be taken from them. God, in just retribution, takes away the gifts which are abused to intemperance and excess (Joel 1:5).
(6) The God of Israel did not spare even His own land (Joel 1:6), upon which He had promised that His "eyes should always be, from the beginning even unto the end of the year" (Deuteronomy 11:12), when His people apostatized to sin. The laying waste of the vine and the barking of the fig tree by the locusts (Joel 1:7) are a symbol of the desolation caused to the Church by sin, and the judgments which are its consequences. The Lord of the vineyard has transferred it from the Jews to our Judaeo-Gentile Christian Church. Let us beware lest by unfaithfulness we incur still more awful judgments. Let every careless professor hear betimes the voice of Scripture, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Ephesians 5:14).
(7) Judah, by apostasy, lost "the husband of her youth" (Joel 1:8). So the outward Church, when she is unfaithful to her Lord, and the individual professor who gives his heart to the world instead of to Christ, lose the favour and the eternal protection which are to be enj oyed only in communion with our Divine Head and Saviour. At such times we should lament and pine after the return of our Lord. All spiritual "joy is withered away" (Joel 1:12), when "the meat offering and the drink offering" of the spiritual services of the sanctuary are "cut off from the house of the Lord" (Joel 1:9). Little as many prize holy ordinances now, a time shall come when thousands will wish they might have again the opportunities of prayer and praise, and of hearing the message of salvation, which they have now, but shall wish in vain. "The days will come," saith Christ, "when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it" (Luke 17:22).
(8) The "ministers of God" (Joel 1:13) should be foremost, by example as well as by precept, in leading back the people to God. The "elders" should use the influence which age and gray hairs give, to induce all to call upon God while yet there is time (Joel 1:14). The more that we unite in prayer, the greater weight has prayer with God. As Tertullian ('De Oratione,' sec. 29: 320) says, 'Prayer overcometh God;' especially the joint prayer of His covenant-people; because He Himself has willed it that they should thus take heaven with holy violence. While we pray reverently, we mast not pray lifelessly, but "cry" as those who are in earnest (Joel 1:14). "Fasting," too, is to some a means of subjecting the flesh to the spirit, and of promoting devotion. But it must be a sanctified fast, in which we seek not to glory in self-mortification, but to cultivate a humble, chastened, and loving spirit. It is not an universal rule for Christians; and it seems suited best for special occasions of spiritual mourning and humiliation before God, as here in Joel; and should be accompanied with almsgiving and increased prayer.
(9) Our present days are the days allotted to man, but the day of coming judgment is peculiarly "the day of the Lord" (Joel 1:15). Its nearness, and the "mighty destruction from the Almighty" which it brings with it to the lost, should urge sinners to immediate repentance. The very "beasts of the field," that virtually, though unconsciously (Joel 1:20), cry to the God who compassionates His suffering creatures from the highest to the lowest, should move man, amidst far higher wants and dangers, to look up to Him who alone can help him. In every trial let our resolve be like that of Joel, whatever others do, "O Lord, to thee will I cry." For the Lord alone is "a very present help in trouble" (Psalms 46:1).