Joel 3:1 - Meaning and Application

We often hear about the year when God redeems his people, and the year when he settles the case against Zion’s enemies. Here, Joel describes what happens in that year and what God will do when it comes. It comes again and again in history, and at the end of time it will come once for all.

This will be the year of the redeemed, because God will bring Judah and Jerusalem back from captivity (Joel 3:1). Even if God’s people suffer long and hard bondage, it will not last forever. Israel’s slavery in Egypt ended in deliverance into the glorious freedom of God’s children, and the command, “Let my son go, so that he may serve me,” was finally answered. The same will be true of Babylon, and the Lord Jesus will also bring poor enslaved souls out from under sin and Satan’s rule.

He will proclaim that welcome year of release, the year of jubilee, when debts are forgiven, servants are freed, and prisoners are set at liberty. God has a fixed day and time for bringing his children back from captivity and for redeeming them from the power of the grave. In the end, that will be the last day and the close of all time.

This will also be the year when God pays back the wrongs done to Zion. He may allow enemies to win against his people for a long time, but he will call them to account. He will lead captivity captive (Psalm 68:18), meaning he will bring down those who once held his people in bondage, as even those who took others captive will themselves be judged (Revelation 13:10).

Those who will be judged are all nations (Joel 3:2). This shows that all nations had made themselves guilty before God for the harm they did to his people. Persecution is a common sin in the world. The whole world lies in wickedness, and wickedness sets itself against godliness. The old serpent, the devil, who is the god of this world, shows his hatred of the seed of the woman in the lives of the world’s children. So we should not be surprised if the world hates us.

No nation that hurt God’s people will go unpunished. Whoever touches the Israel of God will find that he has touched the apple of God’s eye. Jerusalem will be a burdensome stone for all peoples (Zechariah 12:3). The nearby nations will be called to account in a special way, especially Tyre, Sidon, and the regions of Philistia, because they were troublesome neighbors to God’s people (Joel 3:4). When God judges the larger and stronger nations that ruined Israel, he will not overlook the weaker ones that were close by, helped the trouble along, and made use of it for gain (Zechariah 1:15; Ezekiel 26:2).

Small persecutors will be judged too, not only great ones. Even if they could not do much harm, they will still answer for the evil they tried to do, and for the wickedness of their efforts.

All of them will be gathered for judgment (Joel 3:2). They had joined together against God’s people with one purpose (Psalm 83:5), and together they will receive their sentence. They will be brought down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, near Jerusalem, where God will plead with them.

This is fitting for several reasons. Criminals should be tried in the same region where they committed their crimes. Their shame will be greater when they see Jerusalem, which they had long hoped to destroy, made a praise in the earth instead. God’s Jerusalem will also be comforted and honored when it sees God defending its cause. In that valley, God’s victory over Jehoshaphat’s enemies will be acted out again, like the victory that brought joy and praise in the valley of Berachah (2 Chronicles 20:26). Dr. Lightfoot also suggests that it may have been in this valley that Sennacherib’s army lay when an angel destroyed it.

They came together to ruin Jerusalem, but God brought them together for their own ruin, like sheaves gathered into the threshing floor (Micah 4:12). The one who brings the charge is clear: it is for my people, and for my heritage Israel. God will now plead their cause with jealousy. His people are his heritage, his special possession, his portion, and his treasure above all peoples (Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 32:9). They are his land, so he has a rightful case against those who trespass on them.

The charge against these nations is very detailed. They had already offended God by their idol worship, but the main issue here is the way they treated his people and the holy things of his house. They had been cruel to the people of Israel, scattering them among the nations and forcing them to find shelter where they could, or carrying them off as captives and deliberately dispersing them so they could not unite for safety. They divided up the land and claimed it as their own. They even cast lots for my people and sold them.

When they took prisoners, they made a joke of them, treating them as if they were worthless. They would not let them go, yet they still thought they were not worth keeping, so they tossed them about like dice. Or they divided the captives by lot, as the soldiers did with Christ’s garments. They also made money from them. After taking them, they sold them, but with such contempt that they cared more about pleasure than profit. They traded a boy for the price of a prostitute and a girl for the cost of a drink, showing how little they valued a son or daughter of Israel. They reduced them to slaves and drudges in a tavern or a brothel.

Notice how money gained by sin is often wasted on more sin. The plunder these enemies took by violence was spent on drinking and sexual immorality. That is often the way of God’s enemies and persecutors. The Tyrians and Philistines, when they seized the children of Judah and Jerusalem, either took them captive in war or kidnapped them, and then sold them to the Greeks (Ezekiel 27:13), so they would be carried far away from their own border (Joel 3:6). It was a great disgrace for Israel, God’s firstborn and freeborn people, to be bought and sold among the nations.

They had also unlawfully taken God’s silver and gold (Joel 3:5). Some understand this as the wealth of Israel. God calls the silver and gold of his people his own, because they received it from him and had devoted it to him. So when anyone robbed them, God counted it as robbery against himself, and he would repay it in kind.

Those who take the estates of good people, especially when they suffer for doing right, will be guilty of sacrilege, that is, stealing what belongs to God. They are taking God’s silver and gold. But this passage seems to mean more specifically the vessels and treasures of the temple. God calls them his beautiful and pleasant things, things precious and dear to him and to all who belong to him.

The enemies carried these sacred things into their temples as trophies of victory over God’s people. In their minds, they were also boasting over Israel’s God, and even over the idols they worshiped. That is how the ark was once placed in Dagon’s temple. Their whole act was unjust. God asks, “What have you to do with me, and with my people? What wrong have we done to you? What reason have you given for this?” They had no cause at all. They had done nothing to deserve such harm, yet these enemies plotted against them. They attacked people who were quiet, harmless, and inoffensive. Can they claim that God or his people had injured them, so that they were merely paying back evil for evil? No, they had no excuse.

It is nothing new for people who have been kind and fair to their neighbors to be treated badly in return. Those who do no harm may still suffer much harm. The sentence against these enemies is clear. God says, in effect, “If you try to repay me, if you pick a quarrel with me, if you stir up my jealousy, if you touch the apple of my eye, I will quickly turn your own payback on your head.” Those who fight against God will find they cannot stand against him. He repays suddenly, when they least expect it, and when they have no time to stop him. If he begins to deal with them, he will soon bring them to ruin.

More specifically, they will not succeed in the evil they planned against God’s people. They wanted to move them so far from their land that they would never return. But God says, “I will bring them back from the place where you sold them, and they will not be buried alive there, as you intended.” When men sell God’s people, they do not take away God’s ownership of them.

They will also be paid back in the same way they treated others, as Adonibezek was. God says, “I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the people of Judah.” Then they will be as helpless before Judah as Judah had been before them. In this way, the Jews had rule over those who hated them, and the proud were brought low. Then they would justly be sold to the Sabeans, a people far away. Some think this was fulfilled in the victories the Maccabees won over the enemies of the Jews. Others think it points forward to the last day, when the godly will have authority and the saints will judge the world.

One thing is certain, no one ever hardened his heart against God or against his church and prospered for long, not even Pharaoh. The Lord has said it, for the comfort of all his suffering servants, that vengeance belongs to him, and he will repay.