Joel

Joel

"To whom YHWH is God." The son of Pethuel and second of the minor prophets. He is probably of Judah and contemporary with King Uzziah, and makes frequent mention of Judah and Jerusalem.1 He was contemporary with Amos and Isaiah. His book is the twenty-ninth of the Old Testament and depicts calamities, rises into exhortation, and foreshadows the Messiah. His personal history is only known from his book.

The contents of the Book of Joel are:

  1. A prophecy of a great public calamity then impending over the land, consisting of a want of water and an extraordinary plague of locusts.2
  2. The prophet then calls on his countrymen to repent and to turn to God, assuring them of his readiness to forgive,3 and foretelling the restoration of the land to its accustomed fruitfulness.4
  3. Then follows a Messianic prophecy, quoted by Peter.5
  4. Finally, the prophet foretells portents and judgments as destined to fall on the enemies of God (ch. 3, but in the Hebrew text 4).

Joel is also the name of a son of Samuel.6

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References

Notes

  1. 1:14; 2:1, 15, 32; 3:1, 12, 17, 20, 21.
  2. 1:1-2:11.
  3. 2:12-17.
  4. s 18-26.
  5. Acts 2:39.
  6. 1 Sam. 8:2.

Sources

  • Holy Bible (King James Version). 1979. Nashville: Holman Bible Publisher.
  • Easton, M.G. (1897). Easton's Bible Dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers.

This article incorporates text from Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897) by M.G. Easton, which is in the public domain.