they mount up upon the houses; in the place of the windows they enter, like a thief.

11. Before them the earth quaked, the heavens trembled; the sun and the moon darkened, and the stars withdrew their shining.

12. And the ETERNAL uttered? his voice before his army; for his host was very great; for strong the host executing his word: for great is the day of the ETERNAL, and very terrible; and who may abide it?

Vulg. Contremuit terra, moti sunt cœli, &c.

7 Vulg. Et Dominus dedit vocem suam, &c. The LXX turn the tenses into futures.

every respect. Theodoret noticed the horse-like shape, while rapidity also enters into the comparison. Pliny speaks of the creatures as "burning everything with their "contact." "They darken the sun" (solem obumbrant), he says of their appearance, Hist. Nat. xi. 29. "There came over our heads a thick cloud, which darkened the 'air, and deprived us of the rays of the sun," says the author of a Voyage to Senegal, "we found it was owing "to a cloud of locusts." Specially in Syria, De Thou describes dearth of every thing from an unprecedented swarm, which like a dense cloud obscured noon-day, and fed the country bare. (Thuanus, L. lxxxiv. vii. quoted by Newcome, who suggests the Italian name for locusts cavallette (little horses). Jerome says, " præ multitudine "locustarum, obtegentium cœlum, sol et luna convertuntur "in tenebras." His description of the serried march, in which places are kept, as by mosaic stones in a pavement, is of less value, because he framed it to illustrate verse 9, "ut ne puncto quidem, ungueve transverso declinent ad "alteram ;" but it has the advantage of his Palestine experience. Theodoret and Cyril (φασὶ δὲ αὐτοὺς στοιχηδὸν léva) give comments similarly descriptive. Bochart, p.

477.

13. Therefore also now, thus saith the ETERNAL, turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.

14. And rend your heart, but not your garments, and turn to the ETERNAL your God; for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in mercy, and repenteth him of the evil.

15. Who knoweth,8 will he return and repent, and spare behind him a blessing; an offering and libation to the ETERNAL your God?

16. Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, proclaim a restraint.9

17. Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the infants and sucklings of the breasts; let the bridegroom go forth from his chamber, and the bride out of her bower.

15. Quis scit, si convertatur, et ignoscat? Vulg. τίς οἶδεν, εἰ imiorρiyei, LXX. Or, as the last verse of Hosea, xiv. 9, so here, "Whoso is knowing ?-Let him return and repent and offer sacrifice," etc.

16. Restraint, or a solemn assembly. So above, i. 13, and Isaiah i. 11.

13-18. How does God utter his voice? In things terrible by terror, so that the feeling he inspires finds utterance in voice of man. In nature, by objects which he creates. In history, by results which he brings about. In calls to repentance by the concurrence of calamity with our sense of sin, whether an instinct trained, or rather a sentiment imbreathed by Divine communion. When such sentiments run through the people, kindled by Prophets or organised by Priests, the national temples echo with them; public religion embodies them; signs of joy are suspended; and prayers go up to the unsearchable Dweller of Eternity in words which are the words of men, seeking to move the mind of God, yet breathing a life which God's breath implanted. The human passion shews itself in the

VOL. I.

C

18. Between the porch and the altar, let the priests, the ministers of the ETERNAL, weep, and say, Have compassion, ETERNAL, on thy people, and give not thine inheritance for a reproach, for nations to rule over them. Wherefore should they say among the populations, Where is their God?

III.

1. Then, was the ETERNAL jealous for His land, and had compassion upon His people.1

2. So the ETERNAL answered, and spake unto His people, Behold me sending to you the corn, and the wine, and the fresh oil, that ye be satisfied therewith, and I no longer make you a reproach among the nations.

· Καὶ ἐζήλωσε Κύριος τὴν γῆν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐφείσατο τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτοῦ. Kai ȧTEкρion Kúpιog, K.T.λ. LXX. Zelatus est Dominus terram suam, et pepercit populo suo. Et respondit Dominus, et dixit, etc. Vulg. So many moderns, but Maurer defends against Credner the predictive future.

sentiment that Jehovah as the national God of the Hebrews will be jealous for his own people, as if their sufferings would be his dishonour. (Comp. Ezek. xxv. and xxxvi.) Though elsewhere we have the nobler idea of the "God "of the spirits of all flesh."

The year 1865 has recalled the pictures of Joel by a plague of locusts in Nazareth and Galilee, described by a Missionary in the Ecclesiastical Gazette for September, and interpreted by his informants as a judgment from God.

1-2. God answers the wicked by terrible things, and the penitent by blessings. Corn and wine and oil are the best answer to a famine-stricken people. The word translated sending, is the Hebrew participle, the truest present tense which that language admits. No form of speech could more strongly prove the historical sense, instead of the predictive.

and

3. But I send the northerner far away from you, thrust him into a land barren and desolate, his face toward the eastern sea, and his rear toward the western sea, so that his stink come up, and his rottenness mount upward. 4. For he (?) has wroughts mightily,

3

Believing these words

2 Tòν ȧñò ẞoppă. LXX. Qui ab aquilone est. Vulg. The locusts are meant, but whether flying northwards, or else why called from the North, instead of from the South and East, is a difficulty. Hence with some a sign of allegory, with others, a sign of text mis-read. Wrought mightily. Or, magnified his doings. repeated by error of text, I have printed the first edition of them as a verse by itself, as if the name Jehovah had been dropt; which may have been the case; but they are commonly joined to verse 3, as if the locust host wrought mightily, and then more truly so Jehovah. Thus Jerome says, superbè egit for the first, and magnificavit ut faceret for the second. I should prefer omitting the first edition, as redundant; and am glad to be sanctioned in this

in the אגדיל might be an error for הגריל,by Archbishop Secker. Or

first pers. fut.

3. The North, the hidden region, as ill explored, or as dark with storms, and the home of barbarian invaders, was usually the goal to which locust hosts tended. It may have been the quarter from whence portions of these were driven back sea-ward, by north-easterly winds. But Jerome's expression, "the South wind brings them more than the North," implies that the North wind might bring them; and De Thou's and Volney's descriptions of Syrian locusts place beyond doubt that they might come from Syria; to which Newcome needlessly adds Circassia and Mingrelia. Therefore, without blaming those who conjecture that the Hebrew for Northerner should be read as meaning Defiler, or Marshaller, or as Destroyer, we may think the change needless. The Prophet knew best where the locusts came from, and his mention of the quarter of coming or going is a weak argument for changing his locusts into Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans. Even Sennacherib's host, though lost in the desert, was not cast into the sea, much less were the four empires of Daniel. Whereas of locusts, we have innumerable testimonies,

c 2

5. Fear not, O land; exult, and be glad, for the ETERNAL has wrought mightily.

6. Fear not, beasts of the field; for the pastures of the wilderness spring, for the tree beareth his fruit, the fig-tree and vine render their strength.

7. But exult, sons of Zion, and be glad, in the ETERNAL your God: for he giveth you the former rain to full measure, and bringeth down for you showers; early rain and latter rain at the first season.

* The former rain to full measure, Heb. to justice, whether of measure or of time-or "the admonisher to righteousness"—and because you listened to the admonisher (Joel) whom God gave, therefore he added showers. So Vulg. "Dedit vobis doctorem justitiæ," which gives a tolerable, though prosaic sense, and agrees with the Chaldee. The Latin idiom justo tempore, and our English, when the "rain is due," may be the best explanation.

that this is what befalls them, and they stink horribly. "Even in our times," says Jerome, "( we have seen Judæa "covered by bands of locusts, which afterwards, on a "wind arising, were precipitated into the sea." Their stench, he adds, caused pestilence, "or danger of it to "man and beast." Orosius, the Spaniard, in the fifth century, relates a similar immersion of locusts, and stench. from them; the chronicle of Ratisbon, for the year 873, adds a like instance. But by God's mercy the locusts in Joel's time were swept by the wind to less inhabited parts, either about the Dead Sea, or in the Southern Desert and Mediterranean, so that their stink did no harm, but went up as a sign of their destruction. So, whether the locust did great things or not, God did great things in sweeping the pest away.

Joy succeeds to the gloom of Nature. The early and latter rain, precious to the thirsty East, are restored when due. Ver. 9. The produce of lost years is restored; for locusts, says Ludolf, Hist. Æth. I. xiii. 16, "by barking the

trees, are injurious for more than one year." On this verse, Newcome (2 Kings vi. 27) says, "there can remain