8. So that the barns be full of corn,

overflow with wine and oil.

and the presses

9. And I requite to you the years which the locust ate, the canker-fly, and the fledged locust, and the young locust, my great host which I sent among you.

10. So that ye eat plentifully, and have abundance; and praise the name of the ETERNAL your God, that hath wrought wonderfully with you; and my people shall not be ashamed for ever.

11. But ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,5 and I the ETERNAL am your God, and there is no God besides; and my people shall not be ashamed for ever.

12. And afterwards it shall be I will pour my breath upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.

5 Though I have considered the tenses in vv. 8, 9, 10, as dependent upon v. 7, and expressing effect rather than futurity, I will not dispute a rendering of them as futures, which would hardly affect the sense.

"no doubt, but that the prophet is to be understood in a "literal sense, as foretelling a plague of locusts":-a remark which, if we change "foretelling" into describing, is borne out by the text. And the Prophet's own explanation of his poetical figures here may guide our understanding of similar figures when not explained.

11—12. Israel, the religious name of the People, from their ancestor who had power in prayer with God, and possibly having the cognate sense of righteous, is used for solemnity; though of the two tribes only: or with a hopeful glance towards the ideal twelve. In the better days to which the Prophet now looks forward, the land will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, (as in Isaiah xi. 9,) and not only Prelates and Priests, but simple and rude folk shall be taught of God, (as in Isaiah liv. 13), this

13. And also upon the servants and the handmaids in those days I will pour out my breath.

14. And I will set wonders in the heavens and in the earth; blood and fire, and columns of smoke.

15. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and terrible day of the ETERNAL.

being God's better covenant, not engaging men to him by formal Decalogues and rituals, but by the perceptions of conscience, as by a law written in the heart. This better righteousness, which no formal law can reach, is described by Jeremiah, xxxi. 33, as a thing to come; by St. Paul, Romans ii., as not unfelt among the Gentiles, (comp. Cicero's Milo, Soph. Antig. 450) and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as taking the place of the obligatory letter of the Old Testament. Whether the Hebrew word for Prophecy should be taken actively, as bubbling, or babbling, and descriptive of wrought up fervor of speech (comp. 2 Kings ix. 11, Hosea viii. 7,) or, passively of a suffusion with the breath of God, as with water, is not agreed; but in either case it is clear the idea of foretelling future events with articulate prediction (as distinct from devout or hopeful forebodings) is not intended here. St. Peter naturally applied the passage to Pentecost: but these perpetual promises of faith in the living God have many fulfilments; the time of the Maccabees, and of the latest Psalms, the beginnings of the Gospel, and its many reformations in the days of Savonarola, Luther, George Fox, Wesley, and of those who now seek God, face to face, turning with St. Paul from the bondage of the letter, to the freedom of the Spirit; which is turning from an idol to the living God.

14, 15, 16. In experience of deliverance, the Prophet's mind expands to wider hopes. The images, with which so many poets have heralded civil change (Virgil, Georg. I. 46.6; Ovid, Met. xv. 782; Lucan, Phars. i. 524), pass before his mind's eye. As before the fatal Thrasymene, in

16. And it shall be, whosoever calleth on the name of the ETERNAL shall escape; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be escape, as the ETERNAL hath said, and amongst the survivors, whom the ETERNAL calleth.

which the strife paused not for earthquake, the Italians saw prodigies of eclipse, and lightning-stroke, and torches in the sky, and as the bloody sweat of the images of the Gods was a boast of the Diviners in the beginning of the Marsic war (Cic. De Div. i. 44), so in all times of disaster, at the sieges of Jerusalem, Magdeburg, the Thirty years war, and at the deaths of Cæsar and Charles I., the appearance of meteors, comets, or eclipses, strikes awestricken imaginations with terror. The stars in their courses fight against Sisera. God, says the Psalmist, rains upon the ungodly snares, i.e. long trails of lightning, Psalm xi. 6. The Prophet adopts such images of his own age, and of many ages, probably also of his own apprehension, as emblematic of the struggle which is to give his country, already victorious over Edom, a wider triumph. It is remarkable that St. Peter anticipated the "day of the Lord' as coming immediately upon the day of Pentecost. Acts ii. 17, iii. 20; 1st Peter iv. 5-7. And the Gospels, whether written before or after the fall of Jerusalem, by applying to it, as Josephus did, this imagery, justify those who find the second coming of Christ to his people in that catastrophe of their nation. But nothing was farther from the Prophet Joel's mind than his country's ruin in that Lord's day, which was to give "deliverance" in Jerusalem (v. 16). The only escape for the Gentiles in his thought was for them to come over to the side of Israel. Those who survive, can do so only of God's calling them, as our knowing Him is of His first knowing us.

IV.

1. For behold in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and of Jerusalem,

2. Then will I gather all the nations, and bring them down into the valley of the ETERNAL's judgment,'

3. And I will join judgment with them there for my people and my inheritance; Israel, whom they scattered among the nations, and my land which they divided,

4. And for my people they cast lots, and gave away the lad for the harlot, and the girl they sold for wine, that they might drink.

5. Yea, and what are ye to me, Tyre and Sidon, and all the borders of Philistia? Are ye rendering to me any dealing? Or, if ye are dealing by me, lightly and speedily will I requite your dealing upon your head.

1 Valley of the Lord's judgment, of Jehoshaphat. If taken locally, there is a valley near Jerusalem comprehending, if I understand aright, the Kidron within its limits, which is now, but improperly, called by that name. But thus to localise the Prophet's figure is to injure his meaning. Compare Rosenm. in h. 1. Since this note was written, I find Robinson concurring. Phys. Geog. P. p. 95.

2 In this verse I have been induced by the rhythm to depart from the Hebrew punctuation, which the Authorised Version preserves. Such a ground, even for so slight a change, is very doubtful.

1-5. To "bring again captivity," is to restore the exiles, not here, as in Grecian republics, banished by faction, nor yet, as in the case of Babylon, swept wholesale from Judea, but carried off in predatory or slave-dealing excursions of the Phoenicians, with whom the light galleys of the Asiatic Ionians may have already vied, or at least their dealers had traffic; as more than a thousand years afterwards youths from Ireland were stolen by Saxon pirates,

6.

Whereas ye have taken my silver and my gold, and my goodly treasures ye have carried into your palaces.

'My treasures. Hebr. Machmadai, from ChMD. to desire (cf. Sanscrit, Kama, God of love). Vulg. Desiderabilia mea. LXX. rà ¿ñíλeкTá μov тà Kaλà. As in Haggai ii. 8, The silver and gold are the desire of the nations.

and from England in turn by Danes. It was a merit of the Hebrew Prophets, that they conceived such outrages on humanity to be offences against the Divine Majesty, though their perception was quickened by an idea of a special bond between God and their nation, which we have learned to widen into the tenderness of a faithful Creator for all who call upon him. Comp. St. Paul, Romans ii. Yet, as God is always on the side of the fervid speaker, the denunciation becomes more vivid, when, as a warrior, He comes forth to requite those who had outraged him.

6-9. Consecration marks the Old Testament more, as sanctification more the New. As Priests are God's servants, yet all men are so, and the temple His house, though heaven and earth are so, even victims which express contrition become His sacrifices, though He feeds not on them, and tithes are His property, though He needs them not. Thus even cups and goblets become the Lord's, though Joash might use them to buy off Hazael (which the chronicler does not confess, 2 Chron. xxiv. 24), and though the Puritan Bishop Deogratias of Carthage might use such things to ransom captives from the Vandals. Even if Joel acquiesced in such surrender, he resents it as injurious, and wishes the nations to come in idolatrous crusade against Jerusalem: so confident is he of the Divine judgment overtaking them. Such pictures of retribution animate struggle, and console defeat. The Germans expect Barbarossa to break again the Papal rod, and the Bretons Lemenic, and the pure Britons Arthur. Man never is, but always to be blest. Thus Hope leads