This invasion of locusts will be like a might army marching in, taking everything in their path. Joel was telling them this was going to hurt, and they would have to endure the suffering from it. Fields would be destroyed, so there would be little to reap. No wheat, no barley, no fruits. Not much for food or to make wine would remain. There would be no food to feed the livestock. The people in Judah would need to repent for their sins, because this swarm of locusts was their judgement time. They need to return to God. They need to do a fast and go to the house of God. They would be powerless to fix this without God's help.
Joel begins with the land of Judah being invaded. He talks of the fields being taken over by different types of grasshoppers (cutters, locusts and grasshoppers). I didn't ever think grasshoppers to be swarming or harmful to fields, so I looked up grasshoppers this morning. Locust is the common name for several types of short horned (antennae) grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are put into two categories, either swarming (they called it gregarious) or solitary. I have only ever seen them in the solitary way I suppose. And surely one grasshopper can't be that harmful to a garden. I read, though, that the dessert locust in Africa and Asia is usually in the solitary group, but when the spring rain comes, it seems the locust changes into the swarming group. The swarming group can be detrimental to farming, as they invade in mass numbers upon a field. We know about the locusts as one of the 10 plagues in our story of Moses and Pharaoh.
In verse 4, Joel states "what the cutters left, the locust
swarm has eaten; what the locust swarm has left, the grasshopper has eaten; what the grasshopper has left, the devourer has eaten." Though this could mean four types of the locusts, it could also be that the locust goes through molts, and this could just be the phases of the locusts as they develop. Regardless, Judah was about to face a large famine! This plague and famine would be so remarkable, that he tells the people that they will tell their children and grandchildren, and future generations will learn about it. So it would definitely make history books. This reminds me of when my grandmother would tell me about the great depression times she lived through. It seemed far out there to imagine a time when you had to be so thrifty, and reuse so much, and pray you had enough. It seemed like those times had been forgotten until here recently.
This is so very closely related to the suffering that was spoken of by Hosea. We have history written with famine and suffering. Joel says to tell of the suffering, perhaps in an effort to remind them of the power of God, so they future generations don't fall off the path like their ancestors. But as we can see from the story of the Exodus, that it doesn't take long for people to forget God's power and mercy. We are a single minded people most days, only focused on ourselves, which makes it easy to see how people can fall off the path even with all the history to prove God can and will judge us for our sins. Yet we continue to ignore our innermost calling, shutting out God because we can "do it ourselves." And where has that gotten us?
