Context at a Glance
Author:Traditional Attribution
Topic:joel Chapter 3 Study
This chapter provides a foundational look at the theological themes of joel, analyzed across multiple historic translations for maximum scholarly depth.
Joel 3
New Revised Standard Version
1For then, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,
2I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat, and I will enter into judgment with them there, on account of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations. They have divided my land,
3and cast lots for my people, and traded boys for prostitutes, and sold girls for wine, and drunk it down. An oracle against Phoenicia and Philistia
4What are you to me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you paying me back for something? If you are paying me back, I will turn your deeds back upon your own heads swiftly and speedily.
5For you have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried my rich treasures into your temples.
6You have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, removing them far from their own border.
7But now I will rouse them to leave the places to which you have sold them, and I will turn your deeds back upon your own heads.
8I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a nation far away; for the LORD has spoken. The Lord throws down the gauntlet to the nations
9Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war, stir up the warriors. Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up.
10Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weakling say, "I am a warrior."
11Come quickly, all you nations all around, gather yourselves there. Bring down your warriors, O LORD.
12Let the nations rouse themselves, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the neighboring nations.
13Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the wine press is full. The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great.
14Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.
15The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.
16The LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shake. But the LORD is a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.
17So you shall know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, my holy mountain. And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall never again pass through it. The divine blessings
18In that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the stream beds of Judah shall flow with water; a fountain shall come forth from the house of the LORD and water the Wadi Shittim.
19Egypt shall become a desolation and Edom a desolate wilderness, because of the violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they have shed innocent blood.
20But Judah shall be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations.
21I will avenge their blood, and I will not clear the guilty, for the LORD dwells in Zion. AMOS
1825AMOS Introduction The book of Amos is compilation of sayings attributed to the prophet Amos, who was active in the first half of the eighth century BCE, during the long and peaceful reign of Jeroboam II (788-747; Am 1.1). In this period, Israel attained a height of territorial expansion and national prosperity never again reached. At the same time, this prosperity led to gross inequities between urban elites and the poor. Through manipulation of debt and credit, wealthy landowners amassed capital and estates at the expense of small farmers. The smallest debt served as the thin end of a wedge that lenders could use to separate farmers from their patrimonial farms and personal liberty. In this scene stepped Amos, a native of a small village in the Southern Kingdom Judah, and himself a farmer and herder, probably during the 760-750 BCE. Amos denounced the society of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, in vivid language, bitterly describing the decadent opulence, immorality, and smug piety of usually conservative elites who "trampled the head of the poor into the dust of the earth." Amos's program, in contrast, called for "justice" and "righteousness" (5.7, 24; 6.12), terms that connote social inequality and concern for the disadvantaged (Isa 5.7; Mic 6.8). Against the background of Israelite tradition about "the Day of the Lord," occasions celebrated from the past and eagerly anticipated in the future when the Lord dramatically intervenes in human affairs, Amos announced that such a day was imminent. This time, however, the fortified palaces and temples of Israel would be leveled along with those of Israel's rival nations (1.3-2.3) when God executed the divine version of "justice and righteousness." Israel's covenant with God (3.2) did not absolve it from this ethical standard, which Amos, in so many words, universalized (9.7-8). Though Amos affirmed the special quality AMOS
1826of God's relationship with Israel (9.8), he stressed that it entails a special ethical responsibility (3.1). The agent of this divine punishment would be the Assyrian army (Isa 10.5-11). The frequent references to exile in Amos (e.g., 3.11; 6.7; 7.17) reflect a grim threat, the Assyrian imperial practice of deporting and transplanting conquered peoples. The book contains a variety of material. Some of Amos's sayings are presented as messenger speech ("thus says the Lord"), others as visions ("This is what the Lord showed me"), especially in chs 7-9. Amos, in a legal style of indictment followed by punishment ("therefore..."), announced judgments (e.g., 1.3-2.16), delivered funeral orations (5.1-2), and exhorted (5.6). He only rarely encouraged (see 9.11-15) in the book. In addition to the above types of prophetic sayings, the book contains three fragments from a hymn (4.13; 5.8-9; 9.5-6) and one narrative, about Amos's encounter with Amaziah, priest of the Northern Kingdom's royal sanctuary at Bethel (7.10-17). That narrative and the superscription (1.1) yield only the portrait of the prophet. A native of the southern state of Judah who raised livestock and tended fruit trees, Amos prophesied to and in the northern state, Israel. At Bethel (7.13) his bitter invective, voiced as divine word ("I hate, I despise your festivals," 5.21) no doubt scandalized pilgrims from Samaria, capital of the Northern Kingdom. His confrontation with Amaziah (7.10-17) remains one of the unforgettable scenes in biblical prophecy. Expelled from the royal sanctuary and commanded not to prophesy there again, Amos perhaps returned to Judah where he, or like-minded scribes, wrote down the essence of his public preaching in substantially its present form. Amos's prophetic career was roughly contemporaneous with that of Hosea, though Amos probably preceded him. Chronologically, then, Amos inaugurated the era of classical prophecy. In some ancient manuscript traditions (the Septuagint , the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), the book of Amos directly follows Hosea. The traditional arrangement of the Book of the Twelve, however, is based not solely on chronology but often on specific verbal similarities that link the end of one book to the beginning of the next. Amos is linked to its predecessor Joel by identical phrases (see Joel AMOS
18273.16a and Am 1.2a) and to its successor Obadiah by a similar subject (Edom in Am 9.12 and Ob 1). The book of Amos falls into three major parts: Chs 1-2 represent a single speech, an ethical tour of the region from the divine perspective, which climaxes in the indictment of Israel itself; chs 3-6 are the most variegated section and form a collection of short prophetic sayings indicting Israel for sin and injustice; chs 7-9 contain the visions of Amos, as well as the Amaziah narrative (7.10-17) and a final speech of comfort (9.11-15) addressed not to Israel but to Judah. The best approach for readers is to follow the sequence of the book itself. The book of Amos begins and ends with references to an earthquake. (1.1 and the images of shaking in 9.1-9). We do not know the exact year (760 BCE has been proposed), but there is archaeological evidence of a catastrophe. Did this earthquake, so severe that it was recalled centuries later (Zech 14.5), offer cosmic validation of Amos's preaching? We cannot know. Still, even today we feel the aftershocks of Amos, the first in a brilliant succession of biblical prophets whose words, now preserved in written form, have left their indelible stamp on later thought about God and human history.