The Elders and Citizens in General "Hear This" (Joel 1:2-4)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/29/2015 9:51 PM

My Worship Time                                Focus:  The Elders and Citizens in General:  “Hear This!”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                       Reference:  Joel 1:2-4

            Message of the verses:  “2 Hear this, O elders, And listen, all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this happened in your days Or in your fathers’ days? 3  Tell your sons about it, And let your sons tell their sons, And their sons the next generation. 4 What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten.”

            We are beginning to look at the first sub-point under the first main point from the outline of Dr. Wiersbe, a practice that I follow in many of my Spiritual Diaries.  We mentioned in the two earlier SD’s on Joel that “The Day of the Lord” is the theme of the book of Joel and that it was broken up into three different time periods with the first being what is called “The Immediate Day of the Lord” which covers Joel 1:1-20, which is the entire first chapter.  We will be looking at four different sub-points under this first main point in the next few days as we begin our study of this short book of Joel.

            Dr. Wiersbe writes of Joel in his introductory commentary of this first main point:  “Joel was a realist who looked at life from the standpoint of the Word of the Lord.  He addressed himself to five groups of citizens and gave them four admonitions from the Lord.”  As stated we will look at these four admonitions, the first one today as Joes speaks to the elders and the plain citizens and his words are to “Hear this!”

            Now if we look at this second verse in Joel from the KJV it reads “2  Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?”  Dr. Wiersbe has an endnote on this:  “In the KJV, the Hebrew word is translated ‘old men’ in 1:2 and 2:28, and ‘elders’ in 1:14 and 2:16.  The NIV uses ‘elders’ everywhere except 2:28, where the contrast between ‘young men’ and ‘old men’ is quite obvious.  It’s possible that the ‘old men’ were indeed the official elders of the land.”

            Joel addressed the elders or old men first for what is probably two reasons:  that they had long experience and could authenticate what he was saying, and the other reason is that people respected the older men in that generation, something that does not happen in our culture today.  Why do I make that statement?  Well I told one of my friends that our adult children don’t need much advice from us because they can get all of the answers on their “smart phones.”  Now that Joel had the support of the older generation his voice would carry some respect and the elders would agree that their nation was in a very difficult situation such as they had never seen before.  What was about to happen was something that people would tell the next generation and the next generation and so on. 

            Notice Joel uses four different words for how these locusts would go about and eat everything that was able to be eaten.  Some suggest that he did this to show the four stages of the life cycle of the locusts, but as we look at these different words and follow them throughout the passage we see that perhaps the point was that everything would be completely destroyed, for that is what Joel is saying would happen.  The speed in which locusts can destroy plant vegetation is very fast and when they come into a field it looks like a dark cloud has come across the field and with the results that nothing is left when they are done.  Let us look at another place in Scripture where this happened:  Exodus 10:12-20 “12 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up on the land of Egypt and eat every plant of the land, even all that the hail has left." 13 So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the LORD directed an east wind on the land all that day and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts. 14 The locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and settled in all the territory of Egypt; they were very numerous. There had never been so many locusts, nor would there be so many again. 15 For they covered the surface of the whole land, so that the land was darkened; and they ate every plant of the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Thus nothing green was left on tree or plant of the field through all the land of Egypt. 16 Then Pharaoh hurriedly called for Moses and Aaron, and he said, "I have sinned against the LORD your God and against you. 17 “Now therefore, please forgive my sin only this once, and make supplication to the LORD your God, that He would only remove this death from me." 18 He went out from Pharaoh and made supplication to the LORD. 19  So the LORD shifted the wind to a very strong west wind which took up the locusts and drove them into the Red Sea; not one locust was left in all the territory of Egypt. 20 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go.”

7/29/2015 10:21 PM