9 The oblation and the drink-offering are cut off from the house of Jehovah; the priests, Jehovah's ministers, mourn.
Who knoweth? He might return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, an oblation and a drink-offering for Jehovah your God?
Let the priests, the ministers of Jehovah, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare, O Jehovah, thy people, and give not thine inheritance to reproach, that they should be a byword of the nations. Wherefore should they say among the peoples, Where is their God?
They shall pour out no [offerings of] wine to Jehovah, neither shall their sacrifices be pleasing unto him: they shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be defiled: for their bread shall be for themselves; it shall not come into the house of Jehovah.
Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests; howl, ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the oblation and the drink-offering are withholden from the house of your God.
But as for you, ye shall be called priests of Jehovah; it shall be said of you: Ministers of our God. Ye shall eat the wealth of the nations, and into their glory shall ye enter.
But as for us, Jehovah is our God, and we have not forsaken him; and the priests that serve Jehovah are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites are at their work:
The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly: all her gates are desolate; her priests sigh, her virgins are in grief; and as for her, she is in bitterness.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Joel 1
Commentary on Joel 1 Matthew Henry Commentary
An Exposition, With Practical Observations, of
The Book of the Prophet Joel
Chapter 1
This chapter is the description of a lamentable devastation made of the country of Judah by locusts and caterpillars. Some think that the prophet speaks of it as a thing to come and gives warning of it beforehand, as usually the prophets did of judgments coming. Others think that it was now present, and that his business was to affect the people with it and awaken them by it to repentance.
Joe 1:1-7
It is a foolish fancy which some of the Jews have, that this Joel the prophet was the same with that Joel who was the son of Samuel (1 Sa. 8:2); yet one of their rabbin very gravely undertakes to show why Samuel is here called Pethuel. This Joel was long after that. He here speaks of a sad and sore judgment which was now brought, or to be brought, upon Judah, for their sins. Observe,
Joe 1:8-13
The judgment is here described as very lamentable, and such as all sorts of people should share in; it shall not only rob the drunkards of their pleasure (if that were the worst of it, it might be the better borne), but it shall deprive others of their necessary subsistence, who are therefore called to lament (v. 8), as a virgin laments the death of her lover to whom she was espoused, but not completely married, yet so that he was in effect her husband, or as a young woman lately married, from whom the husband of her youth, her young husband, or the husband to whom she was married when she was young, is suddenly taken away by death. Between a new-married couple that are young, that married for love, and that are every way amiable and agreeable to each other, there is great fondness, and consequently great grief if either be taken away. Such lamentation shall there be for the loss of their corn and wine. Note, The more we are wedded to our creature-comforts that harder it is to part with them. See that parallel place, Isa. 32:10-12. Two sorts of people are here brought in, as concerned to lament this devastation, countrymen and clergymen.
Joe 1:14-20
We have observed abundance of tears shed for the destruction of the fruits of the earth by the locusts; now here we have those tears turned into the right channel, that of repentance and humiliation before God. The judgment was very heavy, and here they are directed to own the hand of God in it, his mighty hand, and to humble themselves under it. Here is,