Commentary on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

This text for Ash Wednesday skips from verse 2 down to verse 12. A smart preacher will read all of Joel to get a sense of the gravity, the trauma, and the fear that the prophetic poet addresses. What we miss in the lectionary choice is the terror of a people overrun by an army that swarms, sets fire, and destroys what once was a verdant landscape.

We miss people in anguish and pale from fear; we miss the sounds, smells, and visuals of war. We miss disciplined soldiers who don’t get in each other’s way as they carry out a mission—soldiers prepared to mete out destruction and not deterred by human suffering. We miss smoke that darkens the skies and hides the sun and the moon, a sky where stars that used to help people navigate can no longer be seen. We miss a great and terrible sight: “Who can endure it?” (2:11).

In the first chapter of Joel, these warriors are described as a swarming hoard of locusts. Of course, it could be that there is ecological devastation along with warring forces; in other words, there might be locusts destroying crops and turning the area into a hellscape, increasing the possibility that the people may add starvation to their fears. Wars do lead to sickness, starvation, and destabilization. This text says it’s a tale as old as time. And in our time, any news outlet or internet site can attest to that, whether we talk about Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Gaza Strip, or Venezuela. Anywhere countries are unstable, people are under duress, and a swarm of locusts seems an apt metaphor.

While we prepare for Lent on Ash Wednesday, often as personal and individual repentance, we should be reminded that the text captures the impact on a nation under attack, and the people who suffer from war. This context for the pericope may guide the preacher to look beyond our individualistic way of approaching Lent. All around the globe, and around our country, people are feeling terror. If we “sound the alarm” (2:1), it might be to help us try to figure out how and where God is. The Joel text speaks of the day of the Lord being at hand. I won’t recount all the scholarship that’s available about the day of the Lord, but suffice it to say, it is not a good thing. And in this text, it is tied to war and its ravages.

Unlike many of the prophets, the book of Joel does not date itself with kings or particular historical events, so we don’t know what army or what timeframe is at hand. In some ways, for the ancient people and for us, the world is “always on fire” with some geopolitical danger, and so the prophetic words are a call to a posture for the people who are afraid, a posture toward God as a community.

As Juliana Claassens teaches us, “The expression of individual and collective grief in the face of a tragedy such as portrayed in the first chapters of Joel is an important step in coming to terms with extreme trauma.”¹ And, we might note, women, children, people with disabilities, and the elderly often suffer the most in such instances. I do not want to ignore that male warriors and able-bodied men suffering food insecurity and homelessness, for example, are also victims. But we do a disservice if we don’t note the impact on these other populations (many of which include men). I think it’s important for preachers to make these observations, so that congregations can see the whole community.

What is a preacher to say about war and trauma on Ash Wednesday? What does it mean to return to God on this day (2:12)? It is important to note that there is no mention of “sin” in Joel. Of course, if you read canonically, you would know that the ancient people are blamed for what happens to them. But here, the word for return (shuv), in verse 12, has no such meaning. What we see is a community so distraught that they are in survival mode, and any devotional feelings toward God are not in their survival toolkit.

The prophet encourages them to turn to God in a time of ecological, political, and economical crises. “Rend your hearts” (verse 13) is an invitation to be open to the grief and sorrow that leads us to prayer, fasting, mourning, and weeping. It is a call to open our hearts to God and to one another in a time we would rather withdraw and isolate. The people are reminded of an ancient recitation about God’s character: “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment” (2:13; see also Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Nehemiah 9:17; Jonah 4:2).

The writer does say that we cannot know whether or how God will respond (2:14). But the point of turning to God includes refocusing our attention and our hearts. That is the point of the Lenten season. The point is to slow down from the “business as usual” that is sometimes the way we live in denial of what’s happening around us. The call to assemble everyone, old and young, celebrating and mourning, religious leaders and all, is to experience particular kinds of lamentation and petitions. The people’s prayers are about God’s character. If they were to die, it would have their enemies asking, “Where is their God?”

The writer’s words toward this call are noteworthy (Joel 2:15–17):

¹⁵ Blow the trumpet in Zion;
consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
¹⁶     gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
and the bride her canopy.

¹⁷ Between the vestibule and the altar,
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’ ”

Ash Wednesday lends itself to this same call to assembly. Many will have had a debauchery of pancakes and other sweets on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) in preparation for the Lenten fast, but that’s just a tradition we have invented because of our fear of scarcity and of fasting. But this text pushes us to openhearted grief, with a caveat to also dream of another future.

Grief and fear often forestall imagination. But the prophetic poet, in Joel 3, imagines a world after war and geopolitical upheaval. The poet promises that God will “roar” from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem (3:16). They will experience a country nevermore invaded, a return to Eden-like land. It’s a different vision from the day of the Lord in the earlier chapters. Claassens describes this eschatological vision as “an intensified form of hope in the midst of despair, which has power in the present. We see vivid descriptions of how the world ought to be, a world in which there will be food aplenty and hunger will be no more.”²

As Judy Fentress-Williams notes, “This future vision of the Day of the Lord is significant in its inclusivity, and with the expectation that God’s return and restoration is not just a return to how things were, but a return of how things were meant to be.”³ Fentress-Williams argues that to find a future beyond our imagination, we have to cultivate hope. On this Ash Wednesday, preachers can lean into hope without moving too quickly from despair. We could use a good dose of reality infused with a helping of hope for a better future, one in which we are all called to participate.

Notes

1. L. Juliana M. Claassens, “Joel,” 309–311, Women’s Bible Commentary: Twentieth‐Anniversary Edition, ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Westminster John Knox, 2012), 310.
2. Claassens, “Joel,” 310.
3. Judy Fentress-Williams, Holy Imagination: A Literary and Theological Introduction to the Whole Bible (Abingdon, 2021), 211.