A Holy
and Just God (Joel)
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the April 20, 2013 Sabbath School Lesson
“You
will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts
will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not
drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have
olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the
olives will drop off. Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the
crops of your land. The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you
higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. They will lend to you,
but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.”
Deuteronomy 28:38-40, 42-44; NIV
According to the book itself, the prophet Joel was the son of
Pethuel. While we may always question when a name has meaning and when a name
is simply a name, we are perhaps justified in considering the meaning of names
when we are studying a book like Joel where allegory appears to be the means
used to present the message. In this case, the names may add to our
understanding as we saw with the book of Hosea.
“Joel” is a combination of Ja,
short for YHWH, and El, which is also a common reference to God
and a shortened form of Elohim. In
our modern era, with a perspective shaped by many centuries of wrestling over monotheism
and trinitarianism, issues that theologians still debate today, the
distinctions can be difficult to understand. The ancient Jews apparently saw no
contradiction between using the plural Elohim,[1] and
declaring “The Lord our God is one.”[2] Perhaps
there was an early popular syncretism that tolerated both viewpoints. However,
as a hardening of theological dogma has set in, the resulting arthriticism has
greatly limited opportunities for such flexible accommodation. Whether or not
that has been good for the church, we can leave for another day. For now, let’s
return to understanding these names.
Some might render the name “Joel” in English as “God is Lord,” but
I think this loses some of what is meant by this name. It is a great attempt at
a literal translation, but if we replace the word “is” with an equal sign as in
mathematics or logic, we can come closer to understanding. In other words, the
name is saying that YHWH and Elohim are one and the same. This
naturally raises the question of how a singular and a plural can ever be equal,
but the book does not answer that for us. In spite of our difficulty with that
idea, it seems to be a given and presumed not to be an issue for the reader of
Joel.
When we throw into the mix the name of Joel’s father, Pethuel, the
meaning becomes richer. Pethuel means “Elohim delivers.” It is as though we
have the statement “Elohim delivers” with the answer “YHWH is Elohim.” When we
understand that YHWH is a form of the
verb “to be,” we can then render the exchange as “Elohim delivers” with the
answer “being is Elohim.” In other words, God is not simply our deliverer; He
is the source of our very being, our existence. Perhaps this perspective can brighten
our understanding of what the book of Joel is about.
The book begins with devastation of the country of Judah as the
result of several consecutive locust invasions. In Joel’s day, people lived
close to the land and understood the agricultural basis of their economy. They
knew that agricultural failure could mean famine and even death for their
neighbors, their families and themselves. Today, when we buy prepackaged food
in the grocery store to heat in our microwaves, and when our livestock are
rendered into “nuggets” and patties that bear little resemblance to the animals
they once were, we have more difficulty appreciating the relationship between
food and farm.
Perhaps we should pay more attention to that relationship. In the
United States as elsewhere, there have been repeating natural disasters that
have had profound effects on our economy. Successive years of flooding in the
upper Midwest and drought in the lower and southwestern Midwest have profoundly
affected not only our local food supplies but have caused increased prices in
food worldwide. Perhaps because of our blessings as a nation in having such
wealth relative to the rest of the world, we simply pay the increased prices
without giving much thought to what is driving them upward. Due to a massive
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we also had an interruption in the supply of
seafood, which is a major industry in that area. When we throw into the mix the
destruction brought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed over eighteen
hundred people and caused eighty-four billion dollars in damage[3]
and several other storms and tornados since then, up to and including Hurricane
Sandy in 2012, which devastated New York and New Jersey, causing seventy-one
billion dollars in damage[4]
the picture becomes clearer.
Perhaps our wealth isolates us from seeing the real impact of these
successive disasters. Our grocery stores, like cornucopias, still have lots of
food in them, with the promise of an endless supply to replace what is
purchased. The restaurants continue to operate, although increased food costs
are passed on to their customers. Our internet connections, cable and satellite
television, and our smart phones all continue to work. Clothing is readily
available. We continue to avail ourselves of ever more expensive private
transportation. While this may be disconnected from how many in the rest of the
world struggle to survive, it is the reality in the United States even though
it also represents disconnection from these disasters and what they mean to our
well-being over time. Maybe we are truly the Laodiceans of the Bible.[5]
Could it be that the people of ancient Judah felt secure in the
same way? We are told that in the reign of Solomon that silver was so abundant
that it was counted of little value.[6]
With that kind of prosperity, the people could have easily felt secure against
any disaster. The repeated locust invasions revealed how foolish this was. Even
with lots of wealth to offset the loss, replanting what was lost could take several
years to even begin to restore the harvests to their former levels. In the meantime,
they would need to import food from elsewhere, if they could find it. The
demand would naturally drive prices up, and their wealth could eventually fail
them. Many United States citizens do not realize that while we refer to our
country as “bread basket to the world,” we actually imported more than sixty-two
million tons of food in fourteen key categories from other countries in 2012.[7]
Are we on the same path as ancient Judah? If so, Joel may be important to help
us understand.
Joel could be telling us that recurring disasters are a result of
falling out of relationship with our “existence” in the person of YHWH. This is not only related to the
symbolism of Joel’s name. This can work on the very literal level of “obey God
and live,”[8] as
well as the metaphorical level where we understand that we should not lose
sight of what are the necessary structures of our existence. As we divorce
ourselves from a relationship with God, the source of existence, we may also
divorce ourselves from understanding the relationships with the world we live
in and the significance of the health of these relationships to our survival.
In this sense, whether considered literally or metaphorically, the spiritual is
the indicator of the viability of all other relationships. Perhaps the Bible is
not simply a pirate’s treasure map showing us where to find the future, gold-paved
streets of heaven. Perhaps it is a guidebook for natural stewardship and
mutually supportive relationships in the present.
If we take to heart the message of Joel, maybe we can find that it
is not too late to find restoration and healing. Perhaps Joel is a clarion call
we should consider heeding. Of course we can wait until we have no choice but
to notice the message, but by then the damage could take many painful years to
heal. We can ignore a “check engine light” blinking at us from the automobile
dashboard, but doing so could result in much more expensive repairs later and a
loss of transportation while those repairs are being done. What may have been
handled with a short trip of a few hours to the auto maintenance shop could
possibly require days rather than hours. Painting over the dashboard light to pretend
the warning isn’t there will not solve the problem. That approach rarely works
with cars. It also rarely works with prophets.
