A New Start
The ‘return to routine’ worked and God’s ‘ardent love’ (v 18 REB) answered their prayer. The new mood shows signs of consolidation. Having plumbed the depths we begin to climb the hill. Food is on the way and there is no need for Israel to feel like a beggar or a poor relation (v 19). The threat of further disaster recedes and gives place to hope. (v 20). All nature, so badly battered by the disaster, shows all the signs of renewal (vv 21-24).
In the nature of the poem we are treated to a reversal of what went wrong — pastures devoured by fire, vine and fig tree are restored and drought gives place to rain. In real life the evils of a disaster are not always (or necessarily) reversed in this way, though the way we perceive them often is, and v 25 suggests that even in Joel we are talking about the kind of renewal that makes good disaster rather than the kind that tries to imagine everything can be put back as it was before. We are moving on, not going back (v 25).
The nightmare over, now is the time for dreams and visions (vv 28-29). Life is not all disaster, nor is it mere routine. It is not enough to know who we are and what we are doing; we need people capable of seeing who we may become and what we may achieve. Hence the ‘dreams and visions’ demonstrate an inclusiveness that embraces ‘all flesh’ — not only ‘slaves’ but ‘even male and female slaves’. Was such an inclusiveness born of the realisation that during those dark days all the community had pulled together, with slaves and women appreciated as never before? Perhaps so, but if not, what other changes might have been brought about as a result of the disaster and what might have prompted them?
Small wonder that the early Christians, emerging from a new and different disaster, grabbed these verses and saw their significance on the Day of Pentecost. They too saw more than Joel could ever have appreciated. So can we some 2,000 years later.