changing the historical tenses in Joe 2:18, Joe 2:19 into futures. We have rather simply to supply the execution of the prophet's command between Joe 2:17 and Joe 2:18. קנּא with ל, to be jealous for a person, i.e., to show the jealousy of love towards him, as in Exo 39:25; Zec 1:14 (see at Exo 20:5). חמל as in Exo 2:6; 1Sa 23:21. In the answer from Jehovah which follows, the three features in the promise are not given according to their chronological order; but in order to add force to the description, we have first of all, in Joe 2:19, a promise of the relief of the distress at which both man and beast had sighed, and then, in Joe 2:20, a promise of the destruction of the devastator; and it is not till Joe 2:21-23 that the third feature is mentioned in the further development of the promise, viz., the teacher for righteousness. Then finally, in Joe 2:23-27, the fertilizing fall of rain, and the plentiful supply of the fruits of the ground that had been destroyed by the locusts, are more elaborately described, as the first blessing bestowed upon the people.
Verses 19-20
The promise runs as follows. Joe 2:19. “Behold, I send you the corn, and the new wine, and the oil, that ye may become satisfied therewith; and will no more make you a reproach among the nations. Joe 2:20. And I will remove the northern one far away from you, and drive him into the land of drought and desert; its van into the front sea, and its rear into the hinder sea: and its stink will ascend, and its corruption ascend, for it has done great things.” The Lord promises, first of all, a compensation for the injury done by the devastation, and then the destruction of the devastation itself, so that it may do no further damage. Joe 2:19 stands related to Joe 1:11. Shâlach, to send: the corn is said to be sent instead of given (Hos 2:10), because God sends the rain which causes the corn to grow. Israel shall no longer be a reproach among the nations, “as a poor people, whose God is unable to assist it, or has evidently forsaken it” (Ros.). Marck and Schmieder have already observed that this promise is related to the prayer, that He would not give up His inheritance to the reproach of the scoffings of the heathen (Joe 1:17 : see the comm. on this verse). הצּפוני, the northern one, as an epithet applied to the swarm of locusts, furnishes no decisive argument in favour of the allegorical interpretation of the plague of locusts. For even if locusts generally come to Palestine from the south, out of the Arabian desert, the remark
