The Year the Locusts Ate

The word of the Lord came to a man called Joel, the son of Bathuel. It came in a year that nobody in that country ever forgot. It was the year the locusts came. A locust is a grasshopper, about as long as your finger, and one of them in a field is nothing at all. But they do not come one at a time. They come in a cloud with millions in it, so thick that it puts the sun out, and when the cloud comes down, it eats. It eats the wheat and the barley, and the leaves off the vine, and the leaves off the fig tree, and then the bark. In one afternoon a green field can be brown ground. That year they came four times over. “Listen to this, you old men. Everybody who lives in this land, pay attention. Has anything like this happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children, and their children tell the ones who come after them.” “What the caterpillar left, the locust ate. What the locust left, the crawling locust ate. And what the crawling locust left, the blight finished.”

Joel walked out and looked at what was left, and this is what he said about it. “A strong nation, too big to count, has come up against my land. Its teeth are a lion’s teeth. It has laid my vine waste and broken my fig trees. It stripped the vine bare and threw it down and left the branches white.” “The plains are ruined. The grain is gone, the wine has dried up, the olive oil has run short. The pomegranate and the palm and the apple, and every tree in the field, have dried up. The farmers have withered along with them.” “The heifers kick at their empty feeding troughs. The storehouses have gone. The winepresses have fallen in. The herds wander about lowing, because there is no pasture anywhere, and the flocks of sheep are dying.” And there was one thing more, and to Joel it was the worst of all. “There is no sacrifice and no drink offering left for the house of the Lord. Put on sackcloth and beat your breasts, you priests. Mourn, you who serve at the altar. Go in and spend the whole night in sackcloth, you who serve God, because there is nothing left to bring to the house of your God.” The priests came to the altar every morning with grain and with wine, the way they always had, and that year there was no grain and there was no wine, and they came with their hands empty. “Set apart a fast. Call a solemn service. Gather the old men and everybody who lives in the land into the house of your God, and cry out to the Lord.” And Joel did it himself, first. “To you, Lord, I will cry. Fire has eaten the beautiful places of the wilderness, and flame has burned every tree of the field. Even the cattle out in the field look up at you, because the channels of water have dried up.”

And then Joel said something that made all of it bigger than the locusts. “Blow the trumpet in Zion. Sound it on my holy mountain. Let everybody who lives in the land shake, because the day of the Lord is coming, and it is near — a day of darkness and thick darkness, a day of cloud and mist.” “Like the dawn spreading over the mountains, a great and strong people is coming. There has never been anything like them, and there never will be again. A fire goes in front of them and a flame comes along behind. In front of them the land is a garden. Behind them it is bare ground. Nothing gets away.” “They look like horses, and they run like horsemen. They leap over the mountain tops with a noise like chariots, like fire in dry stubble. They run like soldiers and climb walls like fighting men, and each one goes straight along his own road and never turns aside. They do not push past one another. They take the city, they run along the walls, they climb onto the houses, they come in at the windows like thieves.” “The earth shakes in front of them and the sky trembles. The sun and the moon go dark, and the stars put their light away. The Lord gives his voice in front of his army, because his camp is very great and his words do great things. The day of the Lord is great and famous. Who will be able to stand it?”

And in the middle of that, God said the shortest and kindest thing of all. “Turn to me with your whole heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” And Joel said it again in his own way. When something terrible happened in that country, a man took hold of the front of his coat and tore it open, so that everybody could see how he felt. Joel told them not to bother with the coat. “Tear your hearts open, and not your clothes. Turn to the Lord your God, because he is kind and full of pity, patient and rich in mercy, and he changes his mind about doing harm. Who knows? He may turn back and change his mind and leave a blessing behind him.” “Blow the trumpet in Zion. Set apart a fast. Call a solemn service. Gather the people. Make the assembly holy. Bring the old men. Bring the babies who are still feeding. Get the bridegroom out of his room and the bride out of hers.” Even a wedding was to stop. And at the foot of the altar the priests were to stand and weep and say this: “Spare your people, Lord. Do not hand your own people over to be a disgrace, with the nations ruling them. Why should anybody say among the nations, ‘Where is their God?’”

Then the Lord became jealous for his land, and he spared his people. And he answered them. “Look — I am sending you grain and wine and olive oil, and you will have your fill of them, and I will not make you a disgrace among the nations any more. I will drive the one from the north away from you and push him off into a dry land.” And Joel turned and shouted the good news at everything he could see — at the ground, and at the cows. “Take courage, land. Be glad and rejoice, because the Lord has done great things. Take courage, cattle of the field, because the wild pastures have come up green. The trees are carrying their fruit. The fig tree and the vine have given all the strength they have.” “Children of Zion, be glad in the Lord your God, because he has given you food. He will send you the early rain and the later rain, the way he did before. The threshing floors will be full of grain, and the presses will run over with wine and oil.” And then God said this. “I will pay you back for the years the locusts ate — the locust and the crawling locust and the blight and the caterpillar, my great army that I sent against you. You will eat until you have had enough. You will praise the name of the Lord your God for the wonderful things he has done for you, and my people will never be ashamed again.” “And you will know that I am here, right in the middle of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and that there is nobody else.”

And then he said something bigger still. “And after this I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will speak for me. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. And in those days I will pour out my Spirit even on the men and the women who are servants and slaves.” “I will give wonders in heaven and on earth: blood, and fire, and a mist of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and famous day of the Lord comes. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Nobody standing in that burned field knew when that was going to happen, or what it would look like when it did. It was still a long way off.

Then God spoke about the nations, and about a valley. “Look — in those days, when I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And there I will have it out with them about my people, whom they scattered among the nations. They carved up my land. They threw dice for my people. They handed boys over and sold girls for wine, and then sat down and drank it.” “And what are you to me, Tyre and Sidon, and all the country of the Philistines? You took my silver and my gold and carried my best and loveliest things into your own temples. You sold the children of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, to get them right away from their own borders. Look — I will raise them up out of the place you sold them to, and what you did will come back on your own heads.” And then Joel called the nations to come and fight. “Say this among the nations. Get ready for war. Wake up the fighting men. Beat your plows into swords, and your sickles into spears. Let the weak man say, ‘I am strong.’ Gather together, all you nations round about, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.” “Because there I will sit down and judge all the nations round about. Send in the sickles, because the harvest is ripe. Go in and tread, because the winepress is full and the vats are running over.” And once more the sun and the moon went dark and the stars put their light away, and the Lord cried out from Zion, and heaven and earth shook — but he kept his own people safe and made the children of Israel strong.

And last of all, God spoke of water. “You will know that I am the Lord your God, and that I live in Zion, my holy mountain. Jerusalem will be a holy city, and strangers will never march through her again.” “On that day the mountains will drip sweetness, and the hills will run with milk, and every stream in Judah will have water in it. And a spring will come out from the house of the Lord and water the valley of reeds. Judah will have people living in it for ever, and Jerusalem for one generation after another.” The word that came to Joel began with a bare brown field and a priest standing at the altar with nothing in his hands. It ended with water coming out from under the door of the house of God.