to bewail · verb, qal imperative, 2nd person feminine singular
virgin
כִּבְתוּלָ֥הkiv.tu.Lah
H1330
a virgin (from her privacy) · preposition + noun, common feminine singular absolute
girded
חֲגֻֽרַתcha.gu.rat-
H2296
to gird on (as a belt · verb, qal passive participle, feminine singular construct
sackcloth
שַׂ֖קsak
H8242
properly · noun, common masculine singular absolute
husband
בַּ֥עַלBa.'al
H1167
a master · noun, common masculine singular construct
youth
נְעוּרֶֽיהָne.'u.Rei.ha
H5271
(only in plural collectively or emphatic form) youth · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 22:12 And in that day did the Lord GOD of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth:
Malachi 2:15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to yo…
James 5:1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Proverbs 2:17 Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.
Isaiah 24:7-12 The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merryhearted do sigh.
Isaiah 32:11 Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins.
Jeremiah 3:4 Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
Jeremiah 9:17-19 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may co…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Joel 1:8-13
The judgment is here described as very lamentable, and such as all sorts of people should share in; it shall not only rob the drunkards of their pleasure (if that were the worst of it, it might be the better borne), but it shall deprive others of their necessary subsistence, who are therefore called to lament (Joe 1:8), as a virgin laments the death of her lover to whom she was espoused, but not completely married, yet so that he was in effect her husband, or as a young woman lately married, from whom the husband of her youth, her young husband, or the husband to whom she was married when she was young, is suddenly taken away by death. Between a new-married couple that are young, that marrie…
Lament--O "my land" (Joe 1:6; Isa 24:4).
virgin . . . for the husband--A virgin betrothed was regarded as married (Deu 22:23; Mat 1:19). The Hebrew for "husband" is "lord" or "possessor," the husband being considered the master of the wife in the East.
of her youth--when the affections are strongest and when sorrow at bereavement is consequently keenest. Suggesting the thought of what Zion's grief ought to be for her separation from Jehovah, the betrothed husband of her early days (Jer 2:2; Eze 16:8; Hos 2:7; compare Pro 2:17; Jer 3:4).
John Gill on Joel 1:8
Lament like a virgin,.... This is not the continuation of the prophet's speech to the drunkards; but, as Aben Ezra observes, he either speaks to himself, or to the land the Targum supplies it, O congregation of Israel; the more religious and godly part of the people are here addressed; who were concerned for the pure worship of God, and were as a chaste virgin espoused to Christ, though not yet come, and for whom they were waiting; these are called upon to lament the calamities of the times in doleful strains, like a virgin:
girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth; either as one that had been betrothed to a young man, but not married, he dying after the espousals, and before marr…
(Verse 8.) Lament like a young woman dressed in sackcloth, over the man of your youth. (Vulgate: Lament like a young woman dressed in sackcloth, over her young husband). LXX: Lament to me over the bride dressed in sackcloth, over her young husband. The man of youth, or as the Septuagint translated, παρθενικὸς, which is commonly called virginal, because he is understood to be none other than God, who in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob betrothed himself to a pure bride untainted by any idolatrous filth. To whom and through Jeremiah it is said: You have not called me Master, and Father, and Prince of your virginity (Jer. III, 4). Hence, the Apostle speaks to believers: I have betrothed you to one man, to present a chaste virgin to Christ (I Cor. XI, 2). As long as the bridegroom is with this bride, he cannot fast (Matth. IX), nor mourn, nor indicate the longing for the absent bridegroom with tears. But when the bridegroom is taken away from her, she mourns and weeps, and girds herself with sackcloth and cilice, and is bound with a cord as a sign of mourning. We have understood who the bridegroom of the virgin is: but because this bridegroom, or husband, not only accepted the virgin as his bride, but also took a harlot as a wife in Hosea, therefore it is written in Deuteronomy: If you go out against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hand, and you take captive women among them, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and would take her as a wife, you shall bring her into your house; and she shall shave her head and trim her nails and put off the clothes in which she was captured, sit in your house, and bewail her father and mother a month's time, and afterwards you shall go in to her, and be her husband (Deut. 21:10-13). Such a woman does not have a husband, that is, a master of virginity, but she has taken a prostitute from the filth of the nations as a wife. And we can say this about every believing soul. If she believed in the Lord from a young age, she has the Lord as her virgin bridegroom. But if she comes to the truth of faith, from the most unclean depths of the Jews, the Gentiles, or the heretics, and transitions from darkness to light, she will indeed have a bridegroom, but not a virgin one. And it is said about people like this: Your breasts were broken in Egypt, and there you lost your virginity (Ezek. XXIII,…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Marriage · The Jews: Contracted when young — The Jews: Contracted when young
Nation · Chastised — Chastised
Sackcloth · A symbol of mourning — A symbol of mourning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
John Calvin on Joel 1:8
Joel 1:8
8. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
8. Plange tanquam puella, accincta sacco, super marito adolescentiae suae.
The Prophet now addresses the whole land. Lament, he says; not in an ordinary way, but like a widow, whose husband is dead, whom she had married when young. The love, we know, of a young man towards a young woman, and so of a young woman towards a young man, is more tender than when a person in years marries an elderly woman. This is the reason that the Prophet here mentions the husband of her youth; he wished to set forth the heaviest lamentation, and hence he says "The Jews ought not surely to be otherwise affected by so many cal…
The whole nation is to mourn over this devastation. Joe 1:8. "Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. Joe 1:9. The meat-offering and the drink-offering are destroyed from the house of Jehovah. The priests, the servant of Jehovah. mourn. Joe 1:10. The field is laid waste, the ground mourns: for the corn is laid waste: the new wine is spoiled, the oil decays. Joe 1:11. Turn pale, ye husbandmen; howl, ye vinedressers, over wheat and barley: for the harvest of the field is perished. Joe 1:12. The vine is spoiled, and the fig-tree faded; the pomegranate, also the palm and the apple tree: all the trees of the field are withered away; yea, joy has expired from the c…
Weep like a bride (literally a virgin): Judah is compared to a young betrothed woman whose marriage is never consummated due to the death of her husband.
