Joel 2:11 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Joel 2:11
And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?
to fear · conjunction + verb, niphal active participle, masculine singular absolute
abide
יְכִילֶֽנּוּye.khi.Le.nu
H3557
properly · verb, hiphil imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine 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
Malachi 3:2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap:
Nahum 1:6 Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are…
Psalms 46:6 The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
Jeremiah 30:7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.
Joel 3:16 The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be th…
Revelation 6:17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
Revelation 18:8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the L…
Numbers 24:23 And he took up his parable, and said, Alas, who shall live when God doeth this!
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Joel 2:1-11
Here we have God contending with his own professing people for their sins and executing upon them the judgment written in the law (Deu 28:42), The fruit of thy land shall the locust consume, which was one of those diseases of Egypt that God would bring upon them, Deu 28:60.
I. Here is the war proclaimed (Joe 2:1): Blow the trumpet in Zion, either to call the invading army together, and then the trumpet sounds a charge, or rather to give notice to Judah and Jerusalem of the approach of the judgment, that they might prepare to meet their God in the way of his judgments and might endeavor by prayers and tears, the church's best artillery, to put by the stroke. It was the priests' business to so…
Lord . . . his army--So among Mohammedans, "Lord of the locusts" is a title of God.
his voice--His word of command to the locusts, and to the antitypical human foes of Judea, as "His army."
strong that executeth his word-- (Rev 18:8).
John Gill on Joel 2:11
And the Lord shall utter his voice before his army,.... Either the army of the locusts, whom Pliny (u) calls "pestis deorum", "the plague of the gods"; and the Arabians frequently style them the army of God. It is a tradition of theirs that locusts fell into the hands of Mahomet, with this inscription on their backs and wings,
"we are the army of the most high God;''
and because they were, for that reason Mahomet made a law that none should kill them; See Gill on Revelation 9:3. These creatures are certainly at his beck and command; he can "command the locust to devour the land", 2 Chronicles 7:13; which may be meant by his uttering his voice here; though Jarchi and Kimchi interpret it of…
Joel 2:1-11
1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand;
1. Clangite tuba in Sion, et clamate (alii vertunt, tantarizate: sed est generale verbum: clamate igitur, vel, clamorem odite) in monte sancto meo: contremiscant omnes incolae terrae, quia venit dies Jehovae, quia propinquus est.
2. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
2. Dies tenebrarum e…
The Church Fathers
But since these are light perceived by the senses, which are said in Moses to have come into existence on the fourth day, they are not the true light because they enlighten the things on the earth. The Savior, on the other hand, is the light of the spiritual world because he shines on those who are rational and intellectual, that their mind may see its proper visions. Now I mean he is the light of those rational souls which are in the sensible world, of which the Savior teaches us that he is the Maker, being, perhaps, its directing and principal artificer, and, so to speak, the sun of the great Day of the Lord.
When a maidservant is rebelling but then sees her master coming, she grows humble and returns to her good behavior. So too the paralytic's body had revolted like the maidservant, and this caused the paralysis. But when the body saw its master coming near, it returned to its good behavior and resumed its proper discipline. And the word of Christ accomplished all this. Yet the words were not mere words but the words of God, of which the prophet said, "The works of his words are mighty." For if God's words made humankind when they did not exist, much more will they make humanity whole again and restore it to health even though it has grown feeble and weak with disease?
If then the beginning of time is called "one day" rather than "the first day," it is because Scripture wishes to establish its relationship with eternity. It was, in reality, fit and natural to call "one" the day whose character is to be one wholly separated and isolated from all the others. If Scripture speaks to us of many ages, saying everywhere, "age of age, and ages of ages," we do not see it enumerate them as first, second, and third. It follows that we are hereby shown not so much limits, ends and succession of ages, as distinctions between various states and modes of action. "The day of the Lord," Scripture says, "is great and very terrible," and elsewhere "Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord: to what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light." A day of darkness for those who are worthy of darkness.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
The whole universe trembles at this judgment of God. Joe 2:10. "Before it the earth quakes, the heavens tremble: sun and moon have turned black, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. Joe 2:11. And Jehovah thunders before His army, for His camp is very great, for the executor of His word is strong; for the day of Jehovah is great and very terrible, and who can endure it?" The remark of Jerome on Joe 2:10, viz., that "it is not that the strength of the locusts is so great that they can move the heavens and shake the earth, but that to those who suffer from such calamities, from the amount of their own terror, the heavens appear to shake and the earth to reel," is correct enough so far as…
The Lord is at the head of the column (literally the Lord utters his voice before his army): The coming destruction was not simply an act of nature or the result of human activity, but an act of God. • This is his mighty army: God executed this judgment. • Who can possibly survive? Apart from God’s grace and mercy, no one can.
