to be (causatively · conjunction + verb, piel sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
land
לְאַרְצ֑וֹle.'ar.Tzo
H776
the earth (at large · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
pity
וַיַּחְמֹ֖לvai.yach.Mol
H2550
to commiserate · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
people
עַמּֽוֹa.Mo
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · noun, common masculine singular construct + 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
Zechariah 8:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I was jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I was jealous for her with great fury.
Psalms 103:13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.
Zechariah 1:14 So the angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion wit…
Lamentations 3:22 It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
James 5:11 Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pit…
Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bar…
Isaiah 63:15 Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of…
Isaiah 60:10 And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Joel 2:18-27
See how ready God is to succour and relieve his people, how he waits to be gracious; as soon as ever they humble themselves under this hand, and pray, and seek his face, he immediately meets them with his favours. They prayed that God would spare them, and see here with what good words and comfortable words he answered them; for God's promises are real answers to the prayers of faith, because with him saying and doing are not two things. Now observe,
I. Whence this mercy promised shall take rise (Joe 2:18): God will be jealous for his land and pity his people. He will have an eye, 1. To his own honour, and the reputation of his covenant with Israel, by which he had conveyed to them that good…
Then--when God sees His people penitent.
be jealous for his land--as a husband jealous of any dishonor done to the wife whom he loves, as if done to himself. The Hebrew comes from an Arabic root, "to be flushed in face" through indignation.
John Gill on Joel 2:18
Then will the Lord be jealous for his land,.... Or "zealous" for it; for the honour of it, and the good of its inhabitants, and for the glory of his own name, it being the chief place in the world for his worship and service; and his indignation will be moved against those who have brought desolation on it:
and pity his people; as a father his children, who had suffered much, and had been reduced to great distress by the locusts, or by their enemies: this the prophet foretells would be done upon their repentance, fasting, prayers, and tears; or, as some think, this is a narrative of what had been done, and the prophet was a witness of; that the people meeting together with their princess an…
Joel 2:18-19
18. Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people.
18. Et aemulatus est (aemulabitur, ad verbum) Jehova (hoc est, zelo ducetur Jehova) super terram suam, et propitius erit (et miserabitur, vel, parcet; nam chml est parcere) populo suo.
19. Yea, the Lord will answer and say unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith: and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen.
19. Et respondit Jehova (vel, respondebit) et dicit (vel, dicet) populo suo, Ecce ego mitto vobis triticum et mustum et oleum, et saturabimini eo (vel illis potius, est mutatio numeri,) et non dabo vos amplius opprobium inter Gent…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 18 and following) The Lord was zealous for His land, and spared His people. And the Lord answered and said to His people: Behold, I will send you grain and wine and oil, and you will be filled with them, and I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations. And I will remove him who is from the north far away from you, and I will drive him into a dry and desolate land: his face will be towards the eastern sea, and his end towards the western sea. And his stench will rise up, and his rottenness, for he has acted arrogantly. LXX: And the Lord was jealous for his land and spared his people and the Lord answered and said to his people: Behold, I will send you grain and wine and oil, and you will be filled with them, and I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations, and I will drive away the one from the north and bring him into a land that is without water, and I will destroy his face in the first sea and his hind parts in the last sea: and his stench will rise, and his decay will rise, because his works are magnified. After the priests prayed for the people and said: Spare, Lord, your people, and do not give your inheritance into reproach, and the people did what was commanded, to sanctify the fast, to preach healing, to gather (or compel) the multitude, to sanctify the Church, to choose the old men, to gather the little ones and those suckling at the breast, and for the bridegroom to go forth from his bed, and the bride from her chamber, and to serve not the flesh and pleasure, but the soul and tears. The Lord was zealous for his land, which he had previously treated as if it were foreign, and he had allowed the locusts to devastate it. He had spared the repentant ones so much that he made them worthy of his response and said, 'Because the locusts, the cankerworm, and the mildew have destroyed all your crops, I will give you grain and everything else that the prophet has described, and I will not deliver you to captivity again. I will also keep the Assyrians and the Chaldeans from the north, especially those from Babylon, far away from you.' As it is written, 'A numerous and mighty people, with fire devouring before them and flames burning behind them, like the appearance of horses.' And I will cast him into a land of solitude, says he, and his former parts shall fall into the Eastern Sea, and his latter parts into the Western Sea, and…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Joe 2:18 and Joe 2:19 contain the historical statement, that in consequence of the penitential prayer of the priests, the Lord displayed His mercy to His people, and gave them a promise, the first part of which follows in Joe 2:19-27. Joe 2:18, Joe 2:19. "Then Jehovah was jealous for His land, and had compassion upon His people. And Jehovah answered, and said." The grammar requires that we should take the imperfects with Vav consec. in these clauses, as statements of what actually occurred. The passages in which imperfects with Vav cons. are either really or apparently used in a prophetic announcement of the future, are of a different kind; e.g., in Joe 2:23, where we find one in a subordina…
Up to this point, the book of Joel has focused on God’s judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem, but from here on, it describes God’s promise of restoration. If the people sincerely repented, God would respond graciously.
2:18-27 God promised to restore his people’s material lives in the immediate future, replenishing their fields, orchards, vineyards, and flocks.
2:18 Since both people and land suffered from God’s judgment, both would be the objects of his zealous compassion.
