Joel 3

Joel gives us the Bible’s only reference to a “Jehoshaphat Valley.” As far as we know from Jerusalem’s history, there’s no such valley in the area. Some Bible scholars say it’s a metaphor because Jehoshaphat means the “LORD’s judgment.”

Tyre, Sidon, and Philistia were all coastal regions from which their people shipped merchandise abroad. Tyre and Sidon were city kingdoms in what is now Lebanon. Philistia was along Israel’s southwestern border, which includes the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Alexander the Great didn’t put Greeks on the map until the 300s BC, more than two centuries after Babylon erased Judah from the map in 586 BC. So, this reference to the Greeks is one reason some scholars have argued that Joel wasn’t writing prophecy about the future, he was writing history as a poem. Yet other scholars say Greeks were alive and well long before Alexander. The prophet Ezekiel lived during the Babylonian Exile in the 500s BC, when  Jews were deported and living in what is now Iraq. Ezekiel mentioned Tyre’s slave trade with Greeks (Ezekiel 27:13). Tyre was a coastal city in Phoenicia, now Lebanon. Most of the book of Joel, like most prophecies in the Bible, are written as Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry uses parallelism the way English poetry uses rhyme. In English, the end of the first line might rhyme with the last word in the second line. Hebrew poetry often emphasizes a subject by repeating the general idea of the first line, but saying it in a slightly different way in the second line.

Often called “plowshares,” these were pieces of metal attached to the front of what was often a wooden plow blade. The metal became the tip of the blade, which cut through the dirt and protected the wood from breaking—especially when the plow ran into a rock. Israel is a rocky land.

Often called “pruning hooks,” these long-handled farming tools had curved blades on the tip. The blade looked like sickles that farmers used to hand-cut stalks of grain such as wheat. To turn this into a spear, they would have to heat the metal and hammer it into a straight spear tip.

This last line is a guess, like those in other Bible versions. The original Hebrew phrase is unclear. That’s why there’s so much deviation among Bible translations when they reach this verse.

The “sacred hill” is Mount Zion. “Zion” an endearing nickname for Jerusalem and for the ridgetop on which the city is built, above the Kidron Valley, beside the Mount of Olives ridge.

The name in Hebrew is Shittim, which church folks wouldn’t want to read out loud in a worship service. It literally means “acacia trees,” or an acacia grove. Hence, “Acacia Grove.” You’re welcome. This grove on the Plain of Moab was the last Israelite camping spot before they crossed the Jordan River. Under Joshua’s command, they began capturing the highland areas of what is now Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. In a sense, when they left Acacia Grove, the nation of Israel came to life. They became a people with land to their name.