21 Have no fear, O land; be glad with great joy; for the Lord has done great things.
In that day it will be said to Jerusalem, Have no fear: O Zion, let not your hands be feeble. The Lord your God is among you, as a strong saviour: he will be glad over you with joy, he will make his love new again, he will make a song of joy over you as in the time of a holy feast.
Have no fear; for you will not be shamed or without hope: you will not be put to shame, for the shame of your earlier days will go out of your memory, and you will no longer keep in mind the sorrows of your widowed years.
So in these days it is again my purpose to do good to Jerusalem and to the children of Judah: have no fear.
I will send the one from the north far away from you, driving him into a dry and waste land, with his front to the sea of the east and his back to the sea of the west, and the smell of him will go up, even his evil smell will go up.
Let your cry come to me, and I will give you an answer, and let you see great things and secret things of which you had no knowledge.
But they will be servants to the Lord their God and to David their king, whom I will give back to them. So have no fear, O Jacob, my servant, says the Lord; and do not be troubled, O Israel: for see, I will make you come back from far away, and your seed from the land where they are prisoners; and Jacob will come back, and will be quiet and at peace, and no one will give him cause for fear.
Make a song, O heavens, for the Lord has done it: give a loud cry, you deep parts of the earth: let your voices be loud in song, you mountains, and you woods with all your trees: for the Lord has taken up the cause of Jacob, and will let his glory be seen in Israel.
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Have no fear, Abram: I will keep you safe, and great will be your reward.
<A Song of the going up.> When the Lord made a change in Zion's fate, we were like men in a dream. Then our mouths were full of laughing, and our tongues gave a glad cry; they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us; because of which we are glad.
Let the streams make sounds of joy with their hands; let the mountains be glad together,
Your righteousness, O God, is very high; you have done great things; O God, who is like you?
Falling on the grass of the waste land: and the little hills are glad on every side. The grass-land is thick with flocks; the valleys are full of grain; they give glad cries and songs of joy.
Now keep where you are and see this great thing which the Lord will do before your eyes.
Give thought now to the days which are past, before your time, from the day when God first gave life to man on the earth, and searching from one end of heaven to the other, see if such a great thing as this has ever been, or if anything like it has been talked of in story.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Joel 2
Commentary on Joel 2 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 2
In this chapter we have,
Thus the beginning of this chapter is made terrible with the tokens of God's wrath, but the latter end of it made comfortable with the assurances of his favour, and it is in the way of repentance that this blessed change is made; so that, though it is only the last paragraph of the chapter that points directly at gospel-times, yet the whole may be improved as a type and figure, representing the curses of the law invading men for their sins, and the comforts of the gospel flowing in to them upon their repentance.
Joe 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, v. 60.
Joe 2:12-17
We have here an earnest exhortation to repentance, inferred from that desolating judgment described and threatened in the foregoing verses: Therefore now turn you to the Lord.
Joe 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,
Joe 2:28-32
The promises of corn, and wine, and oil, in the foregoing verses, would be very acceptable to a wasted country; but here we are taught that we must not rest in those things. God has reserved some better things for us, and these verses have reference to those better things, both the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of glory, with the happiness of true believers in both. We are here told,