Joel: Scope, Genre(s), and Meaning 9781575063829

Citation preview

Joel

C ritical S tudies

in the

H ebrew B ible

Edited by Anselm C. Hagedorn

Nathan MacDonald

Stuart Weeks

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

University of Cambridge

Durham University

1.  A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll, by Bernard M. Levinson 2.  The Prophets of Israel, by Reinhard G. Kratz 3.  Interpreting Ecclesiastes: Readers Old and New, by Katharine J. Dell 4.  Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible? by Konrad Schmid 5.  No Stone Unturned: Greek Inscriptions and Septuagint Vocabulary, by James K. Aitken 6.  Joel: Scope, Genre(s), and Meaning, by Ronald L. Troxel 7. Job’s Journey, by Manfred Oeming and Konrad Schmid

Joel Scope, Genre(s), and Meaning

Ronald L. Troxel

Winona Lake, Indiana Eisenbrauns 2015

© Copyright 2015 Eisenbrauns All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.eisenbrauns.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Troxel, Ronald L., 1951–  author. Joel: scope, genre(s), and meaning / Ronald L. Troxel.     pages  cm — (Critical studies in the Hebrew Bible ; 6) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-1-57506-381-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bible. Joel—Commentaries.  I. Title. BS1575.3.T76 2015 224ʹ.706—dc23 2015017952

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ♾™

To my parents-in-law, Glenn and Ginny, with gratitude

Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  

ix

Chapter 1.  Receptions of Joel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1 Chapter 2.  The Composite Character of Joel 1–2 . . . . . .   30 Chapter 3.  Joel as Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   51 Chapter 4.  Eschatology in the Book of Joel . . . . . . . . .   72 Chapter 5.  Joel and Genre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  95 Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Index of Authors  115 Index of Scripture  118

vii

Preface The initial frame for reading Joel is provided by its superscription, ‘The word of the Lord came to Joel, son of Pethuel’ (1:1) and is reinforced by ‫‘ נאם יהוה‬thus says the Lord’ in 2:12. As Ben Zvi has observed, the superscriptions of the prophetic books functioned not, in the first instance, to attest authorship, but to enable readers familiar with the shared profile of the prophetic books “to develop a working model of what the book was about” (1996, 130). This genre marker signaled what could be expected: oracles accusing Israel of wrongdoing and calling for repentance, assurances of well-being, and declamations against foreign nations. However, readers require more than a “family resemblance” model to comprehend a particular book (Newsom 2007, 22–23). Works sharing this “family resemblance” also carry features that individuate them, in accord with Todorov’s surmise that “historical genres are a subgroup of complex theoretical genres” (Todorov 1973, 21). Because instantiations of a genre “are never or rarely pure,” they “may have membership in many genres” but do not belong to a genre (Frow 2015, 25). They typically adopt a primary genre as a superstructure within which to deploy multiple secondary genres. Accordingly, “genre criticism” oscillates “between the description of phenomena and abstract theory,” with theory not dictating meaning but providing tools to describe the rhetoric of a work (Todorov 1973, 21–22). Although a superscription evokes a reader’s expectations based on a family resemblance to other prophetic books, the complex of genres used in a particular work “are related to one another in a Gestalt structure that serves as an idealized cognitive model” (Newsom 2007, 25), a way of conceiving a slice of the world. Accordingly, genre is a rhetorical act, inasmuch as it addresses a “rhetorical situation” (Bitzer, 1995) that evokes “the forms of rhetorical behavior which would be appropriate to its circumstances” (Frow 2015, 16). The Gestalt matrix of rhetorical strategies prevents genre from being formulaic or simplex, since “form is subjugated to exigence as a particular historical instantiation creating a rhetorical subgenre” (Knapp 2013, 266). Accordingly, although “prophetic book” is a recognizable genre, its instantiations are “Gestalt structures” promoting “an idealized cognitive model” that the reader is to recognize as addressing a rhetorical situation. ix

x

Preface

Since genres create cognitive worlds “mediated by systems of representation” that presume that we accept their “authority and plausibility” (Frow 2015, 20), they are “ideological instruments . . . the expressions of mental structures or worldviews” (Newsom 2007, 29). They draw the reader into a familiar world while modifying it to address the rhetorical situation. Therefore, genres must be defined “by the actions they are used to accomplish” rather than simply their structures (Frow 2015, 14). And because genres have communicative aims, they are justifiably classified as rhetorical tools. Although the historical circumstances that occasioned the book of Joel are irretrievable, divining the situation its rhetoric implies is feasible, if still fraught with difficulties, and is key to understanding the work. The task of this book is to identify its complex of generic conventions and the rhetorical situation it implies. A review of the ways Joel has been read (chapter 1) reveals the diverse genres that have been assumed for it. The prevailing recognition that Joel is a composite work and what that means for reading it are the topic of chapter 2, while chapter 3 focuses on narrative cues that have been overridden or undervalued but are significant for describing Joel’s genre. Because genre is indeterminate without defining the scope of the literary work, chapter 4 revisits the prevailing consensus that Joel 3–4 is extraneous to the “real” book. Although I concur that Joel 4 comprises a set of secondary additions, I argue that Joel 3 is integral to the work. That conclusion requires consideration of the rhetorical function of chapter 3 in the book’s address of a rhetorical situation. A fifth chapter will summarize findings about Joel’s genre. Jim Eisenbraun’s proposal to publish this book in a series that prizes succinctness for ethical and practical reasons attracted me. 50,000 words would seem sufficient to say what needs saying about a book of a mere four chapters (or three, if we follow Bishop Langton’s compression of Joel’s second half into one chapter). Nevertheless, Merx’s diagnosis of Joel as “a problem child of Old Testament exegesis” for which “the resources applied to it by interpreters until now are insufficient to dispel its obscurity” (1879, i–ii) echoes in the body of secondary literature out of proportion to Joel’s length. Nevertheless, the compelling vision of the CSHB series makes concessions palatable. I have devoted technical discussions of grammatical and syntactic problems to journal articles, cited when appropriate (Troxel, 2013a, 2013b). My review of the past decade of scholarship on Joel is also available elsewhere (Troxel, 2015). I also avoid entanglement in issues that other works have addressed in detail. Specialized studies of Joel’s al-

Preface

xi

lusions to other texts (Bergler 1988; A. K. Müller 2008); the social location of the putative prophet (Kapelrud 1948; Ahlström 1971); the book’s rhetoric, in the classical sense (Barker 2014); or its redaction (Wöhrle 2006; Hagedorn 2011) are foundational for this book, and I assess those proposals in the course of elucidating the structural cues that betray Joel’s implied reader’s competency to recognize genre. I cite the chapters and verses after Joel 2:27 according to the divisions found in printed editions of the Hebrew Bible. I translate Hebrew sentences, phrases, and words, except when the Hebrew is the locus of the problem. All translations from other languages are also my own, unless attributed to others. Equally, all italics in quotations is original unless otherwise noted. I am grateful for feedback I received to papers on Joel presented in sessions at the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2010, 2012, and 2013, as well as in a session at the International Society of Biblical Literature in Amsterdam (2012) and in a workshop that Professor Göran Eidevall and I organized for the 2013 meeting of the International Organization for Study of the Old Testament in Munich. I also benefited from the support of my colleagues and engagement with students. Mr. Aaron West, my research assistant during spring of 2013, did much of the spadework on early interpretations of Joel. Graduate students in my seminar on the Book of the Twelve, during the fall of 2014, contributed useful criticisms. My colleague Jeremy Hutton served as a frequent sounding board as I worked through arguments and composed articles, although he must be absolved of any flaws in this work, as must my editor, Andrew Knapp, who highlighted infelicities and obscurities that had escaped my notice. Valued conversations with my Doktorvater and colleague, Professor Emeritus Michael V. Fox, and his sustained interest in our graduate program fortified me in my service as departmental chair during a difficult period that overlapped my work on this book. My wife, Jacki, has been my staunchest supporter and confidant throughout my career. Her engagement with her own career in education has enhanced our partnership, while her co-parenting of two fine young men and her sharing of life’s challenges has nourished a marriage more deeply satisfying that I could have anticipated in 1978. And those two young men, Ben and Bryan, continually inspire me through their growth and initiative in pursuing paths that I never could have foreseen for them. I remain thankful to my mother and my father (the latter of whom I dearly miss), whose ever-evident love and support made possible advantages that I now recognize are not commonplace and required sacrifices

xii

Preface

on their part. I am humbled that they continued to tolerate and love me, despite some of my adolescent antics. With my brother, Mark, and my sister, Cheryl, I have benefited more than is knowable from their love and support. Although I increasingly hear medical personnel preface answers to my complaints with “as we age,” I have also discovered the benefit of a longer perspective on what and who are important in life. The adage that “you do not marry your spouse’s family” might salve youthful impatience and presumption, but it rings false after 37 years have impressed on me how much I cherish my family by marriage, especially Jacki’s parents, Glenn and Virginia Froberg. Glenn seems to have overcome his initial apprehensions about our marriage that spurred him to laugh when we announced our engagement. He no longer refers to me as Jacki’s “friend” or “the padre,” as he did when I served a church. Above all, he has proved a wise and admirable father-in-law and a terrific grandfather. I have long valued Ginny’s sincerity and empathy, while I have come to deeply admire her counter-cultural value of the individual as deserving to be heard and understood. Many of the qualities I love in my wife were inherited from her mother. None of the mother-in-law jokes ever fit Ginny, but the role of friend to a son-in-law and grandmother to the children he and her daughter raised certainly have. It is to my dear in-laws, Ginny and Glenn, that I dedicate this book.

Chapter 1 Receptions of Joel Jauss built his study of the “historical reception” of a work (1982, 28–30) on Gadamer’s claim that assaying a work’s ‘history of effects’ Wirkungs­ geschichte is the only avenue to comprehension, since understanding is not so much a subjective act “as the placing of oneself within a process . . . of tradition in which past and present are constantly fused” (Gadamer 1975, 258). Luz epitomized Gadamer’s point metaphorically: “Neither history nor texts of the past are simply objects of research: rather they belong to the stream of history which also carries the boat of the interpreter” (2006, 125). Past readings are neither relics of a less sophisticated age nor repositories of solutions to exegetical cruxes. They reflect the rhetorical role they filled in their socio-cultural settings, whether or not we find that agreeable. For example, noting that Jerome’s commentary carries vindictive language against Jews is not to reinscribe his invective but to understand the socio-rhetorical crucible of his comments. Equally important, on the other hand, is the discovery that many modern interpretive cruxes have a long history of debate. Reception history can investigate a broad range of responses to the text, including its printed format, its expression in the arts (Beal 2011, 366), its embodiment in political actions, wars, peacemaking, service institutions, and other innumerable forms (Luz 2006, 130). However, this chapter focuses on written receptions of Joel. Although not claiming to be comprehensive, it traces varied perceptions of Joel’s genre that have guided its readers.1 I apporach study of Joel as versed in the languages and the historicalcultural settings of the book and its interpreters. I value the distinction Jauss’s theory of “historical reception” introduced to Gadamer’s project 1.  Merx (1879) has offered the most detailed treatment of the history of interpretation of Joel through the sixteenth century ce.

1

2

Chapter 1

by seeking to understand a work’s rhetorical situation (Jauss 1982, 30–32) and I posit that exploring the history of Joel’s reception is a first step towards a clearer understanding of its possible meanings.2

The Earliest Readers Text-critical Sources Although the Qumran pesharim often provide the earliest explicit interpretations of prophetic books, no pesher of Joel exists. In fact, Joel is attested only in fragments of three of the Dead Sea Scrolls: 4Q78 (frags 10, 13, 14, 18), 4Q82 (frags 30, 31, 34, 36, 38), and Mur88. Together, these comprise Joel 1:11–2:23 and 4:4–24, with many lacunae. What they preserve attests a proto-mt text with a few variants, none of which impinge on the arguments of this book.3 Although the Old Greek of some biblical books carries hints of interpretation beyond its implied analyses of Hebrew grammar and vocabulary, the OG of the Twelve (by a single translator) is “characterized by a high degree of literalness” (Jones 1997, 83).4 OG-Joel shows only a few variations in equivalences for nouns appearing more than once in the book, suggesting that the translator rendered a Vorlage much like the mt as straightforwardly as possible (Crenshaw 1995, 53–54). Only a few isolated readings might be considered exegetical, the most noteworthy being καὶ εὐαγγελιζόμενοι || ‫ ובשׂרידים‬in 3:5.5 Although this might reflect ‫ומבשׂרים‬ in its Vorlage, it is more likely an attempt to integrate the final phrase with the rest of the verse, via etymological association with √‫בׂשר‬.6 Here we have the first evidence of perplexity over 3:5bγ. 2.  Jauss (1982, 30) stresses the responsibility of the reader to utilize “the successive unfolding of the potential for meaning that is embedded in a work” in order to achieve “in a controlled fashion the ‘fusion of horizons’ in the encounter with the tradition.” 3.  Likewise, variants reflected in the versions are individually interesting but have no import for this book. See Gelston’s lucid comments on 1:14, 16–18; 2:5, 8, 11, 13, 19; 4:3, 4, 8, 18, 19 (Gelston 2010, 74*–78*). 4.  Although S and V contain occasional differences from M, V’s variations are likely attributable to its Vorlage (see Kedar-Kopfstein, 1981), while the only trace of exegesis in S are its translations of ‫ ונחם על הרעה‬by ‫( ܘܡܗܦܟ ܒܝܫܬܐ‬2:13) and ‫ מי יודע ישׁוב ונחם‬by ‫ܡܢ ܝܕܥ ܐܢ‬ ‫( ܡܬܦܢܐ ܘܡܪܚܡ ܥܠܝܢ‬2:14), both of which avoid the notion of the Lord changing his mind (Gelston 1987, 152). 5.  The translation of ‫ משׁרתי יהוה‬by οἱ λειτουργοῦντες θυσιαστηρίῳ in 1:9 likely reflects the influence of οἱ λειτουργοῦντες θυσιαστηρίῳ || ‫ משׁרתי מזבח‬in 1:13. ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματός μου || ‫ את רוחי‬in 3:1, 2 may be under the influence of ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματός in Num 11:17, 25. This rendering earned the ire of John Calvin, who lamented that it implied that God offered only “some small portion of his Spirit” (Calvin 1849, 86). ̈ 6.  Cf. S’s ‫ܠܡܫܘܙܒܐ ܕܩܪܐ ܡܪܝܐ‬ ‫‘ ܐܝܟ ܕܐܡܪ ܡܪܝܐ‬just as the Lord said regarding those saved whom the Lord called’ and TJ’s ‫‘ כמא דאמר יוי ומשׁיזביא דיוי זמין‬just as the Lord said, and the

Receptions of Joel

3

The New Testament The earliest reuse of Joel appears in the New Testament. Rom 10:13 and 1 Cor 1:2 use unmarked citations of Joel 3:5a to buttress a claim that salvation is universally available, while Acts 10:45 and Tit 3:6 allude to Joel 3:1 in referring to Pentecost a precursor of the gift of the Spirit to Gentiles. Beyond these, some dystopian eschatological scenarios utilize Joel’s descriptions of harvest (Mark 4:29/Joel 4:13a),7 the darkening of sun, moon and stars (Mark 13:24||Matt 24:29/Joel 2:10), the moon turning to blood (Rev 6:12/Joel 2:10; 3:4),8 and the plague of locusts (Rev 9:7–9/Joel 2:4–5b).9 The most explicit reuse of Joel is in Acts 2, following its report of a rushing wind and flames shaped like tongues hovering over Jesus’ followers, after which they spoke ‘God’s great deeds’ to pilgrims in Jerusalem for Pentecost. What astonished these pilgrims was hearing this proclamation in their own dialects, despite the speakers’ inexperience in the languages (v. 11). Peter explained these prodigies as fulfilling ‘what was spoken through the prophet Joel’ (v. 16). His citation of Joel 3 rests not only on the effusion of the Spirit but, even more so, on the prophetic agency of those speaking on the day of Pentecost (Strazicich 2007, 279–80). Their proclamation to Jews and proselytes from every corner of the world (as enumerated in vv. 9–11a) embodies, in nuce, their commission to be witnesses ‘to the ends of the earth’ (1:8). Nevertheless, Peter addresses the crowd as ‘men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem’ (v. 14) and ‘Israelite men’ (v. 22), alleging that they are culpable for Jesus’ crucifixion (vv. 23, 36) and urging them to repent and be baptized to receive forgiveness and ‘the gift of the Holy Spirit’ (v. 38), in accord with Joel’s promise of salvation to ‘everyone who calls on the saved will be those whom the Lord appoints’. Both S and TJ seem to draw on their prior translation of ‫ פליטה‬to interpret the problematic ‫ובשׂרידים‬. 7.  Less certain is the dependence on Joel 4:13 by Rev 14:14–20, where similar vocabulary appears, since the theme of harvesting is sufficiently commonplace to account for the parallel themes and terms (Strazicich 2007, 358). 8.  The earth’s quaking in Rev 6:12, while similar to Joel 2:10, shows closer lexical agreement with Ezek 38:19 (Strazicich 2007, 342). Strazicich’s diagnosis of ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ καθημένου ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου in Rev 6:16 as dependent upon Joel 4:2, 12 (2007, 343) falters for too few lexical similarities to support his suggestion that the influence “is most likely mediated through a pseudepigraphic work” (2007, 345). Neither am I convinced by his argument (ibid., 354) that Rev 8:7 splices αἷμα from Joel 3:3 (OG) into its reuse of Exod 9:24–25. 9.  Less convincing are allusions to Joel 2:10, 20 that Strazicich (2007, 352–53) finds in Rev 9:2, 11. Likewise, his assertion that Rev 22:1 utilizes Joel 4:18 already suffers from his admission that the Joel passage “has no discernable lexical influence” of the sort that Ezek 47:1–12 and Zech 14:8 do in Rev 22:1 (ibid., 277).

4

Chapter 1

name of the Lord.’ However, it is only in v. 39 that Peter cites the final words of Joel 3:5, joining them with words from Isaiah: ‘For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him’. OG Isa 57:19 promises ‘peace upon peace (εἰρήνην ἐπ᾿ εἰρήνην) for those who are far away and for those who are near’. Luke equates ‘those who are near’ with ‘you . . . your children’ and defines ‘all who are far away’ as ‘whomever the Lord our God shall call’, employing a slight variation from the OG of Joel 3:5.10 True to this stage of Luke’s story, he applies the promise of the Spirit to Jews alone; his application of it to Gentiles appears later (10:34–11:18), where it is supported by different justifications (Strazicich 2007, 285–86). In reusing Joel 3, Luke renders judgment on features of the text that have proved interpretive cruxes. First, his restriction of the gift of the Spirit to Jews construes ‘all flesh’ of Joel 3:1 as a particular subset of humanity (Strazicich 2007, 279). Second, he implicitly identifies the ‘survivors’ (‫ )שׂרידים‬that Joel 3:5 terms ‘those whom the Lord calls’ as members of the diaspora. At the same time, his omission of the qualification of those saved as ‘in Jerusalem’ (v. 5) befits his insistence that the gospel be proclaimed ‘to the ends of the earth’ (Strazicich 2007, 285). At first blush, Luke seems to heighten the eschatological tenor of Joel 3:1 by substituting καὶ ἔσται ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις ‘and it shall be in the last days’ for the OG’s καὶ ἔσται μετὰ ταῦτα ‘and it shall be after these things’ (Strazicich 2007, 277).11 In fact, however, by asserting that Joel’s words have been fulfilled Luke deprives Joel 3 of any application to the future. In keeping with Luke’s tendency to deflate expectations of an imminent parousia (Haenchen 1971, 96; Fitzmyer 1981, 185–86), ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις designates the mission undertaken in a post-Jesus era (Fitzmyer 1998, 252). Thus, Lüdemann (1989, 44) rightly concludes “it can only be said with qualifications” that Luke assigns the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy to an ‘end of time’. On the other hand, Luke’s interpretation evinces the same actualized reading of the prophetic books evidenced in the pesharim and throughout the New Testament.

10.  ὅσους ἂν προσκαλέσηται κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν versus OG’s οὓς κύριος προσκέκληται. Most significant are the expansion of οὓς into the indeterminate ὅσους ἂν, and the use of the future tense (προσκαλέσηται) rather than the perfect (προσκέκληται). 11.  λέγει ὁ θεός adds an assertion of divine authority, but seems less a matter of polemics (pace Strazicich 2007, 278) than an attempt to echo typical prophetic diction.

Receptions of Joel

5

Targum Jonathan Although TJ is not a commentary, it is expansive enough to hint at some interpretations circulating early in the common era.12 For example, 2:1 translates ‫‘ כי בא יום יהוה‬for the day of the Lord comes’ with ‫ארי מטא יומא‬ ‫‘ דעתיד למיתי מן קדם יוי‬because the day which will come from before the Lord has arrived’, suggesting that the ‫ יום יהוה‬is not reserved for the future.13 Equally, TJ modifies the threat of the ‫ יום יהוה‬from being categorically inescapable (‫וגם פליטה לא היתה לו‬, ‘nor will there any escapees from it’, 2:3) to being so only for the wicked: ‫‘ ואף שׁיזבא לית ביה לרשׁיעיא‬nor will there be salvation in it for those who are wicked’. Correspondingly, TJ interprets ‫‘ וקרעו לבבכם‬and rend your heart’ in v. 13 with ‫ואעדו רשׁע ליבכון‬ ‘and remove the evil of your heart’. Parallel to this, TJ removes doubt about the outcome of repentance by embedding v. 14’s question ‘who knows?’ within an assurance: ‘He who knows that sin lodges with him, let him repent from them and he shall be shown compassion’. Accordingly, TJ seems to view the ‫ יום יהוה‬as commonplace divine punishment, escapable through repentance. Although TJ translates the four kinds of locusts in 1:4 with words for four different flying creatures, it identifies the four locusts of 2:25 as ‘peoples and tongues, rulers and kingdoms’, whose crime is designated as ‘the years when they plundered you’ (‫)שׁניא דבזו יתכון‬, which TJ equates with ‘the years that (the locusts) ate’ (‫)את השׁנים אשׁר אכל‬.14 Correlatively, it translates “the northerner” of 2:20 with “the people (‫ )עמא‬who come from the north,” while it elaborates the concluding ‘for I will act greatly’ with ‘for I will do much harm’, referring to the judgment on this ‘people’. Implicit in TJ, then, is an interpretation of the locusts as nations and of the Day of the Lord as their assault on Israel, apparently betraying a conviction that Joel’s forecasts were already fulfilled. Although TJ’s ‫‘( רוח קודשׁי‬my holy spirit’) for ‫‘( רוחי‬my spirit’) in 3:1–2 bears a resemblance to τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον in Acts 2, throughout the Targumim this phrase designates the force that inspires prophecy (Chilton 1982, 49–51). Thus, TJ interprets ‫ רוחי‬as bespeaking prophecy rather than as an independent phenomenon of a new era. 12.  Although the date of TJ is unclear, it preserves traditions from around the time of Jerusalem’s fall in 70 ce (Cathcart and Gordon 1989, 12–13, 16–18). 13.  This translation of ‫( יום יהוה‬also in 1:15, 2:11, and 3:4) is standard in the Targumim. 14.  ‘Plunder’ probably relates to TJ’s translation of ‫ וכשׁד משׁדי יבוא‬in 1:15 by ‫וכביזא‬ ‫‘ מן קדם שׁדי ייתי‬and like plunder from before Shaddai will it come’, although ‫ ביזא‬is a typical Targumic equivalent for ‫שׁד‬.

6

Chapter 1

Rabbinic Literature This rubric encompasses a broad array of scholarly Jewish literature from ca. 200 to as late as 900 ce, but can too easily mask a diversity of sources, perspectives, and dates. It encompasses not only the Mishneh, codified around the beginning of the third century ce (Goldenberg 1984, 138), but also two bodies of commentary on it, the earlier compiled in the land of Israel (Talmud Yerushalmi) and the later in Babylon (Talmud Bavli). The Midrashim, which ostensibly expound the meaning of biblical books, were also produced by authors living in diverse times and locales. No one work focuses on Joel, which is often cited only incidentally within halakhic discourse. Accordingly, interpretations of Joel appear sporadically, of which the following from the Talmud and Midrash Rabbah are representative. Like TJ, rabbinic tradition construed the locusts of 1:4 literally. Exod. Rab. ii.5 identifies what Exod 10:2 mandates be transmitted to posterity as having to do with a locust plague, to which it compares Joel 1:3. R. Joḥanan considered the plague of locusts forecast in Joel 1:4 to have been realized in Joel’s day (b. Taʿan. 5), while other interpreters aligned the locusts with successive Mesopotamian assaults on Israel and Judah. In commenting on ‫ העם‬in Lev 4:3, Lev. Rab. v.3 reports that R. Abba b. Kahana (in the name of R. Samuel b. Nachman) identified this as Sennacherib, noting that Joel 1:6 also speaks of the Assyrian king. Not surprisingly, the rabbis found the nations a prominent presence in Joel 3–4. Qoh. Rab. ii.8 sec. 1 glosses ‫( קניתי עבדים ושׁפחות‬Qoh 2:7) as referring to heathen nations, comparing Joel 3:2 and asserting that the nations will become Israel’s property in the age of the Messiah. Num. Rab. x.2 finds in Joel 4:19 a promise of punishment for all nations that have harmed Israel, while Exod. Rab. xv.17 considers that verse a forecast of Rome’s annihilation (under the cipher of Edom). Meanwhile, Exod. Rab. xv.6 cites Joel 4:10 as the Lord’s words to Mattathias and his sons in battling the Greeks. Consistent with TJ’s translation of ‫ רוחי‬in 3:1 as the prophetic spirit, Num. Rab. xv.25 reports that R. Tanḥuma, son of R. Abba, cited Joel 3:1 to claim that in the new era the previous limitation of prophecy to a few individuals would give way to all Israel becoming prophets. At the same time, commenting on Deut 24:9, Deut. Rab. vi.14 finds ‫ רוחי‬to mark a new era, citing Joel 3:1 as an assurance that the current absence of the divine presence will be remedied after removal of the ‫‘ יצר הרע‬the evil inclination’, which it also identifies with ‫‘ הצפוני‬the northern one’ (Joel 2:20), one of the seven biblical epithets for the ‫ יצר הרע‬identified by R. ʿAwira (or R. Joshua b. Levi), according to b. Sukkah 52a.

Receptions of Joel

7

The perception that Joel forecasts an ideal era is equally evinced by rabbinic comments, cited in b. Kethub. 112b and y. Šeb. 4:8, that Joel 2:22 signals that the current inability of trees to bear their full complement of fruit will be ameliorated in the future age. Similarly, y. Šeqal. 6:2 and y. Taʿan. 1:2 cite the opinion of R. Yose that grain will ripen in only fifteen days and trees bear fruit in a month based on Joel 2:23, whose early and latter rains will fall in the first month (‫)בראשׁון‬. Likewise, Lev. Rab. xii.5, Num. Rab. xx.22, Song Rab. i.7 sec. 3, and Qoh. Rab. i.9 sec. 1 diagnose Joel 4:18’s forecast of flowing wine and water, along with a spring from the temple, as promises for the coming age. Although ‫ ויקנא‬and ‫ ויחמל‬of 2:18 came to bedevil interpreters, TJ’s translation of them as past tense verbs (‫ ורחים‬. . . ‫‘ וחס‬And took pity . . . and had compassion’) betrayed no such quandary. On the other hand, however, according to Num. Rab. ix.12, R. Nachman b. Isaac argued that ‫ קנא‬in Num 5:14 meant ‘warn’, in support of which he cited ‫ ויקנא‬in Joel 2:18, which he understood as ‘Then the Lord, having warned his land, took pity on his people’ (cf. b. Soṭah 2b), thereby explaining the transition from dire forecasts to divine compassion. Equally hinting at exegetical cruxes, b. Sanh. 92a cites R. Eleazar’s gloss of ‫ שׂריד‬in Job 20:26 as ‘scholar’ by comparison with ‫ובשׂרידים אשׁר‬ ‫ יהוה קרא‬in Joel 3:5bγ, suggesting an interpretation of this phrase as a special promise for students of Torah. Patristic Commentaries Patristic expositions of Joel treat its passages sequentially, without commenting on every verse. Not surprisingly, all interpret Joel 3 in light of Acts 2’s account of events on Pentecost. In doing so, however, Jerome acknowledged the difficulty this poses for the reader: “It takes great effort to understand how the things which follow are to be understood in relation to the things which we just went through” (PL 25:975).15 To resolve this problem, Jerome adopted what he termed “the rule of the prophets,” asserting that “those things which they promised carnally to the Jews in the last time are said to be completed spiritually at the first advent of our Lord and Savior,” so that nothing awaits fulfillment (PL 25:975–976). Jerome’s extended argument for the validity of this reading—taken for granted by Cyril (ca. 425 [Hill 2007, 3–4]) and Theodoret (ca. 433 [Hill 2006, 2–3])—suggests that it was novel when Jerome wrote in 406 ce (Adriaen 1964, 76:1). 15. All citations are from Jerome’s Commentarii in prophetas minores in Patrologia latina edited by Migne (1844–1864), cited as PL. I am grateful to Mr. Aaron West for all translations.

8

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Theodore, writing around 380 (McLeod 2009, 72), postponed aligning Joel 3 with Acts 2 until he had observed that ancient Israel did not consider “spirit” a member of the deity, but an expression of divine care, so that the promised effusion amounted to a pledge to “provide you with care so that you may be accorded all visions and be in a position to disclose something of the future” (Theodore 2004, 117).16 Likewise, the signs in heaven and on earth (Joel 3:3) must first be understood as hyperbole for the overwhelming effects of divine judgment upon the people of Israel, when salvation will be available for those who call on the name of the Lord (Theodore 2004, 117–18). Only if this is regarded as “the obvious sense of this passage” is it possible to acknowledge that Peter found in it “the reality . . . in the time of Christ the Lord” (2004, 118), so that “what had formerly been said through the prophet as metaphor or hyperbole had its demonstration in reality with the promise being superseded by the fulfillment” (ibid., 120). Theodore’s caution matches that of the only known earlier Patristic commentator on the Twelve, Ephrem of Edessa (died 373 ce), whose readings survive in a catena compiled in 861 ce by Severus, a monk of Edessa. Ephrem equated the promised effusion of the spirit with prophetic promises of deliverance in Hezekiah’s day, with which he also linked the omens in heaven and earth in v. 3 (Assemani 1743, 249).17 Only then did he allow that the effusion of the Spirit equally pertained to a “mystical deliverance which was wrought through our Lord from Satan, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out on male servants and maidservants,” while the signs in the heavens and on earth also appeared in his first advent and would reoccur at his second advent (ibid., 252). On the other hand, Ephrem utilized Christian motifs in his exegesis more broadly than Theodore, identifying (for example) the ‫( אכרים‬1:11) as “spiritual ploughmen” whose many labors in the field of humanity bore no fruit, due to widespread refusal to receive their teaching (Assemani 1743, 249). After stressing that this message was proclaimed to “pagans, and Jews, and all other peoples,” he expounded the horrific fate awaiting those who refused it, while identifying the tree that bears fruit (2:22) as “the tree of life,” equivalent to “the holy cross which offers incorruptible fruit to the human race” (ibid., 250). Again, while allowing that 2:24 forecast relief after the destruction of Israel’s foe, he found the verse equally capable of being understood “mystically” as Christ’s body (grain) and blood (wine), with oil signifying baptism and the gift of the spirit (ibid., 250). 16.  All translations are by R. C. Hill (Theodore, 2004). 17.  Assemani’s 1743 edition is the only extant source for Ephrem’s scholia.

Receptions of Joel

9

And he identified the promised requital of the nations’ exploitation of Israel (4:4–9) with ‘the second coming of our exalted Lord’, who will resurrect the righteous for life and the wicked for judgment (ibid., 249–50). Far more strident, however, was Jerome’s claim that all of chapters 3–4 forecast events after Jesus’ resurrection (equated with the Day of the Lord), through the persecution of the church, to the final judgment of heretics. Especially egregious is his lacing of such assertions with antiJewish polemics. He pointedly denied legitimacy to Jewish interpretations of the punishment for Tyre, Sidon, and the Philistines (4:4) as entailing deliverance for Jews and shrilly refuted what he called a Jewish fabulum ‘fairy tale’ of a thousand year reign over the nations in Jerusalem (PL 25:986), during which the Lord would defeat the forces of Gog and Magog in the Valley of Jehoshaphat (PL 25:984). Likewise, he ridiculed the notion that the eternal habitation spoken of in 4:20–21 has to do with “this Judah, which we can see is deserted, nor this Jerusalem, whose ruins we discern” (PL 25:988). The only Zion of significance is the one where God dwells, “in Christ, his holy mountain, or in him who prepared himself to be worthy of God’s dwelling” (PL 25:985). The anti-Jewish rhetoric in Cyril and Theodoret, on the other hand, seems less openly malicious. Cyril found in 3:5 an allusion to the day when “Christ renders to everyone according to their deeds” but also to “the misfortunes of the Jews . . . heaped upon them at the hands of the Romans” (2007, 291–92) in just punishment for their rejection of “their bridegroom from heaven, that is, Christ” (ibid., 299).18 He also disputed Jewish claims that the judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat would occur when “everyone throughout the world will be called to account for what has been done to them” (ibid., 305–6), rejecting such a claim on the grounds that “the divinely inspired Scripture states that the contents of prophecy have been fulfilled” (ibid., 306). Similar is Theodoret’s stock explanation of why the promise of no more shame for Israel (2:26) has failed: “if Jews are in a shameful position today, it is not that the God who is without falsehood was false in his promises; rather, they rendered themselves unworthy of the promises, proving ungrateful towards the benefactor, calling Beelzebul master of the house, killing the heir, and not only failing to yield the crops in season but even trying to seize the inheritance” (Theodoret 2006, 87). Cyril and Theodoret stridently accented Christian themes in Joel. For instance, while Ephrem allowed that 2:24, after its original meaning is accounted for, also speaks “mystically” of Christ’s body and blood, as well 18.  All translations are by R. C. Hill, (Cyril, 2007).

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as of baptism and the gift of the Spirit, Cyril asserted that the verse’s only message is that through Christ “comes complete fullness of good things and an abundant supply of heavenly graces,” especially as “the living water of holy baptism is given to us as rain, the bread of life as grain, and the blood as wine,” with oil representing baptism (Cyril 2007, 292). Jerome, at the vanguard in discovering Christian motifs in Joel, found in 1:2 a key for his exegesis. Noting that the summons of ‘all you inhabitants of the land’ to hear etymologically involves the ears (“enôtisasthe in Greek and eezinu in Hebrew”), he concluded that the demand laid on the general populace was mere sensate hearing, whereas that required of the elders was “a more sacred hearing” (PL 25:950–951). Both sets of hearers have responsibility to relate what they have heard: the elders are to “teach your children the mysteries (sacramenta),” while the inhabitants of the land are to “narrate the simple story (historiam)” about things that “were not done in your time or in the time of your fathers and ancestors” (PL 25:951). The assertion that Joel forecasts events unknown in his addressees’ experience (1:2) drew the interpreters’ attention. Jerome argued that this relates to the juxtaposition of four types of insects that “each happen rarely themselves . . . and therefore they are amazing” (PL 25:951), each of which prefigured an invasion by one of Israel’s foes. Theodore found this rhetoric to underscore “the magnitude of the troubles” ahead as exceeding anything the people had known and requiring that they pass knowledge of them on to their descendants “so that the novelty of the events may succeed in bringing them as well to their senses by report of it” (Theodore 2004, 105). Similarly, Theodoret interpreted Joel’s call to consider whether these events had occurred as a prod to pay attention to his forecast of calamities yet to befall them (Theodoret 2006, 86). The assumption that Joel presaged assaults by earthly foes raised for these interpreters the question of how to view the wayyiqtol verbs in 2:18. Jerome described the past tense verbs as a feature of the coeptam narra­ tionem ‘narrative begun’ (PL 25:964), even if its events were yet future. Similarly, Theodore stressed that Joel “does not mention this as if already done, but says it is something in the future,” despite the verb form, which simply reflects “Hebrew usage, employing spared to mean will spare” (Theodore 2004, 114). Nevertheless, for Jerome, reading this as a narratio of plunder by foreigners lay at the level of “hearing with our ears along with the inhabitants of the earth” (PL 25:952), whereas listening with the elders reveals that these four insects represent the four passions that wage war against the soul, about which he offered a lengthy discourse, exhorting readers to use

Receptions of Joel

11

the powers of wisdom to escape their clutches (PL 25:952–953). Similarly, while Cyril concurred that the locusts of 1:4 represented different foreign armies attacking Israel (Cyril 2007, 262), he also conceded that if “you wanted to find a more moral content registered in these accounts, you would not be wide of the mark,” since they signal the soul’s attack by the passions (ibid., 264), behind which lurk demonic powers (ibid., 268).19 Similarly, Theodoret detected a moralistic subtext behind the summons of drunkards to awake (1:5): “a different kind of inebriation, the complete decline of the soul to depravity, referring in this way to manifold lawlessness” (Theodoret 2006, 87). Notably, none of these commentators detect in the Day of the Lord anything like a culmination of history. Jerome considered it to speak generally of “the day of retribution for all sins,”20 while finding that in 1:15 it refers “specifically to the time of the Jewish captivity, when Jerusalem was taken and the temple was destroyed” (PL 25:959–960), to which he also considered 2:1 to refer (PL 25:963). Theodoret described the Day of the Lord in 1:15 as designating merely “one trouble after another, one added to another” (Theodoret 2006, 89), much as Cyril identified it as the time “when the effects of his wrath were discharged” through unremitting disasters (Cyril 2007, 275), to be identified with the Babylonians (ibid., 267). Theodore did not even comment on the phrase. In any case, the patristic commentators do not recognize this phrase as redolent of eschatology. Additionally, most Patristic commentators found the forecasts of chapter 4 fulfilled in the post-exilic era, when the people were afflicted by “the house of Gog,” the phrase Ephrem uses to gloss “all the peoples” to be gathered, according to 4:2 (Assemani 1743, 252). To similar effect, Theodore used “Gog” for a foe of the post-exilic era, equating it with the Scythians (Theodore 2004, 104), much like Theodoret, who identified the “Idumeans, Ammonites, Moabites, Amalekites, Philistines, Tyrians and Sidonians” as “the ones who summoned the Scythian nations against Jerusalem” (Theodoret 2006, 100). Cyril, on the other hand, was content to align chapter 4 with events of the post-exilic era generally and began his exposition by recounting events reported by Ezra as the likely backdrop for the chapter (Cyril 2007, 302–5). The most common threads in patristic readings of Joel as prophetic literature were the assumption that Joel spoke of assaults on Israel that took place in the past, anticipated the coming of Jesus and the church, 19.  This recalls some rabbis’ detection of the ‫ יצר הרע‬in Joel (above, p. 6). 20.  Jerome asserts that the “Day of the Lord” as judgment is equally ‘fulfilled in each person on the day of death’ hoc in singulis die mortis impletur (PL 25:965).

12

Chapter 1

and served as instruction in morality. They differed in the degree to which reading the book as addressing its historically proximate audience was significant for understanding it, with Jerome judging a mere literal reading to fall short of the instruction Joel directed to “the elders.”

Medieval Commentators Ishoʿdad of Merv Ishoʿdad of Merv was a prominent eastern cleric who served as Bishop of Hadatha in the middle of the ninth century (Ishoʿdad of Merv 1911, xii). His brief commentary on Joel exhibits only two references to Christian tradition, and lightly at that. In explaining why 2:20 speaks of the enemy from the north, he noted Mesopotamians’ need to transverse the top of the fertile crescent and observed that Babylon’s location in that arc is confirmed by the reference in the Gospel (of Matthew) to Magi from the east, adding “and it is tradition that these came from the districts of Babylon” (1911, 80). His other reference to Christian tradition appears in his comments on 3:1–2. After following Theodore’s tack of describing the promise of the outpoured spirit for Israel as meaning “I will make known to you my care and will pour it out upon you abundantly” (1911, 80), he adds that the promise was later confirmed “in the Messiah, and in the apostles, and in the prophets, and in the believers, who were filled with the Spirit” (1911, 80). On the other hand, his commentary is devoid of anti-Jewish polemics. In fact, he identifies the spring flowing out from the temple in 4:18 with “absolution and teaching, in the form of a spring flowing out through the agency of the priests and poured out on all those who dwell in the city” (1911, 81). Ishoʿdad disputed the argument advanced by “The Interpreter” (Theodore) that the wayyiqtol verb forms in 2:18 are “expressed with a change of time” and defended reading them as past-tense verbs, inasmuch as they convey a report of what will be said once those in exile have repented as instructed by the prophet. In tacit agreement with both Theodore and Ephrem, he equated the four types of locusts in 1:4 with Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnezzar. He identified the “vines” of 1:7 as the common people, while the “fig trees” represented the nobles, although he noted that the (Nestorian) commentator Ḥannan identified the “vines” with the ten tribes and the “fig trees” with “the house of Judah” (1911, 78). Like a number of his predecessors, Ishoʿdad identified the foe of chapter 4 as Gog, equating it with the Scythians and dating the events to the post-exilic era (1911, 81).

Receptions of Joel

13

Jewish Commentaries Although Judaism had long interpreted its scriptures, “it is only in the Middle Ages that the genre of the running, direct commentary on the biblical text comes into its own” (Greenstein 1984, 213), adopting a philological approach that stressed the ‘plain meaning’ peshat and increasingly displaced the prism of the midrashim. Its analytical approaches to grammar, lexicography, and literature trace back to Babylonian Jewish scholars like Saadia Gaon (882–942 ce), who adopted the methods of Islamic scholars working on Arabic texts (Harris 2003, 142). Jewish emigrants to Spain brought this scholarship with them and extended it, producing grammars, lexicons, and commentaries, which they continued to write in Arabic (2003, 143–44). The Spanish scholar Ibn Ezra (1089–1164 ce) translated several of these works into Hebrew, thereby making them available to European Jewry more broadly (2003, 164). Parallel to this, a school of exegesis developed in northern France with its own penchant for peshat exegesis, only partially under the influence of the Spanish scholarship (Grossman 2000, 327–28). Best known of its scholars is Rashi (1040–1105 ce), who emphasized peshat but still cited midrash, although later representatives of the school came to eschew it (2000, 359). Peshat began to yield to other forms of reading in the thirteenth century (2000, 370–71), as is evident in the work of the French rabbi David Kimchi (1165–1235 ce), who used a synthesis of peshat and midrashic approaches (Harris 2003, 167). The influence of the Spanish grammarians is especially prominent in observations about definitions and etymologies of words. For example, whereas Rashi is content to report that “gazam, arbeh, yelek, hasil are species of locusts,” Kimchi provided an etymology for each. In fact, Ibn Ezra and Kimchi devote more space to such linguistic notes than does Rashi, a sign of the increasing dominance of philology in the northern French school during the twelfth century. Nevertheless, Rashi already frequently provides glosses on Hebrew lexemes, at times comparing them to French words. For the sake of this review of reception history, however, the greater interest is what these scholars say about the identity of the locusts, the metaphors, and the identity of the aggressors, particularly in chapter 4. Given the broad consensus on these issues among Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Kimchi, I will also report comments from Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel (1437–1508 ce), whose work towards the end of the medieval period was influenced by the Italian renaissance (Harris 2003, 174). All of these commentators

14

Chapter 1

placed Joel in the pre-exilic period, whether just after Samuel, during the time of the famine predicted by Elisha, or in the reign of Manasseh. Rashi identified the locusts of v. 4 as actual insects devouring vegetation, noting that v. 6 describes them metaphorically as “a host of nations.” Kimchi, likewise, observed that insects are described as an ‫ עם‬elsewhere in the Tanak, making intelligible the use of ‫ גוי‬for them here. On the other hand, Abarbanel took the reference to a nation literally and considered the locusts to represent the armies of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Rashi found the incomparability of Joel’s locust plague (1:2) in the fact “that all these species should come one after the other,”21 while adjudicating its relationship to the claim of Exod 10:14 that the locust plague in Egypt was unsurpassed by explaining that the arbeh of Exodus 10 was but one species identified in Joel and less numerous than in Egypt. Kimchi, also, contrasted the single type of locust in Exodus 10 with the four types mentioned in Joel 1:4, but posited that the distinctiveness of Joel’s infestation lay in their appearance over four successive years, making for a longer duration of the infestation. Ibn Ezra likewise saw four waves of locusts in Joel, for which he found confirmation in the reference to “the years” devoured by the locusts in 2:25. Kimchi identified the voices of v. 7 as either the inhabitants of the land, as they surveyed the damage inflicted by the locusts, or a prophet forecasting the damage but using the past tense as a means to make the specter vivid. Abarbanel identified the speaker as the Lord, lamenting in figurative terms Israel’s destruction by Babylon. Correspondingly, while Kimchi and Ibn Ezra equated the ‫יום יהוה‬ (1:15) with the disaster wrought by locusts, Abarbanel identified it with the ninth of Av, the day of the temple’s destruction, pointing to the nearby motif of fasting and the cessation of sacrifice in the temple (v. 13), since sacrifice continued until shortly before the destruction. Most notably, much like the patristic commentators, Jewish interpreters “did not understand yôm Yhwh as a technical expression” of eschatology (Crenshaw 1995, 48). Rashi considered chapter 2 to continue the appeals of chapter 1, with the shofar extending the call to repent before disaster strikes. Ibn Ezra and Kimchi, on the other hand, saw the chapter portraying the locusts as already having begun their invasion, but with the Lord offering one last chance for the people to repent. Kimchi considered ‫ אישׁ‬and ‫ גבר‬in v. 8 21.  All quotations of Rashi are from Rosenberg (1986). Citations of Kimchi, Ibn Ezra, and Abarbanel are from Rosenberg (1986) and Roberts (1995). Because the interpretations of these scholars are cited ad loc. in Rosenberg and Roberts, I will not cite page numbers.

Receptions of Joel

15

to confirm that the locusts are compared to a human army rather than constituting one. Thus, the question of the relationship of the locusts of chapter 1 to the imagery of chapter 2 has old roots. Meanwhile, Abarbanel considered chapter 2 to continue describing the Babylonian army and regarded the shofar as announcing the fall of the first temple, while the claim that the event would not be repeated ‘until the years of generation and generation’ (2:2) signaled that it would be reprised when Rome destroyed the second temple. Rashi and Kimchi identified the Lord raising ‘his voice before his army’ (v. 11) as the prophets sent “prior to His sending this host of His.” Similarly, Kimchi posited that ‫‘ ויען יהוה‬and the Lord responded’ (v. 19) assumes the mediation of prophets speaking on the Lord’s behalf. Recalling TJ, Rashi interpreted ‫ מי יודע ישׁוב‬at the head of v. 14 to mean “whoever knows that he is guilty of iniquity,” while Ibn Ezra construed ‫ מי יודע‬as implying human ignorance about how much a person’s repentance can accomplish in persuading the Lord to avert calamities. Meanwhile, Abarbanel found here an allusion to repentance that would bring about a return of a small remnant from Babylon. Rashi interpreted ‫( למשׁל‬v. 17) to mean to make them “for an example (‫ָשׁל‬ ָ ‫ )מ‬and for a conversation piece,” while Kimchi and Ibn Ezra took it as “to rule over,” a lexical debate that continues today. Kimchi explained that famine forced the people to seek refuge in Egypt and Philistia, thereby succumbing to derision and rule. Rashi reprised the early Rabbinic understanding of ‫( ויקנא‬2:18) by comparing it to ‫‘ המקנא אתה לי‬Are you zealous for me?’ in Num 11:29 and noting, “Our Sages [Sotah 3a] explain it as an expression of warning. He warned the locusts concerning His land.” For Rashi, the verse did not speak of an end to the people’s distress but of a curb imposed on the locusts. And yet, the question of the tense of the wayyiqtol verbs continued to vex interpreters. Ibn Ezra attributed to them a future-tense force, describing this as a promise that the Lord would respond to his people’s repentance. Kimchi, similarly, considered these promises by prophets responding to the people’s supplication. For Abarbanel, the promise of the Lord’s renewed zeal for his people signals return from exile, spurred by Babylon’s profanation of the divine name in their treatment of the people. Ibn Ezra and Kimchi considered “the northerner” expelled in 2:20 as the army of locusts that invaded from the north. Rashi conceded that interpretation, but also proposed that these are “The people that come from the north, viz., the kings of Assyria,” while noting that “our Sages [Sukkah 52a] state: This is the temptation, which is hidden (‫ )צָפוּן‬in a person’s

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heart.” Rashi also reported “our Sages’” interpretation of the two seas as the first and second temples, while Kimchi equated them with the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. Rashi found that ‫והיה אחרי כן‬, at the outset of chapter 3, places events in the indeterminate future. Although Ibn Ezra noted the interpretation of Yehoshua that this refers to the messianic era, he judged the phrase is not as specific as “at the end of days” in Isaiah 2 and Micah 4. Kimchi posited that the phrase points to another period of sin following the restoration forecast in chapter 2. Only afterwards would the people fully recognize the Lord and cease sinning. Rashi interpreted ‫‘ כל בשׂר‬all flesh’ (3:1) in light of Ezekiel’s promise of “a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26), thereby finding that the spirit is poured out “upon anyone whose heart becomes soft as flesh.” Kimchi and Abarbanel took ‫ כל בשׂר‬to indicate that all humanity would benefit from the Spirit, although prophetic abilities would be restricted to Jews. Ibn Ezra regarded ‫ כל בשׂר‬as designating inhabitants of the land of Israel, the suitable place for prophecy. These discussions again foreshadow a crux in contemporary discussions of Joel. While Kimchi regarded the signs of vv. 3–4 as portents of war with Gog, Magog, and their affiliates, Ibn Ezra denied that chapters 3–4 have anything to do with Gog and Magog, dating their events to the rule of Jehoshaphat. On the other hand, Abarbanel found here a forecast of a battle between Christians and Arabs, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, through which both will be destroyed for their persecution of Jews. Rashi inferred that the offer of salvation in 3:5 extends to all Israel, finding that the promise of deliverance cited by the prophet was the Lord’s vow, “And all the peoples of the earth shall see that the Name of the Lord is called on you” (Deut 28:10). Abarbanel also considered the promise extended to all Jews, while Kimchi restricted it to those who display marked holiness and fear of God. This debate over those encompassed by the promise remains lively today. Rashi found in the Lord’s vow to lead the nations into “the valley of Jehoshaphat” (4:2) a commitment to “descend with them to the depth of justice,” noting that “Jehoshaphat” designates “the judgments of the Lord.” For Ibn Ezra, the valley gained its name from a battle in which Judah’s enemies succumbed to a divine assault before Jehoshaphat’s army arrived (2 Chr 20:22–24). Comparably, the reference to the fall of the Philistines refers to their payment of tribute to Jehoshaphat during his reign (2 Chr 17:11).

Receptions of Joel

17

Although Ibn Ezra and Kimchi agreed that 4:8 foresees the return of the exiles, Kimchi inferred that this would take place only after those who died in exile had been resurrected to accompany their descendants. Rashi explained the Lord’s roaring from Zion (4:16) as prompted by the injury done to it, while Abarbanel elaborated the quaking of heaven and earth as portending punishment for the heavenly princes and the nations. Kimchi emphasized Zion’s role as the place of the divine presence and the source of the voice that terrifies the nations, aligning the earth’s quaking with the earthquake anticipated by Ezekiel 48 and Zechariah 14. For Ibn Ezra, on the other hand, quaking was merely a metaphor for the nations’ fear. Rashi considered Egypt and Edom juxtaposed in v. 19 simply because “if not for Egypt, Edom would not exist.” Kimchi, on the other hand, detected underlying these nations Arab peoples and Rome, singled out for special punishment due to their egregious affliction of Israel, comparing Dan 7:7, 19–28, where Rome is the fourth beast. Rashi translated the opaque ‫( ונקיתי דמם לא נקיתי‬4:21), ‘Now should I cleanse, their blood I will not cleanse’, commenting, “Even if I cleanse them of other sins in their hands, and of the evils they have done to Me, I will not cleanse them of the blood of the children of Judah.” Similarly, Kimchi and Abarbanel found here an assertion that the crimes against Israel were unforgiveable. While Rashi was content to ascribe this event to “the time the Holy One, blessed be he, dwells in Zion,” Kimchi linked the return of the Shekinah with the days of the Messiah. Although these medieval Jewish commentaries exhibited a greater variety of readings than the patristic commentaries, the reference points for interpreting Joel as prophecy either restricted it to forecasts of events now past (so supremely Ibn Ezra) or found also promises of retribution against Israel’s enemies, with a righting of the scales for Israel. Their major new contribution remained their increased attention to philological details.

The Protestant Reformation Commentaries written by Protestant Reformers are myriad. I review those by Luther and Calvin not as representative, but as prominent exemplars. Similar to the medieval Jewish scholars, Luther and Calvin were influenced by new standards for exegesis. They stood in the wake of the Renaissance’s insistence on a return to the sources that prompted study of the Hebrew text.

18

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Luther Luther’s lectures on Joel, delivered during mid-summer of 1524 (Oswald 1975, 11), are a detailed exposition of the book. Luther dated Joel to the days “before Isaiah, Hosea, and the rest” (Luther 1975, 80).22 He assumed the Latin text as his base, but did not accept it uncritically, as evident in his recoil at et praestabilis super militia ‘and preeminent over evil’ in 2:13: “It is not clear to me what this says in the Latin. In the Hebrew it reads as follows: ‘He easily repents of evil’” (ibid., 97). Although he laments that sound knowledge of “customary Hebrew usage” is not even ascertainable from “the grammarians” (ibid., 102) and Jews “no longer have the Hebrew language pure among themselves” (ibid., 93), his frequent citation of Hebrew words and readings in the Septuagint indicate that he aimed at a philological commentary. He disdained traditional attempts to identify the four types of locusts in 1:4 with specific nations (ibid., 89). His interpretive approach was distinctly theological. He faulted earlier interpreters like Jerome for being overwrought about “the coherence of the text,” inasmuch as they failed to take into view “the whole picture, the way the Holy Spirit clearly has embraced the entire people and the entire kingdom of Christ” (Luther 1975, 89). Joel, like all prophetic books, “may mix in various accounts of things present or of things to come, yet all things pertain to this point, that they are declaring the coming kingdom of Christ” (ibid., 79). In Luther’s view, chapter 1 describes this-worldly events. Even when 1:15 speaks of “the day of the Lord,” Joel does not envision a suprahistorical judgment but merely asserts that “another evil is going to come upon you” (Luther 1975, 85). Likewise, in commenting on 2:1, he denies that the Day of the Lord need denote “the final Day of Judgment,” since it can designate simply “a day when the Lord visits us either in grace or in anger” (ibid., 90). Only in chapter 2 does prophecy proper begin, anticipating the descent of “a different kind of grasshoppers [sic],” and Luther asserts that it would be as erroneous to equate the foe of chapter 2 with the locusts of chapter 1 as it would be to detect nations there (Luther 1975, 79). Notwithstanding the fact that, in his preface to chapter 2, Luther insists that Joel “speaks in generalities,” not naming “either the Assyrians or the Egyptians when he describes a hostile army which is to come up against Israel” (ibid., 88), in commenting on 2:5, he identifies this future enemy as “Assyria or the Babylonians” (ibid., 92). 22.  All translations of Luther are by R. J. Dinda (Luther, 1975).

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19

The unity of the book’s first half lies in its aim to terrify “sinners in such a way that they lift up their hearts in hope and in the mercy of God” (Luther 1975, 97). Accordingly, the image of the earth quaking and the stars withholding their light (2:10) sounds “as if the prophet were speaking about the Last Judgment, but he is not” (ibid., 94). The language reflects the psychological terror inflicted by Joel’s attempts to disturb his audience. Understanding this rhetorical purpose suggests that the past tense verbs of 2:18–19 should be read “in the subjunctive or optative mood,” as if to say: “If you will have thus humbled yourselves and will have turned back to the Lord with your whole heart and will have prayed, ‘Spare Thy people, O Lord’ (v. 17), then what I am saying will turn out to be true.” But he is speaking in the past tense as if the Lord will already have done this. Yet he means that it is going to happen. (Luther 1975, 102) The warning and entreaty of the first half of the book is, nevertheless, merely a prelude to the central message of the book, which resides in its latter half. Although Luther, like Jerome, declared the book’s second half distinct from the first, he accounted for the breach more directly, asserting that Joel follows the pattern of other prophets, who, after “they have declared that prophecy for which they had been sent, they put aside what has taken place after the revelation of their prophecy and immediately go on to prophesy about Christ” (Luther 1975, 105–6). Thus, the promise of the Spirit’s effusion “is a prophecy about the public revelation of the Holy Spirit” on the day of Pentecost, when signs appeared (ibid., 106). The fact that the Spirit was promised for “all flesh” means not that all peoples received the Spirit but that they “saw that manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the apostles when they taught and preached the Gospel” (ibid., 107). Those who “call on the name of the Lord” will be saved in the sense that they will be “redeemed from sin, death, and hell” (ibid., 111). The final promise of “survivors,” including “those whom the Lord has called,” can only mean that the Gospel “will be preached everywhere throughout the world” (ibid., 112). And it is the introduction of this theme that accounts for the final chapter, which announces “the preaching of the Gospel which gathers all nations and calls them to judgment, which declares to them their error and passes the judgment that they are damned, and which shows them Christ, their Salvation” (ibid., 114).

20

Chapter 1

Thus, although Luther prided himself in eclipsing Jerome’s foolish speculation about the images of chapters 1–2 by focusing on Joel’s rhetorical purpose, he concurred with Jerome’s conviction that the latter half of the book pertains solely to the church. Luther takes pains to emphasize that his account of the shift from chapters 1–2 followed a rational explanation rooted in a pattern evinced in other prophets. Calvin John Calvin’s commentary on the Twelve originated as notes taken by two auditors of his lectures in his Geneva academy in 1559, and were reviewed by Calvin before publication (Wilcox 2006, 107–9). Calvin betrays his renaissance training in his analysis of linguistic problems and interpretive issues. Like Luther, he possessed some knowledge of Hebrew, based on which he offered explanations of difficult words (ibid., 118). Calvin denied that chapter 1 forecast punishments, finding instead that Joel reproved “the hardness of the people” for having failed to heed previous chastisements that were “nothing less than miraculous” (Calvin 1849, 13).23 Interpreting the four species of locusts in the same way as Jerome, he proclaimed that these infestations of locusts over four years should have astonished the people. Although the people’s obduracy blinded them to these as much as if they were “drunkards” (v. 5) (ibid., 16), these wonders merited transmission to succeeding generations (ibid., 14). Calvin insisted that ‫ כי‬at the start of v. 6 is asseverative, inasmuch as the verse does not reveal the identity of the locusts as nations (1849, 20) but presents a new calamity, with its severity accented in God allowing his land to suffer in (what proves) a vain hope of eliciting the people’s repentance (ibid., 19). The crux of the identity of the ‘nation’ of v. 6 thus engaged Calvin, just as it did the medieval commentaries and as it occupies attention today. With v. 13 the prophet turns from description of the people’s plight to a summons to repent (1849, 28), hinting that worse is to come if they do not. The severe prospect of the Day of the Lord lies in the fact that “God calls that his own day, when he will openly shine forth and appear as the judge of the world” (ibid., 31). After Joel briefly resumes his call for the people to note their peril (vv. 16–18), only to realize that the people will not repent, he addresses his God (vv. 19–20) (ibid., 35). When the prophet turns again to his people in chapter 2, it is with a different aim. No longer is it to awaken them to past perils, but to incite 23.  All translations are from Calvin, 1849.

Receptions of Joel

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terror by speaking of the Day of the Lord, via which “the Prophet paints the terrible judgment of God with the view of rousing minds wholly stupid and indifferent” (1849, 42). Given this disjunction, Calvin, like Luther, found it reasonable to interpret these images as the Assyrians, who “would be the ministers and executioners of his vengeance” (ibid., 43). It is they who are described through v. 11, where God underscores that they are sent at his command (ibid., 48). This terrifying scene is meant to motivate repentance, for which the prophet calls again in vv. 12–17. Even the expression “Who knows?” (v. 14) must be understood as a goad. Rather than calling into question God’s willingness to forgive, the question means “to rouse our slothfulness, and also to shake off our negligence,” so as to assure that the addresses are “sufficiently touched by the fear of God” (ibid., 56). Calvin’s first reference to the Christ appears with the summons of the priests to offer prayers on behalf of the people (2:17). Noting that their role as mediator positioned them between the people and their God, he comments, “The whole of this is to be referred to Christ; for by him we now pray; he is the Mediator who intercedes for us . . . and through Christ we are all made priests” (1849, 64–65), a statement hardly surprising for a commentator who elsewhere takes opportunity to denounce “the Papists” (ibid., 89) Although Calvin translated ‫ ויקנא‬and ‫ ויחמל‬in v. 18 in the future tense without explanation, he explained the past tense of ‫ ויען‬in v. 19 as an assurance to the people “that your prayers have been already accepted before God, though, as I have before reminded you, ye have not offered them” (1849, 68). He found the Assyrians the embodiment of the nation whose assaults are rebuffed by the Lord in vv. 20–21. He associated the restoration of what the locusts had eaten (vv. 22–24) with the plague of 1:4, although he is now willing to see them figured as an army (ibid., 79), a tack he rejected in commenting on 1:6–7. In Calvin’s preface to his comments on the book, he complained that “the chapters have been absurdly and foolishly divided” (1849, 6), and he found an overarching coherence in chapters 1–2. To account for why chapter 3 abruptly turned to forecast the day of Pentecost, he explained that the first chapters had to begin with the material benefits bestowed by God and only ‘afterwards’ could they advance analogically to the spiritual (ibid., 84). Although the Spirit “was enjoyed even by the ancients,” the verb ‘poured out’ points to something far grander, as does the expansiveness suggested by ‘on all flesh’, followed by the widespread gift of prophecy

22

Chapter 1

(1849, 86–87). He maintained that such an event “was not fulfilled until after Christ appeared” but also inquired about how it was fulfilled (ibid., 87). He asserted that Peter interpreted the phrase ‘all flesh’ as hyperbolic, a way to contrast the paucity of the Spirit among the ancients and the abundance of the Spirit in the church, just as “the Prophet hyperbolically extols the grace of God” (ibid., 87–88). Nevertheless, “this which is said of ‘all flesh,’ must be limited to the Church” (ibid., 90). In contrast to most Christian interpreters, however, Calvin found in 3:3–4 not harbingers of an advent of the Christ, but an admonition that the faithful, beset by many troubles, might not “deceive themselves with empty dreams, or expect what is never to be, that is, to enjoy a happy rest in this world” but recognize what “would become of men, were not God to shine on them by the grace of his Spirit” (1849, 92–93). In this context, ‘the great and terrible day of the Lord’ refers to coming divine judgment, a reminder that not to amend one’s way is to face the terrible prospect of “the tribunal of the celestial Judge” (ibid., 96). But that day equally brings a happy prospect for those who repent, with the promise of deliverance for those who call on the Lord (v. 5).24 Like Luther and the medieval scholars before him, Calvin does not consider the Day of the Lord infused with eschatology. Calvin noted longstanding differences in reading chapter 4, with Jewish scholars finding its fulfillment in the return of exiles, while “Christian doctors apply this prediction to the coming of Christ” (1849, 107). This Calvin labeled a false polarity: “The Prophet then does not speak only of the coming of Christ, or of the return of the Jews, but includes the whole of redemption” (ibid.). He also declared interpretations that find all nations shoehorned into the valley of Jehoshaphat for final judgment “too strained” (ibid., 108), but agreed with those who identified this valley with the one in which Jehoshaphat won a miraculous victory over the nations, thereby evoking in the people assurance that God would again protect them (ibid., 109). This protection applies ultimately to the church, as is apparent in Calvin’s specification that v. 7’s promise “I will raise them out of the place where you sold them” has found “spiritual fulfillment” in the fact that “God, since the appearance of Christ, has joined together his Church by the bond of faith; for not only that people have united together in one, but also the Gentiles, who were before alienated from the Church” (ibid., 117). Because the church embraces ancient Israel and the Christian 24.  Not surprisingly, Calvin finds 3:5bγ an admonitory note: “The Prophet shows, that he did not address all the Jews indiscriminately, because many of them were spurious children of Abraham, and had become degenerated” (1849, 102).

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community, chapter 4 applies to both, so that the defense of Israel against the nations entails the defense of the church against its foes.25 Both Luther and Calvin proved themselves scholars of the Renaissance, when careful philological interpretation of ancient texts became a desideratum in Christian circles as much as Jewish. But they also show themselves theologians of the church, finding the ultimate significance of scripture in the train of events initiated by the advent of the Christ.

In the Wake of the Enlightenment Up until the nineteenth century, the Book of Joel was assumed to be of the same mold as the other prophetic books. It conveyed a prophet’s forecasts for the future—whether of his country’s fall to foreign powers, of a final battle with Gog and Magog, or of the advent of the Christian Gospel—and granted insight into the actions of the deity. In the main, expositions of the book identified prophecies that had been fulfilled and detected admonitions for the faithful. There was no sustained discussion of genre, save for Jerome, who identified the book as a narratio and raised the problem of how to reconcile the literary divide he perceived between its first and second halves. Even through the nineteenth century, scholars simply assumed that the book’s form was the same as the other prophetic books. Explicit discussion of its genre surfaced again only in the twentieth century. Early debates over date and locusts In the eighteenth century, scholarship tutored by the enlightenment began scrutinizing received tradition about Joel and his book, beginning with its historical setting. Credner (1831, 38–49) reviewed the evidence, noting that the allusions to Edom and Egypt in chapter 4, together with the absence of any reference to the Chaldeans, the Syrians, or a Judean king, suggested that Joel worked early in the reign of Joash, while still under the tutelage of Jehoiada. (Credner’s conclusion echoed those of Rashi and Luther.) However, Hengstenberg (1835, 137) rejected it out of hand, arguing that, absent substantial contrary evidence, the book’s position between Hosea and Amos decisively placed the prophet and his book in the eighth century. Meanwhile, Vatke (1835, 462–63 n. 1) aired misgivings about such an early date for Joel, given its identification of the Phoenicians, Philistines, 25.  Muller (1996, 11) notes that “Calvin consistently understood the ‘literal’ meaning of Old Testament prophecies of the kingdom to be not only the reestablishment of Israel after the exile but also the establishment of the kingdom in the redemptive work of Christ.”

24

Chapter 1

Egyptians, and Edomites as Israel’s chief enemies (4:4, 19), and based on his surmise that the Day of the Lord “has been drawn into transcendence and approaches the later view of world judgment (Joel 3:4; Zech 14:4–7),” with the peoples attacking Jerusalem (Joel 4:9; Zech 12:1, 2; 14:1, 2) and Israel’s deliverance effected by returning to the Lord (Joel 3:5; Zech 14:17ff.). Despite his suspicion that these features place Joel nearer to Zechariah 9–14, he yielded to “the common opinion” about date, awaiting a more probing study (ibid.). Kuenen initially (1863, 323–32) assigned Joel to the mid-ninth century, but cautiously noted features hinting at a later date. A decade later, he reported that “the dissertations by Dr. H. Oort (Godg. Bijdragen for 1866, pp. 760–773), and by Hilgenfeld (Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie, IX. [1866] pp. 412–427), and especially the former, have confirmed me in the conviction that my doubts . . . were not unfounded” (1874, 87). Accordingly, he now dated Joel to the early sixth century. Despite this, he allowed that “Perhaps the first part of the book, chap. i. 1–ii. 27, dates from an earlier period, and Joel has thus, not altogether unjustly, obtained a place among the older minor prophets” (ibid.). Wellhausen (1892, 211) endorsed Vatke’s suspicion that Joel might be post-exilic, since only in chapter 3 does “prediction begin,” giving way to a “dogmatically fixed eschatology” that reduces the Day of the Lord to “an article of faith (ein Glaubenssatz).” Nevertheless, like Vatke and Kuenen, he assumed that the book reported the words of a single prophet. Equally subjected to scrutiny in the nineteenth century was the referent of Joel’s locusts. Credner (1831, 16–17) considered two options: either Joel predicted nations attacking Israel, under the guise of locusts, or he described a locust infestation that had already occurred. After reviewing the advocates of the first option from the Targum through commentators of the eighteenth century, Credner concluded, “No passage in our prophet, considered under the principles of grammatical-historical interpretation, can be understood as a figurative representation of a destruction by literal enemies” (ibid., 26), including in chapter 2, which speaks of the same locust infestation as chapter 1 (ibid., 28–29). In strong Enlightenment fashion, Credner attributed the enduring interpretation of the locusts as nations to the fact that “Dogma’s iron grip has frequently enough made the unbelievable believable” (ibid., 23). In rejoinder, Hengstenberg (1835, 145–66) defended the traditional identification, dismissing Credner’s arguments as displaying “a most inscrutable ignorance of poetry, imagery, [and] allegory” (ibid., 166). He contended that Joel’s heralding of an event without analogue in the past and demanding transmission to future generations “scarcely admits

Receptions of Joel

25

thinking of a locust plague in the literal sense. Only through the greatest exaggeration . . . could [Joel] describe a locust plague—always a shortlived malady—as the greatest tragedy that affected a nation and that ever would” (ibid., 154). Despite Hengstenberg’s protests, by the end of the nineteenth century both the early dating of the book and the interpretation of the locusts as Israel’s nemeses had largely been set aside. Redaction-critical approaches A momentous step came when Vernes (1872) advanced the thesis that chapters 3–4 were a late supplement to chapters 1–2. His fear of contravening tradition is evident in his defense of the historian’s responsibility to judge whether all verses were written by the prophet named in the superscription (ibid., 52).26 While noting that “historians of more authority” (he mentions Kuenen) continued to attribute the entire book to Joel, he cited distinct characteristics in chapters 1–2 and 3–4 as betraying different authors: Chapters 1–2 speak solely of agricultural distress witnessed by a pre-exilic prophet, who “described in vivid terms and images the invasion of the locusts” that embodied the Day of the Lord (ibid., 48). However, that event is spent by the end of chapter 2, with the locusts banished and the crops restored (ibid., 49). Then, unexpectedly, chapters 3–4 reprise the Day of the Lord but redirect it against Israel’s enemies, while promising Judeans protection from it and saying nothing about locusts and drought (ibid., 49–51). Although these shifts are radical enough to suggest a different author for chapters 3–4, their “very real consanguinity” (ibid., 47) with chapters 1–2 suggests their author drew on motifs from 1–2 (ibid., 51) to address “some political event” of his era (ibid., 55). Although Driver’s Introduction (1891) had merely rehearsed the debate about the date of Joel, Rothstein’s translation of it into German included his own arguments that chapters 3–4 were a late supplement (1896, 333–34 n. 1). Whereas chapters 1–2 assume an intact populace, chapters 3–4 presuppose that part of the people reside in foreign lands and need restoration; and whereas in 1–2 the people’s hardships expose them to taunts from other nations, in 3–4 Jerusalem has already been “shamed and defiled,” made to “suffer far more than 2:17 feared” (ibid.). Furthermore, chapters 1–2 speak of a full restoration of what has been lost, without an inkling of the political abuses presumed in chapters 3–4, which are (in turn) silent about the agricultural calamities of chapters 1–2 (ibid.). Stylistically, chapters 3–4 lack the sheen of originality found in 26.  Vernes’s concern to stake out this principle is manifest already in his preface, where he stresses the neutrality of the historian towards the subject matter (1872, 5).

26

Chapter 1

1–2, especially in their use of phrases borrowed from elsewhere (ibid.). Not only were chapters 3–4 written with an eye to 1–2, but their author also created and insinuated 2:20, with its expulsion of the ‘northerner’, so as to encourage a connection between the invasion of locusts in chapter 2 and that of the nations in chapters 3–4 (ibid.). Likewise, 2:10–11a may be interpolations by the same author, since these also imagine the locusts as an army. While chapters 1–2 fit well the eighth-century reign of Joash, chapters 3–4 reflect the post-exilic era. The broaching of redactional assessments of Joel quickly blossomed into diverse proposals. Duhm’s earliest comments on Joel merely assigned it a late date, since its eschatology reflects the “particularistic” and “more narrow-minded” bent of post-exilic prophecy (1875, 323). Better remembered is his revised assessment in 1911: “. . . I now, however (jedoch jetz), consider the prose section 2:18–4:21 considerably younger than the poetic section up to 2:18” (ibid., 184). That prose supplement bore a “thoroughly apocalyptic character” and carried the “base rhetorical style” of the “synagogal preachers” (ibid., 187). The motif of the Day of the Lord in 1:15 and 2:1d–2b was insinuated into the original poetry by the same hand evident in 2:18–4:21 (ibid., 185).27 Meanwhile, because the metrically similar 1:4–5, 8, 10, 12c, and 16c are distinct from the surrounding verses, they attest that a poem lamenting a locust infestation came to be copied between columns of Joel’s lament of the land’s destruction by a great army and were subsequently integrated with it (ibid., 185). Bewer’s commentary, appearing in the same year as Duhm’s article, found that once all references to the Day of the Lord in chapters 1–2 (1:15; 2:1b, 2, 6, 10, 11, 27) were excised, “the difference of interest and subject-matter between chs. 1, 2 and chs. 3, 4 becomes even clearer” (1911, 50–51). The decisive issue for Bewer, as for Duhm, was aesthetic originality, since “it is most improbable that a man of such fine literary style, who knows so well how to express his thoughts in a manner all his own, should in every instance have inserted common, well-known phrases from other prophets into poems of such high literary beauty and finish” (ibid., 51). On those grounds, Bewer conceded that 3:1–4a, 4:2a, and 4:9–14a are original to Joel, since they “are of equal in strength and originality of expression as well as rhythmic beauty and effectiveness to chs. 1, 2” (ibid., 52). Although Jepsen (1938, 85–86) assigned all four chapters to Joel, he found amongst them additions by “der Apokalyptiker” in seven phrases 27.  Duhm (1911, 185–86) also labeled secondary 1:19b, as well as ‫ יום יהוה כי קרוב‬in 2:1 through ‫ וערפל‬in v. 2, and 3bγ.

Receptions of Joel

27

that recur in the book,28 as well as ones he judged simply foreign to their context.29 Alongside these, the Day of the Lord was injected into passages about a drought overcome by the people’s repentance (ibid., 94). H.-P. Müller (1966), on the other hand, applied form criticism and his measure of what constitutes authentic prophetic rhetoric to conclude that everything from 1:5 to 2:27 (save 2:18) reflects an oral setting in the cult and is, therefore, attributable to Joel. By contrast, he identified chapters 3–4 as supplements bearing “eschatological dogmas” (ibid., 242). In these proposals about accretions to a core composition, discussions of genre remained tacit. They invoked a romantic notion of a prophet as a poet whose original proclamation became obscured and even denigrated by subsequent expansions, but questions of the prophet as artist suppressed any investigation of genre. In a hypothesis that has acquired increasing importance in the past two decades, Plöger posited that chapters 3–4 embody a reinterpretation of chapters 1–2 by a peripheral sect engaged in conflict with the entrenched temple establishment (1968, 97–98). While conceding the impossibility of isolating Joel’s original words in chapters 1–2, he surmised that Joel’s message “could hardly have contained more than now stands in i. 4–10, for instance, with a challenge to fast similar to the message in the written form of i. 1–14 or ii. 12–14, 12–18 [sic]” (ibid., 98). Insinuated amongst these were statements about a drought (1:11–18, 19–20), in which the Day of the Lord served “as an illustrative element” (1:15) to call the audience to seek the Lord’s protection through the cult (ibid., 98–100). These were augmented through “interpretation of these terrible events by means of prophetic, theological reflection about the day of Yahweh in ii. 1b and 2 and ii. 11,” accompanied by “an extended and almost platitudinous description of the plague of locusts” (ibid., 98). Only later did the authors of chapters 3–4 reinvest the Day of the Lord with eschatological vigor, creating “a new historico-eschatological interpretation of this message” (ibid., 100). Contrary to appearances, however, chapter 4 was composed first, reinterpreting the army of locusts to address current conflicts from which the Lord would deliver Israel through “a martial encounter,” independent of cultic acts, that would inaugurate “the ultimate conclusion of Yahweh’s activity in history” (ibid., 101). Chapter 3 was subsequently insinuated as a response to opposition raised against the message of chapter 4 by temple-based, theocratic groups supportive of the status quo. It warns 28. 2:1aα, drawn from 2:15a; 2:15b, from 1:14a; 2:20bβ, from 2:21bβ; 2:26b, from 2:27b; 4:15, from 2:10b; 4:16aβ, from 2:10a; 4:17a, from 2:27. 29. 1:2–4, 15; 2:1aβ, b, 11; 3:4, 5; 4:1, 14b, 16aα, b, 17b, 18–20.

28

Chapter 1

that although deliverance is promised to all Israel, it belongs only to “the Israel that has responded to the eschatological faith and considers the day of Yahweh as an eschatological entity” (ibid., 103). Although Plöger’s analysis did not directly address the question of genre, his proposal shifted from positing a core that accumulated accretions to describing growth through programmatic expansion. Whatever the origins of the core of chapters 1–2, the third and fourth chapters, together with correlative insertions into the first two chapters, betray a socio-political faction seeking to reshape a prophetic address of an agrarian crisis into a manifesto for a counter-cultural conception of Israel and its future. Such proposals about the book’s development spurred attempts to rehabilitate ascription to a single author, beginning with Dennefeld (1924; 1925a; 1925b; 1926) and Kapelrud (1948, especially pp. 57, 176), with subsequent exponents including Ahlström (1971), Rudolph (1971), Allen (1976), Wolff (1977), Weiser (1985), Prinsloo (1985), and Bergler (1988).30 Crenshaw (1995) treated Joel as a unitary composition, on the grounds that “Contemporary scholars generally accept the unity of the book, although many view 4:4–8 [3:3–8] as later than the prophet Joel” (p. 30).31 Several of these proposals touched on the book’s genre. Kapelrud found it to embody a cultic lament, reflecting Joel’s social location as a cultic prophet (compare H.-P. Müller’s explanation of chapters 1–2 [1966]). Wolff and Bergler underscored evidence that the book is ‘scribal prophecy’, which invoked authoritative texts in composing a new prophetic book. Such proposals began to broach the question of what sort of prophetic book Joel is, albeit assuming that a single rubric sufficed to describe it. By the dawn of the twenty-first century most scholarship accepted that chapters 3–4 were expansions, added in the sequence proposed by Plöger, whose hypothesis Redditt (1986) had taken up anew. Exemplary of this trend was Jörg Jeremias, whose earliest overview of Joel (1988) reflected Wolff’s influence. In reviewing the path forged by Vernes and Rothstein, he remained noncommittal, but cited Wolff’s observation of “manifold internal word connections between Joel 1–2 and 3–4” (ibid., 94). However, his next published comments on Joel (1993) adumbrated 30.  Among scholars inquiring after Joel’s place in the Twelve, Nogalski (1993a; 1993b; 2000) posited that Joel was composed by a single author to serve as the “literary anchor” for the Book of the Twelve. Schart (1998, 278 n. 45) characterized Joel as “broadly unified literarily,” with only 4:4–8 unquestionably late, while 1:2–3 and 4:18–21 may exhibit modifications that fit Joel’s role in the Twelve. 31.  Assis (2013) and Barker (2014) have recently reasserted arguments for the authorial unity of the book.

Receptions of Joel

29

features that differentiate chapter 3 from chapters 1–2 and spoke of 2:27 as having once marked the book’s end, while noting its later echo in 4:17 “at the conclusion of the Book of Joel in its final form” (ibid., 37–38, my emphasis). Although on that occasion he resisted Plöger’s suggestion that chapter 3 was inserted secondarily between chapters 1–2 and chapter 4, he embraced that hypothesis by the time he composed his commentary on Joel (2007, 4). This model has provided the consensus account of Joel’s composition, as is evident also in the commentaries of Barton (2001) and Dahmen (2001). It has also proved central to recent reconstructions of the origins and development of the Book of the Twelve (see especially Bosshard, 1987; 1997; Schart, 1998; Nogalski, 1993a; 1993b; 2000; Beck, 2005; Roth, 2005; Schwesig, 2006; Wöhrle, 2006; 2008), for which Joel is less significant in itself than for its contribution to the shape of the corpus (see Troxel, 2015). In the following chapters, I will argue for a different understanding of the origins and composition of chapters 1–3 (with chapter 4 comprising later expansions), based on attention to their author’s rhetorical use of genres. The interpretive cruxes debated in the history of interpretation will play key roles in my argument, and the influence of those longstanding debates will be apparent.

Chapter 2 The Composite Character of Joel 1–2 Kapelrud’s argument that the Day of the Lord motif reflected Joel’s role in the cult (1948, 51–63) and H.-P. Müller’s contention that chapters 1–2 (save for 1:1–4 and 2:18) preserved an orally performed liturgy (1966, 234) were undermined by Ahlström’s observation that in 1:2–12 “the prophet calls upon the priests to lament and mourn and asks them to call the people together,” while the style of a lament taken up in 1:19–20 is interrupted by calls to sound the shofar (2:1–11) and to assemble for repentance (2:12–17) (1971, 131). Thus, rather than preserving a liturgy, Joel is “a prophetic text which uses liturgical style and motifs” (ibid.). Nevertheless, it remains a record of prophetic speech, reflecting “an actual situation in which a lamentation should be heard and performed” (ibid.). Wolff diagnosed chapter 1 as an amalgam of cultic forms, with vv. 5–14 constituting a “call to communal lamentation” (1977, 21), while vv. 15–20 “represent fragments of two lament songs, exhibiting almost exclusively that element of the lament which describes the distress (vv. 16– 18, 19b–20)” (ibid., 22), given focus by its cry of terror at the Day of the Lord, which itself is derived from earlier traditions (ibid., 23). Wolff sought to comprehend the book’s disjunctions as marks of composition by reuse and integration of earlier texts. Admittedly, Wolff’s appeals to overarching literary patterns to find a single author (with the exception of 4:4–8, 18–21) failed to directly address the book’s inconcinnities, which subsequent scholarship has sharpened in elaborating hypotheses about redaction in Joel. But his classification of the book as a literary composition contributed a new tool for defining its genre. Nevertheless, redaction criticism has remained the default method for evaluating this literarily composite text. After reviewing scholarship on textual (“empirical”) evidence of scribal editing, I will review redactional analyses of the similarly composite book of Jonah, arguing that they run roughshod over marks of the book’s genre that should be a factor in assaying its composition. At the end of the chapter I will survey recognitions that Joel is an exemplar of schriftgelehrte Prophetie, an important factor in describing its genre. 30

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

31

Composite Texts and Redaction Redaction criticism has a solid history of success in explaining the composition of books that amount to oracle compendiums. This proven efficacy does not mean, however, that redaction criticism is the default tool for studying composite texts. One must ask what factors best explain a composite text. A frequent supposition of redactional assessments of Joel has been that its composite character obscures a once parsimonious text. In addition to declaring 2:18–4:21 a late prose addition by a writer with an apocalyptic bent, Duhm (1911, 187) identified 1:4–5 as breaking the natural connection between the address in 1:2–3 and the exhortations that begin in v. 6. He also judged vv. 4–5 to share the meter of vv. 8, 10, 12c, and 16c, all of which he ranked alien to their context (ibid., 185). Meanwhile, he judged 1:15 an addition that “fits neither in its context nor generally in the real Book of Joel” (ibid.). In reviewing chapter 2 he identified ‫יום‬ ‫( יהוה כי קרוב יום חשׁך ואפלה יום ענן וערפל‬vv. 1d–2b) an insertion from Zeph 1:11–14 (“in part verbatim, in part according to the sense”) that intruded on an original ‫כי בא עם רב ועצום‬, although that phrase was misplaced, since it interrupts v. 1’s call to sound an alarm and v. 2’s description of the locust horde introduced by ‫( כשׁחר פרשׂ על ההרים‬ibid., 185–86). Likewise, he considered ‫ וגם פליטה לא היתה לו‬at the end of v. 3 inapt, since “one does not flee before locusts” (ibid., 185). Although Duhm’s dissection yielded a more streamlined text, scholarship’s sharpened uncertainties about meter in Classical Hebrew poetry make his surgical use of colometry tenuous, while his excision of the phrase ‫ יום יהוה‬as not fitting in “the real Book of Joel” reflects a common prejudice of Duhm’s era that appears also in Bewer (1911, 50–51), who regarded all references to the Day of the Lord in chapters 1–2 (1:15; 2:1b, 2, 6, 10, 11, 27) as interpolations by an apocalyptically minded tradent.1 Similarly, Jepsen (1938, 85–86) isolated locutions (often containing ‫ )יום יהוה‬that he judged alien to their context (1:2–4, 15; 2:1aβ, b, 2aα, 10, 11; 3:4, 5; 4:1, 14b, 16aα, b, 17b, 18–20) but noteworthy for containing all the book’s citations of other prophets. According to Jepsen’s surmise, the original form of the book concerned a crisis of drought, perhaps linked with locusts, in response to which the prophet counseled the people to offer repentance and prayer, which brought relief and a promise of the Lord’s defeat of the nations. That promise was likely what attracted a 1.  I will reserve for chapter 4 discussion of early twentieth-century disparagement of eschatology as a late and degenerate element in Israel’s thought.

32

Chapter 2

tradent (der Apokalyptiker) to infuse the book with the theme of the Day of the Lord (ibid., 94). Searches for an original, parsimonious story underlying the book remain common. Wöhrle’s placement of Joel within the developing Book of the Twelve detected a Grundbestand in which a drought was interpreted via the motif of the Day of the Lord to spur the people to repent (2006, 428–29). To this foundation were added the theme of an attack by a foreign army and the locust infestation (ibid., 431–33). By contrast, Hagedorn (2011, 246) identified the report of the locust infestation as the foundation of the original composition, since it stipulates what the people are called to attend to in 1:2–3. He compares stories of locust infestations in antiquity (ibid., 254–56) to establish criteria for detecting the earliest layer of Joel, to which were added the motifs of an attacking army and the Day of the Lord (ibid., 248–53). Although Hagedorn agrees with Wöhrle that the elaboration of the Day of the Lord as a threat to Israel’s foes represents the latest stage of composition, he diagnoses it as a process internal to the book’s development, whereas Wöhrle considers it part of an overarching redactional layer in the Twelve. Elsewhere (Troxel, 2015) I have offered a detailed critique of Wöhrle’s and Hagedorn’s analyses of Joel (along with those by Nogalski [1993a; 1993b], Bosshard-Nepustil [1997], and Schart [1998]), detailing my reservations about the application of redaction criticism at the phrase level and lower. I am equally skeptical of attempting to identify redactional layers that span multiple books. Indeed, the study of redacted works whose source texts are extant has both confirmed the validity of redaction criticism and raised cautions about detecting precursor editions that have not survived intact. Fox’s study of redaction in the attested editorial expansions of Esther found that while certain modifications could be detected without having the source text in hand, “some redactional changes in the receptor text could never, as far as I can tell, have been identified without the existence of the donor text” (1991, 137). Even aspects of ideology from the donor text might be judged original in the absence of the donor text (ibid.). Additionally, Fox noted that “the tensions and awkwardness that are clues to redaction can also appear within the work of an individual author or redactor” (ibid., 138). Similarly, Zahn has noted that even though the Dead Sea Scrolls contain evidence of redaction of the type scholarship has posited for biblical books, manuscripts found among them that belong to the textual history of a single book reveal that “many, if not most, cases of textual devel-

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

33

opment likely can no longer be identified with precision,” undermining confidence in fine-grained redactional reconstructions (2014, 315). Her study of the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) disclosed that although “most of the largest changes in SP and pre-SP mss appear to accomplish a very specific goal, and may therefore be the product of a single redactor,” the diverse variations that occur within pre-SP, SP, and OG texts preclude that they are “witnesses to the compositional techniques of a single scribe”: rather, they represent the hands of various scribes working at different times (2011, 136–37). This problematizes associating thematically similar additions with a single editor who reworked a large expanse of texts. Stipp underscored the latter point by showing that variations in the Deuteronomistic diction of the Jeremianic Sondergut reflect imitation of earlier insertions over a long period, thereby undermining theories of an overarching Deuteronomistic redaction (1995, 245–46). And he challenged the assumption that such diction necessarily signals a redactional intrusion (1995, 257). More recently, he has brought his observations about diction to bear on theories of redactional reworking of large spans of text, concluding that the evidence for the text of Jeremiah urges restraint in reconstructing redactional processes, since, “if we did not have an alternative text type permitting us to reconstruct the common ancestor, we would be utterly incapable to do so” (2015, 4; compare R. Müller, Pakkala, and Haar Romeny 2014, 15). Parallel to Zahn’s conclusions about the number of hands at work in Pentateuchal texts, Stipp concludes that even “the Masoretic Sondergut cannot stem from only one author” (Stipp forthcoming). What is more, nearly half the characteristics of the idiolect of the masoretic Sondergut are confined to Jeremiah, and those that “resurface in other books are distributed in a way that does not support the assumption that the same editors refashioned any other biblical document” (ibid.). Equally, the lack of an identifiable ideological focus in the Sondergut runs counter to assumptions that editors were intent on modifying the text theologically, while their expansions and literary rearrangement of units (such as the Oracles against the Nations) seem more to reflect their “stylistic ideal of how worthy religious literature should look like” (ibid.). These factors urge “a caveat to theo­ries postulating redactional processes which reworked several prophetical books in the final stages of their history” (ibid.). There are also significant questions to be posed about whether readers operated in the way such theories presume. To take a recent example, Wöhrle’s method in detecting a ‘grace layer’ (Gnadenschicht) in the Twelve assigns significance to the fact that the ‘grace formula’ (based on

34

Chapter 2

Exod  34:6) appears in full form in Joel 2:14 and Jonah 4:2, outside of which its individual components appear but once and isolated from the terms with which they are associated in Exod 34:6 (Mic 7:18–20; Nah 1:2b, 3a; Mal 1:9a) (2012, 14–15). Although for Wöhrle these data constitute “distinct evidence that these passages trace back to one and the same redaction” (ibid., 15), they invite the question of whether an ancient audience, lacking concordances and mostly hearing the text read, would have perceived such cues, or whether they ever would have had occasion to read (or hear) all twelve books as a whole to be exposed to them (compare Carr 2006, 216–17). This does not mean that redaction criticism is unimportant for Joel. As Kratz (1997, 13) contended, redaction criticism finds its footing and utility in problems raised by synchronic reading. The problem is the assumption (stated or implied) that redaction criticism is the default method to understand composite works, while ignoring what a book’s genre might contribute to assaying how a book was composed. In particular, narratives composed by interweaving precursor stories and motifs do not yield to redactional analysis in the same way as oracle collections, because authors arrange their sources and motifs in ways that, although they might reflect their diverse origins, are part of a compositional process rather than later accretion. For example, the motifs and subplots of the Old Babylonian Gilgamesh story (2000–1600 bce) are recognizable in relation to their Sumerian precursors, and yet their forms do not permit us to “reconstruct the form in which those motifs and plots existed” prior to integration within the larger story of Gilgamesh (Berlin 1983, 133). A similar argument can be advanced for Jonah, whose narrative is widely recognized as composite. Because in chapter 3 I will argue that Joel’s literary character can be explained from its similar composition as a narrative, reviewing issues in Jonah’s composition will provide a useful prelude.

Jonah as a Composite Narrative Most prominent among the incongruities in Jonah is the contrast between the deity’s change of heart in response to the city’s repentance (3:10) and his defense of his actions to Jonah as taking appropriate pity on the hapless Ninevites (4:11). Various redaction-critical explanations for this and other inconcinnities have been proposed, of which Krüger’s assessment (1991) offers a serviceable example that I will annotate with alternatives suggested recently by Wöhrle (2008).

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

35

The narrative of Jonah 1 Krüger isolated 1:1–5a, 7, 15 as the Grundschrift of chapter 1, into which was interpolated a “story of the ‘salvation’ and ‘conversion’ of the sailors” (vv. 5b–6, 10*–14) (1991, 62), as signaled by distinctive features: the waw + noun word order of v. 5b interrupts the narrative flow of the preceding wayyiqtol verbs; its use of ‫‘ ספינה‬ship’ is peculiar following the use of ‫ אניה‬three times in vv. 3–5a; only in vv. 5b–6 is Jonah not on deck, only there does the ship’s captain appear, and never do we learn whether Jonah followed the captain’s exhortation. Similarly, the sailors ask Jonah a reproachful question (v. 10aβ) based on their knowledge of his flight (v. 10bα), while vv. 11–13 echo the contrast between the captain’s concern for Jonah’s peril and the nonchalant Jonah through the sailors’ attempt to save Jonah’s life, despite his advice to throw him overboard (ibid., 62–63). And just as v. 5b uses a different word for ‘ship’ than vv. 3–5a, ‘the sailors’ of v. 5a are replaced by ‘the men’ in vv. 10–13.2 Krüger identified vv. 8–9, 10aα, 10bβ, and 16 as a still later layer of expansions. He judged the sailors’ inquiry into Jonah’s circumstances (v. 8) contrived, since “v. 3 at least suggests the assumption, and v. 10ba expressly confirms, that they already knew that Jonah was in flight from Yahweh,” while divination (v. 7) had revealed ‘by whom this misfortune has come to us’ (1991, 64). The statement ‘for he had told them’ in v. 10bβ is linked to ‘tell us!’ in v. 8, which was supplied to introduce Jonah’s claim to ‘fear the Lord’ (v. 9) inspiring fear in the sailors (v. 10aα) so that they offered sacrifices and vows (v. 16) (ibid., 65).3 Thus, in Krüger’s reconstruction, the Book of Jonah is composed of a Grundschrift overlaid with two layers of expansion: a story of the salvation and conversion of the sailors and an expansion given to introducing themes of piety. On the one hand, Krüger’s observation that waw + noun in 1:5b interrupts the narrative is accurate, but his diagnosis that it marks redaction is flawed. Such noun-initial clauses are often labeled “circumstantial” or “background” (for example, Gibson 1994, §80), although their roles are highly nuanced. They can be anterior to or simultaneous with the main action, while their word order regularly marks pragmatic topic or focus (Moshavi 2010, 33–36). Accordingly, although they can provide background information, they can also participate in the foreground (Cook 2.  Wöhrle (2008, 369) added the observation that ‫ קרא אל‬is used for petitioning the deity only in vv. 6 and 14, whereas ‫ זעק‬was used for that purpose in 1:5. See below, n. 12. 3.  Wöhrle (ibid.), on the other hand, marked the whole of 10abα secondary, given that Jonah’s answer in v. 9 says nothing about flight. He found the separable explanation of 10bβ confirmation that 10abα was secondary, judging 10bβ an attempt to justify 10abα.

36

Chapter 2

2004, 263). In this case, following reports of the storm’s effects on the ship (v. 4) and the sailors (v. 5a), ‫‘ ויונה‬and Jonah’ is pragmatically marked for topic,4 reintegrating the protagonist into the narrative by revealing his state of mind, much as ‫‘ ויהוה הטיל‬Then the Lord cast’ in v. 4 reintroduces divine action after v. 3 reports Jonah’s response to the commission of vv. 1–2. Accordingly, vv. 5b–6 can sensibly be read as simultaneous with vv. 4–5a: ‘Meanwhile, Jonah descended into the recesses of the ship, lay down, and fell asleep. And the captain approached him and said . . .’.5 The fact that the captain does not appear again in the narrative is no more remarkable than that the fish disappears after 2:11. The captain, like the fish, plays a minor role, serving as a foil for the negative characterization of Jonah.6 As for Krüger’s observations about vocabulary differences, since ‫אניה‬ (vv. 3–5a) and ‫( ספינה‬v. 5b) are synonyms,7 using them to dissect layers is as tenuous as it would be to differentiate sources in Gen 21:8–14 based on the references to Ishmael as a ‫ בן‬in vv. 9–10, 13 but ‫ הנער‬in v. 12 and ‫הילד‬ in v. 14 (the same term v. 8 uses for Isaac). The shift from ‫ אניה‬to ‫ספינה‬ in Jonah 1:3–5 is remarkable only insofar as the latter is a hapax legomenon. Similarly the replacement of “the sailors” in v. 5a by “the men” in vv. 10–13 accords with the substitution of ‫ אנשׁים‬for a more specific term earlier in a narrative (for example, Gen 20:8; 34:7; 43:15). Finally, Krüger’s description of v. 8 as superfluous on the grounds that Jonah’s flight was already explained in v. 3 is an overstatement, while his judgment that the sailors’ divination of who had imperiled them (v. 7) would have been sufficient for the story suppresses a likely narrative function for vv. 8–10. Although in v. 3 the narrator discloses for readers Jonah’s reason for boarding the boat, nothing suggests that the story’s characters are privy to this information. And whereas in v. 7 the sailors learn that Jonah caused their plight, in v. 8 they seek to learn what light Jonah might shed on his role in their peril. Even though their ‘great fear’ contrasts with Jonah’s claim to fear (‫‘ )אני ירא‬the Lord, the god of heaven’, it is not 4.  I adopt Buth’s definition of topic as “a specially signaled constituent for the purposes of relating the clause to the larger context” (Buth 1999, 81); see Troxel 2013b, 585–87. 5.  There is no reason to see Jonah’s action as consequent to that of the sailors, as Sasson (1990, 100) posits and as is apparently the basis for Wöhrle’s judgment (2008, 366) that this scene “comes too late in the present context.” 6.  For the use of contrast between a character’s actions and what is expected of him or her, see Berlin 1983, 41. 7. Despite attempts to derive the meaning of ‫ ספינה‬from the verb ‫‘ ספן‬cover’ (see Wolff’s “the decked-in ship,” 1986, 106), cognate lexemes—attested already in a seventhcentury Assyrian text (Sasson 1990, 101)—suggest that it is synonymous with ‫אניה‬.

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

37

spurred by Jonah’s confession of the Lord as his god in v. 9 nor is it what paves the way for ‘religious acts’ in v. 16. In fact, the sailors’ lead question in v. 8 (‘Due to what did this sort of evil befall us?’) goes unanswered until v. 10ba,8 which explains their fear as a recoil at Jonah’s audacity in attempting to flee a god whom he confesses ‘made the sea and the dry land’. This delayed stipulation of Jonah’s crime allows narratees to perceive his recalcitrance through non-Israelite eyes.9 Thus, although redactional explanations of composite narratives are not to be summarily dismissed, word selection, syntax, and structure must also be assessed from the standpoint of narrative strategies and given preference over quests for parsimony. The narrative of Jonah 3–4 When Krüger turned to 3:6–4:5,10 his quest for parsimony yielded to a search for narrative coherence. He detected the Grundschrift of chapter 1 continuing in 2:1, resuming in 2:11–3:5, picked up again in 4:5a, 6aα, 6b, 7–8a, and concluding with the divine speech in 4:10–11 (1991, 88).11 3:6–4:4 comprises two sets of additions, each allied with one of the layers of expansions in chapter 1. The king’s mandate to fast and wear sackcloth (v. 6), as well as the report of the people’s repentance, the Lord relenting (vv. 7–10), and Jonah’s disappointment (4:1) belong to the first layer, as do 4:3b, 6aβ, and 8b–9 (ibid., 66–67). Traces of the second layer surface in 4:2–3a, echoing motifs in Joel’s confession of 1:9, while 4:5b has to do with “religious practices” (ibid., 68–69). What Krüger identifies in chapters 3–4 are inconcinnities rather than superfluities: a mandate to fast and don sackcloth that replaces the people’s action (3:6), Jonah’s certainty that the Lord would relent (4:2) over against his lingering to see what would happen, and two different reports of how Jonah found shade (4:5b, 6). These problems cannot be facilely dismissed, but neither should we, as a matter of course, prefer redactional solutions to narrative explanations. Judging the royal decree superfluous following the people’s initiative, Krüger found it an addition meant to cast the king as the Ninevites’ 8.  Wöhrle (2008, 369) identified 10abα as secondary, given that Jonah’s answer in v. 9 said nothing about his flight. He considered the detachable character of 10bβ confirmation that 10abα is secondary, since 10bβ is an attempt to justify 10abα. His assessment is subject to the same objections as Krüger’s argument. 9.  For characterization through “indirect showing,” see Walsh 2009, 37–39. 10.  His analysis of chapter 2 has no direct bearing on his treatment of chapters 3–4. 11.  Wöhrle (2008, 392) considered the Grundschicht to conclude with 4:5–6* (minus ‫ יהוה‬and ‫ להציל‬through ‫ )גדולה‬and 7–9.

38

Chapter 2

representative, parallel to the role of the captain as the sailors’ representative in 1:5b (1991, 67).12 Verses 8–10, which report that the people’s repentance swayed the Lord to relent, and 4:1’s description of Jonah’s displeasure are part of this expansion, as is evident from their conflict with the Lord’s later admission that he changed his heart solely out of compassion for the Ninevites (4:11). The judgment that the king’s decree is belated presumes that, if original, it would have stood instead of the report of the people’s actions. Notably, however, v. 6’s report that ‘the word reached the king’ (‫ויגע הדבר אל‬ ‫ )מלך‬shows narrative sensibility, whether or not it is an addition. According to 3:4, Jonah proclaimed his succinct message only after one day’s walk into the city. The resultant impression is that he withheld giving early and broad warning. Against this foil, the Ninevites’ spontaneous act of fasting and donning sackcloth shows them remarkably sensitive to the word of the Lord delivered by a prophet. Only after reports of Jonah’s words reach the king does he act, issuing a decree that deepens the response: he stipulates the involvement of both small and large domesticated animals (‫ )הבקר והצאן‬and uses a verb appropriate to them, ‫‘ ירעו‬graze’ (v. 7). This emphasis on the participation of animals has been called “a Persian custom” (Allen 1976, 224), based on Herodotus’s report of the Persian army’s mourning a slain commander by cutting their own hair and that of their horses and pack animals (Histories, ix.24). Also cited as attesting this practice is Plutarch’s report of Alexander’s mourning over the death of Hephaestion, which included cutting the tails and manes of all horses and mules (Alexander, 72.2). However, the military setting of these acts complicates inferring from them mourning rites in non-military settings, especially as there is no description of such practices in other social settings. 12.  Wöhrle (2008, 377–78) also found the report of the royal mandate tardy and rightly rejected Wolff’s explanation that vv. 6–9 unfold the details behind the summary of v. 5 (Wolff 1986, 144–45). Wöhrle’s prime evidence, however, is different vocabulary used in vv. 5–8: ‫ כסה‬vs. ‫לבשׁ‬, ‫ )מ(טעם‬vs. ‫צום‬, and the use of ‫ גדול‬to denote both the king’s officials and “the older portion of the people” (2008, 378). However, the first four lexemes appear only here in the book, making them a weak basis for his conclusion. His contrast between ‫( וגדליו‬v. 7) and ‫( מגדולם‬v. 5) overlooks that ‫ מגדולם‬is part of an idiomatic merism (‫מגדולם ועד‬ ‫)קטנם‬, while ‫ גדליו‬acquires its profile from being paired with ‫המלך‬. Wöhrle also distinguishes between the use of ‫ קרא‬for a public proclamation (1:2; 3:2, 4, 5) and ‫ זעק‬for an appeal to the deity (1:5) to identify ‫ ויזעק‬in 3:7 as the mark of an addition (ibid., 379). However, ‫זעק‬ is used elsewhere of public proclamations (as, for example, in 1 Sam 5:10; 28:12; 2 Sam 19:5; 1 Kgs 22:32), while ‫ קרא אל‬is used for petitions offered under duress (for example, Judg 15:18; 2 Sam 22:7; 1 Kgs 8:52). Assessing the distribution of common phrases within a single work—particularly one containing few exemplars of the phrases—produces artificial conclusions.

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

39

A closer parallel is Judith’s scene of Israelites responding to the report of Holofernes’s advance by donning sackcloth en masse: men and women, their children, their cattle, resident foreigners, and all their servants (4:10), while those in Jerusalem supplicated the Lord before the temple, placing sackcloth on the altar (4:11–12). However, Judith’s author regularly employed hyperbole and absurdity, such as setting the story in Nebuchadnezzar’s twelfth regnal year in Nineveh (1:1), when the Israelites had only recently returned from exile (4:3). Equally preposterous are the Assyrian army marching 300 miles in three days (2:21) and Judith having water to bathe herself (10:3), despite the report of 7:22 that Bethulia had no water left (Levine 1989, 565). Correspondingly, the profligate draping of sackcloth fits a story that trades on exaggeration and fantasy (Craven 1983, 115), while the author’s use of motifs and plots from Israelite and Greek literature (Patterson 2008, 119–23) arouses suspicion that cloaking everyone and everything in sackcloth is a motif borrowed from Jonah 3:7 (Moore 1985, 152), rather than vice versa. The inclusion of animals in the king’s mandate must be ranked as fancy of the same sort as the note that Nineveh was traversable only by a three-day walk (3:3) and the report of Jonah’s ride in the belly of an appointed fish (2:1). Similarly, 3:6–7 describe the depth of Nineveh’s repentance hyperbolically, even if the Lord’s citation of ‘many animals’ as stirring his pity (4:11) suggests that the author had more than a passing interest in animals (Burrows 1970, 102). Not only did the people respond spontaneously to Jonah’s hint of catastrophe on the horizon, but the king, upon learning of Jonah’s message, issued a decree that all in the city make a show of repentance, creating an implicit contrast to Jonah’s earlier recalcitrance. Nevertheless, as Krüger observed (1991, 67), the report of a divine response to the people’s repentance conflicts with his subsequent admission that he changed his mind out of compassion (4:11). But then, 4:11 also implicitly conflicts with the scenario of sending Jonah to proclaim Nineveh’s imminent doom, since the only reason to send a prophetic messenger is if the Ninevites might respond as they do in 3:5, thereby warding off disaster. Thus, the conflict Krüger identified exists apart from 3:6–10. Wöhrle (2008, 396) attempted to overcome this problem by identifying 4:10–11 as part of the Gnadenschicht ‘grace layer’ that also encompasses 4:1–4 (inseparable from 3:6–10), as well as the addition of ‫יהוה‬ and ‫ להציל לו מרעתו וישׂמח יונה על הקיקיון שׂמחה גדולה‬to v. 6.13 In Wöhrle’s 13.  Wöhrle’s Gnadenschicht includes verses he divined to be secondary in chapter 1 (5b, 6, 8aβ, 10abα, 14, 16) and 2:2–10 (2008, 396).

40

Chapter 2

Grundschicht, 4:5 follows 3:5, with Jonah taking a position opposite the city to see how the Lord “will react to the repentance of the Ninevites” (ibid., 385). Because 4:5 “could scarcely have been an original end of the book,” vv. 6–9 fill that role (ibid.). On the other hand, the use of ‫ יהוה‬in vv. 10–11 (as in vv. 1–4) marks them as late additions (ibid., 387), even as ‫ יהוה‬in v. 6 must be a secondary expansion of ‫אלהים‬.14 This conclusion rests on Wöhrle’s proposal that use of divine names in Jonah correlates with two factors. On the one hand, in chapters 1–2 ‫יהוה‬ appears solely as the name for the prophet’s deity, while the sailors’ deities are referred to as ‫( אלהים‬2008, 390).15 On the other hand, the use of ‫אלהים‬ in 3:3b–5 is determined by Jonah’s new location, which spurs its use not just for the Ninevites’ deity (3:5) but also for the Lord’s interactions with Jonah (ibid., 391). Thus, the presence of ‫ יהוה‬in 4:1–4 and 10–11 mark those verses as secondary. However, whereas the explanation of the shifts between ‫ יהוה‬and ‫ אלהים‬in chapter 1 is cogent, there is no evident reason the narrator should confine himself to ‫ אלהים‬in chapters 3–4 merely because the prophet is in Nineveh. Why should Nineveh spark this narrative exigency more than Jonah’s isolation among foreigners at sea in chapter 1? Wöhrle’s bracketing of ‫ יהוה‬in v. 6 is allied with his designation of ‫‘ להציל לו מרעתו‬to provide him relief from his misery’ as a secondary insertion (2008, 386), on the grounds that it supplies another reason for the plant (beyond its provision of shade) and connects with the report of Jonah’s ‫‘ רעה גדולה‬great misery’ in 4:1. The derivation of the latter motif from v. 1 implies also the secondary status of ‫וישׂמח יונה על הקיקיון שׂמחה‬ ‫ גדולה‬at the end of v. 6. The verdict that ‫ להיות צל על ראשׁו להציל לו מרעתו‬posits two reasons for the existence of the plant appears as early as Wellhausen (1892, 214) and Marti (1904, 256). However, given that these phrases correlate with the paired verbal clauses ‫‘ וימן יהוה אלהים קיקיון ויעל מעל ליונה‬and the Lord God appointed a gourd and caused it to grow up over Jonah’, it is not clear why ‫ להציל לו מרעתו‬must be secondary. Citing similarity to v. 1 as the criterion is circular. And even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that it was added to coordinate v. 4 with v. 1, positing that the scribe who added it also inserted ‫ יהוה‬supposes he had a compulsion to perfunctory additions, in contrast to the logical exigency posited for his addition of ‫להציל לו מרעתו‬. 14. As Wöhrle acknowledges, the variation in the divine names has been an intractable issue in the study of Jonah (2008, 390 n. 81; compare Troxel 2012, 129). 15.  ‫ יהוה‬is used in connection with the sailors in 1:10, 14, 16, verses that Wöhrle identified as secondary, but on weak grounds, as argued above.

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

41

Wöhrle’s attempt to account for the divine names in Jonah illustrates the resistance of the book’s inconcinnities to analytics.16 Likewise, his affirmation that both 4:5 and 4:6a (through ‫ )להיות צל על ראשׁו‬are part of the Grundschicht allows the sequence of Jonah building a ‫ סכה‬for shade and the Lord raising the ‫ קיקיון‬for shade to stand unexplained. Given the intractability of such inconcinnities and hints that the book incorporates motifs and materials of different origins (see Burrows 1970, 86; Wolff 1986, 77–80), but also carries features that unify the book (see Wolff 1986, 80), I concur with Sasson’s verdict (1990, 19) that the book reveals an author who adapted motifs and materials he inherited into a single story. And in this respect, the book’s genre accounts well for this blend. Schart’s diagnosis of the narrative as satire (2012, 111; compare Burrows 1970, 95–96 and Wolff 1986, 84–85) provides a frame for comprehending the discordant features.17 Inferring stages of redaction from apparent anomalies without considering that the narrative might combine antecedent materials is unproductively atomistic. If the book of Jonah instantiates a narrative about a prophet composed of diverse materials, Joel is patient of a similar explanation, as I will argue in the next two chapters. It is important, first, to notice support for that argument arising from sharpened perceptions of the roles of citation and allusion in prophetic books from the post-exilic period.

Composite Texts and Schriftgelehrte Prophetie The confidence of earlier scholars in isolating a prophet’s original utterances from later additions has evaporated partly due to recognition that written reports of speech occupy a different linguistic register than orality (Davis 1989, 20–25; Becker 2004, 37), rendering form criticism impotent to take us back to a prophet’s original utterances (Floyd 2003a, 298–99).18 There has also been growing recognition that editors did not simply provide a literary setting for inherited logia, but shaped and reshaped the prophetic books to make them speak to new generations (Becker 2004, 46). 16.  Wöhrle’s proposal stands alongside others that have been offered, each with its own weaknesses. For example, Goldstein’s claim (2007, 82) that “Elohim emerges to convey the concern God has for the Ninevites” not only sifts the matter too finely, but is undermined when ‫ יהוה‬speaks on behalf of the Ninevites in 4:10–11. 17. Compare Schart 2012, 114. Burrows (1970, 94) similarly laments the misdiagnoses caused by “Lack of attention to the central importance of the grotesque aspect of the story.” 18. As Floyd notes elsewhere (2006a, 6), “The use of conventional forms of prophetic speech in the final form of prophetic books is above all a fictive rhetorical device employed by the writers of these books.”

42

Chapter 2

Thus, all prophetic books are rightly classified as Schriftprophetie, since they were shaped by writing and rewriting. However, as allusion and reinterpretation became tools wielded by scribes in producing new prophetic books, a new type of composition arose: Schriftgelehrte Prophetie. It is exampled by Zechariah 9–11, which is “a by-product of mantic scribal activity” that sought to reinterpret chapters 1–8 (Floyd 2003b, 243). Schart, likewise, describes the final chapters of Zechariah as “a schriftgelehrte work of interpretation in the Jeremianic and Ezekiel tradition” (1998, 279). He applied the same verdict to Joel, calling it “a new phenomenon in prophecy,” since it “unambiguously presupposes Zephaniah, Jeremiah 4–5, and Isaiah 13, borrows themes, images, key words, phrases, sometimes entire sentences, from tradition and integrates them in a new unit” (ibid., 278). Similarly, Beck (2005, 174) maintained that “Joel’s foundational composition is to be viewed as learnedly and literarily taking up other texts, but is to be regarded as an independent prophetic writing.” Likewise, Jeremias (2002, 99) considered Joel’s reuse of earlier oracles to make it an exemplar of schriftgelehrte Prophetie. Intertextual relationships between Joel and other biblical literature were noted as early as Exod Rab. ii.5, which espied the similarity between Exod 10:2 and Joel 1:3. Similarly, Rashi and Kimchi felt compelled to explain how Joel 1:3 could claim that the locusts constituted an unparalleled event, given the assertion of Exod 10:14 that the locust plague in Egypt would stand without parallel.19 Credner noted the similarity of 1:3 to Exod 10:2 (1831, 100) and of 1:15 to Isa 13:6, Ezek 30:3, Obad 15, and Zeph 1:7, 15 (ibid., 154), but called them merely instructive parallels. Kuenen (1892, 338 n. 10) endorsed W. R. Smith’s observation (1882, 396–97 n. 15) that the popular conception of the Day of the Lord is first attested in Amos and utilized by Isaiah, Zephaniah, and Ezekiel, but developed fully only by Joel (for Kuenen this was primarily a curiosity of tradition history). Nowak (1922, 88–89) discussed Joel’s borrowings from earlier prophets as a factor in settling the book’s date (similarly, Chary 1955, 195–96), finding 2:27 dependent on Isa 45:5, 17; 3:5 on Obad 17; and 4:19 on Obad 10. Recent scholarship has routinely noted Joel’s borrowings from other works (thus Mason 1994, 117–20; Coggins, 1996; Barton 2001, 22–27). The key question is what role these played in composition of the book. Merx (1879, 43) was the first to classify the similarities of words and motifs in Joel to other books as borrowings and rank them as signs of a compositional style that used earlier oracles to forecast a judgment leading to “the restoration of the kingdom of God.” Finding that Joel “knew Mi19.  See above, p. 14.

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

43

cah and Isaiah, even 13:6; Zech 12 f., Deuter. 28:38; 11:13, Zephaniah, the exilic Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, whose individual oracles he exploited” (ibid., 62–63), he judged the book “the result of Schriftstudium, a ‫ ִמ ְדרָשׁ‬generated through ‫”דּרַ שׁ‬ ָ (ibid., 42–43). Utilizing a typological way of reading that became “the psychological and philological basis on which the apocalyptic art work . . . could be built” (ibid., 49), Joel divined a forecast of restoration impossible to achieve through the efforts of Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, because it required decisive divine intervention at “the end of the present world period,” birthing “a new period, the ‫עולם הבא‬, ὁ αἰὼν ὁ μέλλων” (ibid., 43). Interpreting prophecies in light of the story of the Exodus, Joel found “a typological correspondence of two salvations” (Merx 1879, 63). Just as the Exodus from Egypt was prepared through plagues, so also the Day of Yahweh (‫חבלי‬ ‫ ;)משׁיח‬to the death of the firstborn corresponds the destruction of the peoples; to the Egyptian darkness, the darkening of the sun; and Joel begins with the foregoing destruction by locusts, where he designed its beginning with a doubtless look back to Exod 10:4ff. (ibid., 44–45) Accordingly, Joel’s locusts were not literal but “mystical”, forming part of an “eschatological portrayal” (ibid., 45). Noting that Exod. Rab. ii.5 linked Joel to Exodus 10:2, Merx concluded, “The connection between the Egyptian locusts of Moses and the apocalyptic [locusts] of Joel is here transparent—and Moses’ word ′‫למען תספר וגו‬, which is emulated in Joel— viewed as a mystical indication of those final locusts” (ibid., 61). The beginning of the book has the same apocalyptic character as its conclusion, so that Joel’s addressees “are not his contemporaries, but the people who live at the onset of the Day of Yahweh” (ibid., 63). Joel 1:2 transports readers to “the beginning of the world judgment, in the moment when the apocalyptic locusts are already there as forecast” (ibid.). The definition of apocalyptic Merx assumed is no longer tenable, given recent study of apocalyptic as a genre (Collins, 1998), whose generic Gestalt Joel does not share. Moreover, Merx’s use of “midrash” is of a sort that has been criticized based on attention to the social matrix of that genre (Ulmer 2006, 62–64). Nevertheless, the merit of Merx’s intuition that taking into account such reuse of texts is crucial to understanding Joel is demonstrated by Bergler, who described Joel as a Schriftprophet wielding earlier traditions as compositional tools (1988, 22–23).

44

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Bergler considered Joel 1–2 a carefully crafted composition by an author whose voice is heard in 1:2–4, the book’s prologue (1988, 109). He judged the exhortation of drunkards, priests, and farmers to lament a drought (vv. 5, 9–13) to be units that Joel “individually formulated and compiled,” modeled on laments in the Psalms, rather than compositions he found already formed (ibid., 66). Noting that vv. 6–8, which interrupts those calls with a first-person lament (“my land . . . my vineyard and my fig tree”), contain ‫ עלה‬and ‫עצום‬, which appear again only in chapter 2, as well as similes akin to those in chapter 2’s description of an enemy assault, he inferred that vv. 6–8 originally stood in the introduction to chapter 2’s poem of an attacking army, where they followed the call to sound an alarm in Zion in 2:1aα (ibid., 56). Bergler noted that 1:14–16 also stand out since, despite calling for a cultic assembly, they do not address the priests of v. 13 but a larger group, while the first-person verb forms in vv. 17–20 break with vv. 14–16. Because these verses could not have existed independent of their context, they are the prophet’s creation, used to introduce a liturgical motif that will be a key feature of chapter 2 (1988, 67). He judged the motif of the Day of the Lord in v. 15 integral to this unit (ibid., 57). Accordingly, Bergler considered 1:5–20 an artistic interweaving of materials to establish the motifs of the attack of the nations and the Day of the Lord that dominate chapter 2. To these Joel prefixed his own prologue, vv. 2–4 (1998, 109), making use of the theme of locusts (invoked again in 2:25) in an allusion to the Egyptian locust plague by drawing explicitly on language from Exodus 10 (ibid., 256–65). Distinguishing between clauses introduced by ‫ לפניו‬and ‫ מפניו‬and those introduced by ‫ כ‬in 2:1–11 (1998, 41–42, 50–51), Bergler attributed the former clauses to a traditional story about a foe approaching Jerusalem that Joel utilized (vv. 1a, 4–5, 7–9) (ibid., 44) but gave larger scope by inserting references to the terror of the world’s ‘inhabitants’ in v. 1bα (‫ירגזו‬ ‫ )כל ישׁבי הארץ‬and v. 6 (ibid., 39–40, 49–50), while rarifying it with notices of the impending day of the Lord (vv. 1b–2, 10–11) to stress “its nearness, terror and hopelessness” (ibid., 40). Most notably, v. 11 elevates the aggressor from a frightful foe to the administrator of the decisive day of the Lord (ibid., 44) by combining “the foe with Yahweh directly for the first time” (ibid., 51). Joel composed vv. 12–14 (inconceivable apart from their continuation in vv. 15–17) using esteemed traditions tailored to their present context (Bergler 1988, 73–75). 2:15 echoes 1:14 (‫)קדשׁו צום קראו עצרה‬, just as 2:14 parallels 1:13 (‫( )מנחה ונסך‬ibid., 76). Indeed, the call to assemble the

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

45

people for fasting and supplication in 2:15–17a forms a deliberate parallel to 1:14, but with 2:15a (‫ )תקעו שׁופר בציון‬fitting them to their context by echoing 2:1 (ibid.). Meanwhile, the petition mandated in v. 17b echoes the prayer the people are called on to utter in 1:15 (ibid., 85–86). Corresponding to Joel’s merging of two calamities (drought and locusts) are the two answers to the people’s supplication, the first in 2:18– 27 and the second in chapters 3–4, which Bergler considers integral to the book (1988, 86–87). Central to 2:19–27 is a “promise of salvation” (vv.  21–24, 26aα–β), with which Joel intertwined a “salvation oracle” (vv. 19–20, 25, 26γ–27) (ibid., 89–94),20 prefixing v. 18 as a subtle transition (ibid., 88). Because Bergler found the book structured by two juxtaposed laments and petitions to the deity, correlative to two interwoven calamities, this became his criterion for finding a literary parallel. Finding comparisons to the liturgical laments in Psalm 60 and 2 Chronicles 20 unproductive, he argued that Jeremiah 14 provided an exemplar for the structure of Joel 1–4, since both utilized the combined distresses of drought and enemy attack, intertwined with laments and petitions (1988, 111–12). He argues that although the parallel does not bespeak literary dependence, it establishes a literary form that validates reading Joel 1–4 as a coherent whole (ibid., 130). At best, Bergler’s comparison of Joel 1–4 to Jeremiah 14 gives short shrift to Joel 3–4, which he merely labels the “(zweites) Erhörungswort” (1988, 125), providing formal grounds for reading chapters 3–4 as integral to the book, but sidestepping some of their acute literary problems. Additionally, his focus on composition and form fails to inquire about the larger question of the genres the author used to frame the reader’s understanding. Bergler’s proposition that the character of the book (particularly chapters 1–2) might reflect a compositional process rather than redactional layers is valuable, although his attempt to account for the author’s every step falls prey to similar difficulties as redactional theories of composition. A. K. Müller began her exposition of Joel by observing that its statements and images are not subject to rectilinear processing (2008, 3). Their complexity and indeterminacy are attributable to the book’s address of the Day of the Lord as “the Interpretandum, not the Interpretament” (ibid., 17). Given the inadequacy of known categories for describing something 20. The “salvation oracle” is distinguished from the “promise of salvation” by its format as divine speech, over against the commands addressed to the people in vv. 21–24 (Bergler 1988, 89).

46

Chapter 2

to which “no previous experience is comparable,” Joel reuses or alludes to texts that “serve not simply as ‘sources’ for ideas” (ibid., 5–6) but participate in an alchemy in which their themes and motifs serve “as Hinter­ grund, ‘background’ and thereby contribute something fundamental to the day of Yhwh idea” (ibid., 16). The book’s genius is “that it is readable on two levels and that these ‘levels’ are not based on a mere potential of a reader-oriented reception . . . but for Joel 1–2 are intended by the author” (ibid., 17). This metatextual evocation of themes means that “‘scriptural interpretation’ can be viewed as a special form of tradition history, insofar as through the texts to which Joel alludes arises a kind of second level on which the book can be read and gives the day of Yhwh theology its deep dimension” (ibid., 15). This dynamic becomes evident in the call to transmit to succeeding generations a story of an incomparable event (1:2–3) that betrays Exodus 10 as its Hintergrundtext (A. K. Müller 2008, 25). The significance of Exodus 10 as backdrop becomes evident in the inconcinnity of v. 4’s description of a commonplace event that received overtones of salvation through the use of ‫ספר‬, with its background in the Danklied (ibid., 31–32), marking it as a story of salvation. The background role of Exodus 10 consists not simply in the mention of locusts, but in the fact that the locusts are the only plague on Egypt said to be relevant for Israel, inasmuch as through it Israel—rather than Pharaoh or the Egyptians—comes to recognize the Lord (Exod 10:2) (ibid., 50). Just as recognition of the Lord is mediated by recounting the story of locusts in Exodus 10, so Joel’s narrative culminates in recognition of the Lord in 2:27, bringing with it “the experience of deliverance” (ibid., 55). The effect of interweaving the motif of the Day of the Lord with background texts is evident again in 1:15, which draws uniquely on Isa 13:6, even as 2:1 resonates with Isa 13:9 (A. K. Müller 2008, 80), with Isaiah 13 serving as the Hintergrundtext of 2:1–11. Following 1:15, 2:1 is a second announcement of the Day of the Lord, just as Isa 13:6, 9 announce it twice (ibid., 81–82). 2:1 and 11 form a frame for the unit, whose center is v. 6, parallel to the central role v. 15 plays in chapter 1 (ibid., 62–63). Verse 6 gains its pivotal role from its initial ‫מפניו‬, flanked by ‫ לפניו‬in vv. 3 and 10, thereby bridging “the military comparisons of vv. 4–5 and 7–8,” while being “surrounded by sentences that are stamped by theophany elements (vv. 3, 10) and the day of Yhwh formulas (vv. 1bf., 11)” (ibid., 67). The interpenetration of 1:5–21 with 2:1–11, against the Hintergrundtext of Isaiah 13, yields more than a sum of its components:

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

47

The point, to be sure, is not an enemy attack more or less concretely described, but the attempt to articulate how the day of Yhwh comes about. The reader is to gain an inkling of something unprecedented, and this occurs here, on the one hand, via the comparison with something commonly recognized—an enemy attack—and, on the other—surpassing this—through the connection to precisely the descriptions of Isaiah 13. (ibid., 87) The denial that the Day of the Lord is survivable, as expressed by the rhetorical question of 2:11, finds its response in 2:12–17, which “on the first level . . . is to be read precisely as the possibility of deliverance through return to Yhwh,” but finds a deeper meaning on “the second level, which is seen against Exodus 32–34 as Hintergrundtext” (A. K. Müller 2008, 100). Within this matrix “Joel gives contours to his ‘eschatology’ and the concept of the ‘day of Yhwh’ as an idea that blurs or dissolves the boundaries of the times (and thereby also the historical frame)” (ibid.). The Day of the Lord is not reduced to an army but is depicted as a divinely led army (ibid., 87), since it is nothing less than the coming of the Lord himself (ibid., 89). “The fact that the essential distress exists in the danger-filled presence of God himself ” highlights the predicament of Israel’s relationship to God (p. 110) and elucidates why “the question of guilt is not at all thematized” in Joel 1–2 (ibid., 81). The significance of the Day of the Lord for Israel is expressed in “the uniting of Yhwh’s ‘repentance’ (Ex 32:12, 14) and his compassion (Ex 34:6) in one confessional formula in Joel 2:13,” against the backdrop of Exodus 32–34, where ‫ נחם‬and ‫שׁוב‬ are applied to the Lord (Exod 32:12), just as in Joel 2:14 (ibid., 134). The Hintergrundtext for Joel 2:18–27 is Jeremiah 4–6, where “the northern one” serves as “the personified calamity” the Lord expels to restore “the ‘legitimate’ salvific affiliation of God and people . . . reminiscent of the primal state of creation” forever (v. 27) (A. K. Müller 2008, 150). The introduction of “the northerner,” although disorienting for the reader, clarifies the army in 2:1–11 (ibid., 160–61) and vitalizes the promise of v. 19 with “an eschatological character” (ibid., 163). This arises from the fact that “the ‘north’ in many texts about a northern enemy signals that not a cardinal direction is specified, but the margins of the schematized world, insofar as parallel to ‫ צפון‬stands an unspecified ‘from afar’,” whereby the foe gains “a transcendental or mythic coloring” (ibid., 177). Accordingly, this “personified eschatological calamity” (ibid., 164) “comes from an ‘Urzeit’ . . . [and] destroys the present and future of its [target]” and reverts the earth “into the pre-creation chaos” (ibid., 185). Even though

48

Chapter 2

“the northerner” in Jeremiah is always an enemy that the Lord summons, “the ‘enemy’ is Yhwh himself, in a way distanced from his people, which ‘does not permit him to change his mind’ about his intention to bring disaster ([Jer] 4:28 ‫( ”)לא נחמתי‬ibid., 189). Joel contraposes this figure from Jeremiah 4–6 to the idea derived from Exodus 32–34 that the Lord is willing to change his mind about calamity (ibid., 188). And because the expulsion of ‘the Northerner’ brings about the definitive resolution of the conflict between divine presence as both threat and reassurance, the visibility of the Lord’s presence in Israel’s midst (2:27) reaches the goal implied by ‫ ספרו‬at the outset (ibid., 191). Müller’s astute theological reading based on identification of Hin­ tergrundtexte that inform Joel’s message rests on classifying the book as “prophetischen Schriftauslegung” (2008, 13). In Joel such interpretation amounts to “actualization” of earlier passages that speak of the Day of the Lord in “an attempt at a valid claim about God’s future” (ibid., 14) that must be read on two planes: that “of the Joel text taken on its own, so to speak” and that of the intertexts underlying it (ibid., 16). In a subtle way, this reprises Jerome’s reading of Joel on two levels, making it susceptible to criticisms similar to those appropriate to Jerome. Even though Müller’s “second level” is not derived from the same sort of theological and moral assumptions as Jerome’s, it is dependent on the discovery of roles for the Hintergrundtexte that cannot be established on the “first level” and that effect a theological harmonization. Müller’s overarching claim is that the author intended his reuse of texts about the Day of the Lord as a threat to be read in conjunction with Exodus 32–34, setting up a contrast between the Lord’s dangerous presence over against his beneficent presence that is resolved by his decisive expulsion of “the Northerner” of Jeremiah 4–6, which represents the implacability of his destructive wrath. Not only does this rely on a web of relationships that must be perceived without signals from the text, but it also creates a sophisticated Hegelian theological construct not evident on the “first plane” of reading. Accordingly, it parallels Jerome’s claim that Joel’s real message lies at a level of abstraction from “simple” reading of the book’s linguistic and literary form. Unlike Jerome, this “real message” is derived from an intertextual reading within the theological bounds of canon. A final exemplar of approaches to Joel as schriftgelehrte Prophetie is Strazicich’s recent (2007) study of Joel’s reuse of material from elsewhere in biblical literature. He begins with a thorough consideration of method (ibid., 1–31), which he roots in Bakhtin’s dialogism (1981; 1986) and Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality (1968; 1974), while emphasizing the

The Composite Character of Joel 1–2

49

resignification (not exegesis) of the antecedent text’s meaning in the new context (Strazicich 2007, 3). This compels uncovering “the hermeneutics by which an appropriated intertext is resignified, so that one can discern its nouvelle articulation” (ibid., 8). Nevertheless, the reuse of another text, while answering the questions anticipated from readers, remains “doublevoiced,” carrying both the borrowed text’s original intention and the intention of the resignification (ibid., 9).21 Consistent with his emphasis on the heremeneutics of resignification, Strazicich appeals to Bloch’s (1957) identification of “midrashic techniques of interpretation within the biblical text” (Strazicich 2007, 14), particularly as developed in Sanders’s (1987) study of “the various ways that Second Temple Judaism recontextualized OT traditions” under the rubric of “comparative midrash” (Strazicich 2007, 15). Parallel to Bakhtin’s dialogue between antecedent author, new author, and reader, Sanders proposed a “hermeneutical triangle” to describe “the way that a tradent appropriates an authoritative tradition, and resignifies its meaning in light of the present need of the community” (Strazicich 2007, 16). The key variable for understanding the resignification is “the sociological/ theological context” to which it is directed (ibid., 17). Leaving aside the question of whether it is appropriate to apply the term “midrash” to this hermeneutic, a problem arises in that, even if we can reconstruct a rhetorical situation for the words of Joel, the precise situation that provoked them is unrecoverable. This epistemological gap is problematic for Strazicich’s inference that “The diaological use of scriptural traditions, in the first half of the book of Joel, is designed as an intraideological debate against the official monologism of the Judean leadership” (2007, 14). Like Plöger’s (1968) and Redditt’s (1986) proposals of the sociological/theological situation that gave rise to Joel 3–4, Strazicich’s reconstruction assumes variables that cannot be recovered by reading backwards from the text. However, his emphasis on the resignification of a reused text as primary is valuable, since that lies on the synchronic level. This methodological insistence is sounder than Müller’s contention that allusions to antecedent texts mean to evoke their broader contexts, since there is no way to verify that as the author’s intent, and the activation of the broader context in readers’ minds does not speak to this question. On the other hand, Strazicich’s focus on resignification of antecedent texts highlights the motivation behind their deployment. Thus he cites approvingly Evans’s identification of the motivation as “the quest for 21.  It remains true, however, that the authors who reuse antecedent texts cannot control the readers’ negotiation of the relationship between the original text and its new context.

50

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continuity, the continuity of the past with the present. That is, does the present experience of the community stand in continuity with the sacred past?” (Evans 1989, 169, cited by Strazicich 2007, 15). Correlative to this, the authority of schriftgelehrte Prophetie is grounded in the reuse of texts already deemed authoritative (Jeremias 2002, 97–98). Rather than such reuse evincing an author of limited skill (as maintained by Bewer 1911, 51), it served as a tool for “negotiating through the maze of other words that may claim authority (Tull Willey 1997, 67), since “the more concretely recognizable the new words are, the more acceptable they will be” (ibid., 71). Equally important to Strazicich’s method is his stipulation of “Standards of the Qualifications for Allusions” (2007, 26–27). He notes BenPorat’s definition of allusion as “a device for the simultaneous activation of two texts” (Ben-Porat 1976, 108, cited by Strazicich 2007, 27) and adopts Hays’s (1989) criteria for identifying “intertextual echoes” (Strazicich 2007, 26). Despite the methodological rigor of these criteria, Strazicich too easily uses the results of their application to argue for the unity of the book (ibid., 49), which he traces to a cultic prophet of the early Second Temple period, perhaps in the era of Ezra and Nehemiah (ibid., 50–55). He approvingly cites Crenshaw’s characterization of Joel as “a theodicy of the character of God” (ibid., 56) and approves of Ogden’s description of its address to “the faithful living under tyranny, and in a world in which many have lost hope,” reassuring them that “he is in control and will right society’s wrongs” (Ogden 1987, 7, cited by Strazicich 2007, 57). Although I will propose a different way of describing the rhetorical situation and will not affirm that chapter 4 is integral to the book, I consider Strazicich’s work a significant contribution to studying Joel as schriftgelehrte Prophetie. The classification of Joel as schriftgelehrte Prophetie is not merely an observation about how the book was composed, but reinforces the superscription’s designation of it as a prophetic book. By invoking the authority of recognized texts and deploying them to address a rhetorical situation, the book induces the reader to accept its “authority and plausibility” (Frow 2015, 20) and its claims. To understand the framework within which the book of Joel does so, we must recognize another genre that defines the sort of prophetic book Joel is: narrative.

Chapter 3 Joel as Narrative Identifying Joel as schriftgelehrte Prophetie establishes that its implicit claim to authority rests, in part, on reuse of texts already considered authoritative. However, another genre is equally significant for understanding Joel. In disputing conjectures that Joel reflects a liturgy, Wolff (1977, 9) observed that “the distance between the liturgy as here presented and the actual performance of a lament ceremony” is marked “by the narrative statements in 1:4 and 2:18.” Similarly, Rudolph (1971, 42) noted that with the call to transmit a story, “the author took up an unusual rhetorical device: to be sure, the expected narrative appears immediately in 1:4, but this has its continuation only in 2:18.” The earliest reader to acknowledge these marks of narrative was Jerome, who exhorted those equipped only for “sensate hearing” to “narrate (narret) the simple story (historiam),” describing it as a narrative (narratio) about things that “were not done in your time or in the time of your fathers and ancestors” (PL 25:951).1 Accordingly, he accommodated the past-tense verbs of 2:18 (‫ ויקנא‬. . . ‫ויחמל‬ ‘the Lord became zealous . . . and spared’) as part of a “narrative begun” (coeptam narrationem) in 1:4 (PL 25:964). More often, however, scholars have suppressed these narrative markers in seeking to recover the words of the prophet Joel.

The Function of Reported Speech in Joel Because everything following the superscription is cast as speech, many twentieth-century scholars sought either to recover Joel’s words by purging them of accretions or to attribute all its speeches to Joel. Thus Duhm (1911) scoured the book’s speech to reveal Joel’s authentic words in a poetic lament, while Kapelrud (1948) attributed all speech to Joel as a cultic 1.  Although Jerome frequently used historia to designate the plain meaning of the text over against the more profound meanings he divined, he also used it to designate, more specially, narratives about the past (Brown 1992, 125–26). The fact that he also described Joel’s as a narratio supports understanding historiam in the latter sense.

51

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prophet, and H.-P. Müller (1966) argued that chapters 1–2 preserve Joel’s words, with minor additions. Assis recently claimed (2013, 25) to follow “most scholars today” in attributing the book to a single hand and treated its reported speech as transparent to Joel’s declamations.2 He ascribed its use of rhetoric to both “the author” and “the prophet,” without differentiation (ibid., 258). He posited that Joel sought “to persuade the people that there was benefit to prayer in the Temple site, even after it had been destroyed” (ibid., 17) and called for a “mutual return of the people and God” based on “the renewal of a bond that had been broken” (ibid., 15). His inference that “Joel prophesied in Judah, and probably in Jerusalem, after the destruction of the city and its Temple by the Babylonians in 587 bce,” since 4:1–8 betrays “that the book was written after the destruction,” again assumes a close relationship between author and prophet (ibid., 256, my italics). In my view, Assis assumed too direct a relationship between reported speech and orality (on which see Jeremias, 1996b and Becker 2004, especially p. 37) and overlooks the role of reported speech in identifying the book’s literary genres. On the other hand, Assis astutely described the relationship between the locusts of chapter 1 and the images redolent of locusts in chapter 2 as part of the book’s use of rhetoric (2013, 50; see below, p. 66). In doing so he drew attention to the rhetorical strategies in the book’s reported speech. “Rhetoric” is a subspecies of communication, whether oral or written (Malina 1996, 80–81). It seeks to persuade its audience to adopt a specific disposition or behavior regarding “the rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 1995, 60; Wichelns 1995, 22–23), a phrase denoting the event that occasions the rhetoric, provoking “the forms of rhetorical behavior which would be appropriate to its circumstances” (Frow 2015, 16). Barker (2014), finding that the lack of references to recognizable contemporary events in Joel “effectively camouflages its historical situation,” proposed understanding “the text’s rhetorical situation in a manner that rests less on a hypothetical ‘world behind the text’” by locating it “on the level of the ‘world of the text’” (ibid., 47). Because the text’s strategies are calibrated to a rhetorical situation the text itself posits, “the speaker and the audience are literary constructions who only meet in the ‘world of the text’” (ibid., 49). Strategies can mingle, so that (for example) deliberative rhetoric, which calls for a decision, can alternate with epideictic 2.  He cites Driver (1901), Dennefeld (1924), Engnell (1943), Kapelrud (1948), Rudolph (1971), Allen (1976), Prinsloo (1985), Bergler (1988), Cogan (1994), and Crenshaw (1995).

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rhetoric that invokes shared values to support expected responses (ibid., 51–53). Because such mixing of strategies undermines designating a single rhetorical genre for a book, it is more useful to analyze the ends for which strategies are deployed (ibid., 53) in addressing an audience assumed susceptible to them (ibid., 61). Barker expands the addressees to “the universal audience who experiences this text beyond its original time and place” as a register of its rhetorical effectiveness (ibid., 63). On this basis, he concludes that Joel 1–4 is “a unified work of prophetic literature that moves from scenes of devastation to promises of restoration through its persuasive evocation of divine and human responses in order to articulate the necessity of calling and relying upon Yhwh in all circumstances” (ibid., 64). Barker’s argument for Joel’s unity on these grounds overreaches, in part because he reinscribes H.-P. Müller’s (1966) exclusive focus on speech forms. He classifies everything from 1:2 through 4:21 as a literary representation of prophetic speech, with 1:2–4 drawing the implied audience’s attention to the current situation (2014, 77–79) and the wayyiqtol verbs of 2:18 functioning to promise a reversal “in a familiar prophetic style whereby they appear to foretell what has already happened” (ibid., 173–74). Accordingly, he reads the book on a plane above the questions of composition prompted by chapters 3–4. For instance, although he notes that the locution ‫( בימים ההמה ובעת ההיא‬4:1) occurs elsewhere only in Jer 33:15; 50:4, 20 (ibid., 219), he moves directly to its rhetorical function in the book, without addressing the compositional questions it raises. Moreover, although Barker maintains that the rhetorical situation is created by the text and tacitly equates the text with the rhetor who “shapes the rhetorical situation through the discourse” (2014, 49), his identification of the rhetor vacillates. On the one hand, he finds the understated identification of Joel in 1:1 appropriate for his subordinate role as messenger and as setting up persuasive strategies to exploit (ibid., 55), while later he posits that the sparing identification of Joel in 1:1 “intensifies the identity of the book as divine communication from Yhwh” (ibid., 76), suggesting the possibility that Yhwh is rhetor. On the other hand, in refuting claims that chapter 1’s locusts represent foreign armies, Barker casts the prophet as an autonomous rhetor, arguing that “it is more likely that the prophet pictures an actual locust infestation that creates a striking backdrop for the prophetic message that he hoped to communicate” (ibid., 70, my italics). At other times, Barker’s prophet seems a cipher for the text: “In Joel 1:2–3, the prophet asks rhetorically whether such an event had occurred in the past . . . In Joel 2:2, the text looks before and after the event being described and stresses its incomparability” (ibid., 122,

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my italics). This vacillation fails to specify agency sufficiently to account for the book’s existence, as evidenced by the unremarkable purpose assigned it: “[to] articulate the necessity of calling and relying upon Yhwh in all circumstances” (ibid., 64). Even if the book lacks sufficient data to betray its historical moment, that does not mean that it has no specific provocation or that its implied audience is fungible with a “universal audience.” Its implied audience is defined by a socio-historical context (Malina 1996, 81; Watson 2002, 141) revealed in beliefs its rhetor assumes are shared by his addressees (Bloomquist 2002, 159). For instance, Joel’s rhetor presumes a shared belief in the efficacy of the cult to address the rhetorical situation. That belief cannot be addressed to a universal audience without positing generic analogies to the temple. Moreover, the exhortation of all the people to assemble at the temple to petition the deity assumes a specific type of cultic activity: it is not prayer in the generic sense, nor is this a quotidian use of the cult. The call to corporate lamentation at the temple is calibrated to a distinctive rhetorical situation. Barker also exemplifies a perennial shortfall in reading Joel: the ascription of its rhetoric to a single rhetor. This tendency is understandable, since the book’s superscription seems to prepare us for words spoken by a named prophet, as in other prophetic books. Like superscriptions to those books, this one is grammatically incomplete, distinct from the body of the book, and names a single prophet (Floyd 1995, 474). As Barker (2014, 76) notes, it establishes “a sense of prophetic commissioning” that validates the prophet as mediator of the divine word. It is reasonable, therefore, to identify the voice that speaks in v. 2 as Joel. And on some level, Joel’s voice permeates chapters 1–2. But is it his voice that calls on groups to lament in 1:5–20 and summons an assembly at the temple in 2:10–17? In particular, what are we to make of his prefaced mandate that his addressees transmit to their progeny an account of an unparalleled event (1:2–3)?

Joel’s Narrative Frame The perception that the call to recount an extraordinary event (v. 2) forms a preface has spurred suggestions that vv. 2–4 were inserted late. Jepsen (1938, 86), who assigned passages about the Day of the Lord to the hand of an “Apokalyptiker,” attributed also vv. 2–4 to that hand, on the grounds that the mandate looks beyond the locust plague and “is intended to prepare the descendants for the day of the Lord.” Robinson (1964,

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59) similarly identified vv. 2–3 as “a summons to hearers prefixed to the following by a redactor,” inasmuch as “the audience scarcely needed to be referred so emphatically to present distresses.” H.-P. Müller (1966, 232– 33) also ranked vv. 2–4 a “literary introduction to 1:5–2:27” which, aside from 2:18, preserved Joel’s declamation. Those who have judged these verses integral to the book have argued that the event meriting transmission to posterity must exceed the locusts of v. 4. Crenshaw (1995, 87) suggested that the mandated story encompasses “both disaster and deliverance,” so that “1:2–3 introduces the first two chapters of the book.” Jeremias judged the whole of chapters 1–2 a literary unity (2007, 3), based especially on ‫ ספרו‬in v. 3 as a “terminus technicus of the thanksgiving hymn in the Psalms,” in which an individual gives thanks for deliverance from distress and exhorts others to seek similar aid from the Lord (ibid., 12). Accordingly, ‫ ספרו‬signals that “chapters 1–2 speak primarily of experiences lying in the past,” related to the Day of the Lord, that impel retelling “in order that these coming generations may acquire a touchstone to orient themselves in analogous situations” (ibid., 4). Like Wolff, Jeremias recognized the wayyiqtol verbs in 2:18–19a as narrative markers. Those wayyiqtol verbs have frequently been considered anomalous. Some scholars have explained them as equivalent to the so-called prophetic perfect (Ibn Ezra; Sweeney 2000, 169; Barton 2001, 87; compare Assis 2013, 164 and Barker 2014, 171–72). Others have repointed them as simple waw + jussive, extending the petition of v. 17 (‘and that the Lord might become zealous . . .’) (Merx 1879, 38; Budde 1919, 106–7), or have interpreted the verbs of v. 17 as preterites that initiate the narrative (Hitzig and Steiner, 1881), or have pushed the beginning of the narrative back further by repointing the mp imperative forms in vv. 15–16 as 3mp perfects (Bewer 1911, 107). Others have posited that the wayyiqtol forms presume that the people assembled and the priests offered the prescribed petition (Ahlström 1971, 136; Allen 1976, 86). In support of this last option, Rudolph (1971, 62) noted that such an ellipsis “occurs so often in the OT that it can surprise no one if it is the case in Joel, as well.” Although he offered no parallels to support this claim, they are not difficult to find. For example, the story of Jeremiah’s confrontation with Hananiah begins with the prophet’s report that the Lord commanded him to strap a yoke on his neck and deliver words to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon (27:2–11). Hananiah’s removal and breaking of the yoke (28:10) presupposes that Jeremiah executed the sign act, even

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though the text never reports it.3 In response, the Lord orders Jeremiah to tell Hananiah that he has replaced the “wooden bars” of the yoke with “iron bars,” symbolizing a solidification of Nebuchadnezzar’s hegemony (28:13–14). The ensuing verses not only say nothing of Jeremiah delivering those words, but report him charging Hananiah with fraud and pronouncing a death sentence upon him (vv. 15–16). Nevertheless, it would be inapt for a reader to suppose that Jeremiah, commissioned to speak “whatever I command you” (1:7), autonomously substituted his words for those assigned. Indeed, the report of Hananiah’s death (v. 16) leads the reader to assume that Jeremiah’s words were authorized and, concomitantly, that he delivered those prescribed in vv. 13–14. The literary character of the dispute between Hananiah and Jeremiah suggests that it is a purely literary construct (Leene, 2001), meant to affirm the validity of Jeremiah’s proclamation (Holladay 1989, 126). The omission of a report that Jeremiah delivered the words assigned in vv. 13–14 can be considered a literary shortcut. The use of this literary shortcut in Jeremiah and elsewhere4 buttresses the argument that Joel 2:18–19a presupposes that the Lord responded to a convocation held by the people. In this case, no changes in pointing or anomalous grammatical explanations are necessary: the wayyiqtol verbs are part of a narrator’s report, marking the end of the narrative’s first stage (1:4–2:17) and introducing the second. But does that second stage conclude with 2:27, as Jeremias posited? The phrase ‫ והיה אחרי כן‬in 3:1 has frequently been dismissed as semantically dubious. Vernes (1872, 49) called it “a vague transition,” while Beck (2005, 180) characterized it as only “loosely” connecting chapter 3 to chapter 2. Others have labeled it “a very general designation of time” (Rudolph 1971, 71), “an eschatological introductory formula” (Weiser 1985, 120), “a seldom encountered conjunctive formula” (Wolff 1977, 65), “a clumsy (ungelenker) connection” (Bosshard-Nepustil 1997, 281), a “temporal designation formulated quite unusually in Hebrew” (Dahmen 2001, 80), or “an extremely general designation of time” (Jeremias 2007, 42). Barton (2001, 94) ranked it with “similar phrases that introduce ‘afterthoughts’” (he cited ‫באחרית הימים‬, ‫ביום ההוא‬, ‫בעת ההיא‬, ‫ימים באים‬, 3.  Holladay (1989, 117) compares Jer 19:1–2, where the Lord’s command for Jeremiah to break a potter’s jug in the valley of Hinnom is not followed by a report that he did so. 4.  A subtler use of this device is evident in the relationship between Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones (Ezek 37:1–10) and the message he is commissioned to speak (vv. 12–14), on which see Troxel 2013a, 83. Compare Walsh 2009, 85.

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‫ההם‬ ‫ )בימים‬and posited that “the formula has been added after a prophecy that is complete in itself ” to introduce “a completely new set of ideas.”5 In fact, ‫ אחרי כן‬is semantically precise, designating an action as consequent to another in both narratives (Gen 15:14; 23:19; 25:26; Judg 16:4; 1 Sam 24:6; 2 Sam 2:1; 8:1 [|| 1 Chr 18:1]; 10:1 [|| 1 Chr 19:1]; 13:1; 21:18; 2 Kgs 6:24) and oracles (Isa 1:26; Jer 21:7; 49:6). The fact that ‫ אחרי כן‬elsewhere follows ‫ ויהי‬and is annexed to ‫ והיה‬only in Joel 3:1 is statistically remarkable, but says nothing about its semantics, any more than the collocation of other temporal phrases with ‫ והיה‬makes their semantics vary from their collocation with ‫ויהי‬.6 Accordingly, ‫ והיה אחרי כן‬stipulates that the events of 3:1–5 will follow those forecast in 2:19c–27. Although ‫ אחרי כן‬does not specify how much time will elapse between the events of 2:19c–27 and those of 3:1–5, it cannot be dismissed as “vague” or providing a “loose” or “clumsy” connection. As Kapelrud (1948, 127) concluded, “‫ והיה אחרי־כן‬holds a natural place in the context” and “need not necessarily point to an eschatological future.” In particular, ‫ אחרי כן‬is not equivalent to ‫ביום ההוא‬, which designates events as “roughly synchronous,” unless “clear sequencing is expressed or implied” (De Vries 1995, 52). ‫ ביום ההוא‬can refer to the past or the future, and in the latter case frequently serves to insinuate new material (ibid., 43–44). It can occur in poetry or prose, with or without prefixed ‫( והיה‬ibid., 44–51). In passages with an eschatological bent, it marks an indeterminate time, as is the case in Joel 4:18 (Sæbø 1990, 17). Similarly, ‫ בעת ההיא‬and ‫ בימים ההם‬can place the action in the past or the future, although most of the 52 occurrences of ‫ בעת ההיא‬are retrospective (Kronholm 2001, 439). Despite the apparent semantic opposition of ‫בימים ההם‬ to ‫ בעת ההיא‬as designating an extended period of time, ‫“ בעת ההיא‬might in fact refer to a situation extending over a relatively long duration” (De Vries 1995, 64). Both phrases often introduce redactional additions (ibid., 66–71). By contrast, never elsewhere does ‫ אחרי כן‬head a redactional expansion. Accordingly, as H.-P. Müller (1966, 241–42) concluded, ‫אחרי כן‬ itself provides no grounds for judging chapter 3 secondary. 5.  Despite characterizing ‫ והיה אחרי כן‬as seeming “to push the event into the remote— and mythic—future,” Crenshaw (1995, 164) refuses to call it a redactional link, since “the criteria for distinguishing such redactional touches often leave much to be desired.” 6.  Compare, for example, Deut 21:16—‫והיה ביום הנחילו את בניו את אשׁר יהיה לו לא יוכל‬ ‫‘ לבכר את בן האהובה‬and when he apportions to his sons the inheritance which shall belong to each, he will not be allowed to designate as [his] firstborn his lover’s son’—and Judg 9:33— ‫‘ והיה בבקר כזרח השׁמשׁ תשׁכים‬And in the morning, when the sun rises, you shall get up early.’ The semantics of ‫ ביום‬and ‫ בבקר‬are the same as when they follow ‫ויהי‬.

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Vernes’s contention (1872, 49–50) that the fresh appearance of the Day of the Lord in chapter 3 is unexpected after the resolution of the crisis in chapter 2 carries weight only if the character of the Day itself changes. While 3:3–4 forecast distinct omens foreshadowing it, a change in its contours appears only with chapter 4, which is also where the features that Vernes (1872) and Rothstein (1896) identified as discontinuous with chapters 1–2 concentrate.7 Only in chapter 4 do the stereotypical ‫( בימים ההמה ובעת ההיא‬4:1) and ‫( ביום ההוא‬4:18) introduce new sections.8 There the Lord’s summons of the nations is based on their provocation of him,9 in contrast to chapters 1–3, where the Day of the Lord is not calibrated to specific crimes. Nor does the Day of the Lord in chapter 4 require any action by Israel, whose role is abused protectorate, over against chapter 2, where the encroaching Day of the Lord spurs calls for a cultic assembly, and 3:5, where deliverance comes to those who “call on the name of the Lord” at the temple. Remarkably, chapter 4 does not contain an address to Israel until v. 17, even though a group is addressed in v. 9a and the nations are addressed in vv. 9b–11. By contrast, the divine speech from 2:19b through 3:4 was a sustained address to the people. Equally noteworthy is how 4:17 transmutes the assurance of the Lord’s presence within Israel (2:27) into a guarantee of his residence in Jerusalem, making it not simply the place to offer petitions (2:15–17; 3:5) but a citadel that repels invaders. Finally, phrases borrowed from 2:10 (4:15b, 16aγ), but untethered to their context—and cited in reverse order—encapsulate words found in Amos 1:2, in conformity to Seidel’s law (see Beentjes, 1982; Troxel 2015, 161). In short, chapter 4 is an amalgam of texts that diverges widely from chapters 1–3 in its themes and diction, supporting the judgment that it comprises a series of late expansions to the book. I will address more recent arguments against chapter 3 as original to the book in the next chapter. At this point it suffices to note that the temporal phrase of 3:1 presents no impediment to reading chapter 3 as continuing the story begun in chapters 1–2. The scope of the story’s timeline is extended via divine speech, so that the narrative—while still ostensibly about calamities past—projects another catastrophe into the future. But 7.  See above, pp. 25–26. 8.  The combination of ‫ בימים ההמה‬and ‫ ובעת ההיא‬occurs again only in Jer 33:15 and 50:4, 20, which this may try to emulate. (It is also found in the OG of Jer 3:17 [unattested in the DSS], while S, V, and T accord with mt’s simple ‫בעת ההיא‬.) ‫ בימים ההמה ובעת ההיא‬in Joel 4:1 likely attempts to gather the varied events of chapter 3 as the backdrop for the judgment of the nations (De Vries 1995, 70). By contrast, ‫ בימים ההמה‬in 3:2 is embedded in its clause. 9.  Their misdeeds lie on two levels: abuse of those sent into exile and appropriation of their land (v. 2); and demeaning abuse of captives of war (Jeremias 2007, 48–49).

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what sort of story narrates a near incursion of the Day of the Lord and forecasts another?

Joel’s Story An unprecedented event Wolff considered Joel’s prophecy to have been provoked by “a devastating locust attack and catastrophic drought (1:4–20),” signaling that “quite extraordinary events were still happening in the history of Jerusalem and Judah (1:2b)” and history was moving “toward foundation-shaking changes” (1977, 13). Those changes become clear only in v. 15, which discloses “why news of the incipient disaster must be transmitted throughout the generations (v 3): it is the harbinger of the Day of Yahweh” (ibid., 20). To clarify the threat, Joel 2 introduces a new scenario that describes “the incomparable character of the Day of Yahweh, interpreted eschatologically,” for which “the unusual locust invasion in 1:4ff was both harbinger and model” (ibid., 42). The attacking force in 2:1–11 is not simply “an ordinary army of nations [that] is here compared with locusts . . .; rather, these locustlike [sic] apocalyptic creatures . . . are announced as the apocalyptic army” (ibid.). Joel describes alternative responses to the Day of the Lord, using 1:4–2:17 to develop “the perspective of prophecy of judgment, according to which Yahweh leads the army of the nations to destroy Israel,” while in the second half of the book “he adopts the perspective of prophecy of salvation, according to which Israel is delivered by Yahweh from the onslaught of the nations, while the latter are destroyed” (ibid., 12). When the agricultural disaster is referenced again, its reversal “becomes the basis for the realization (2:27) that the Day of Yahweh itself will bring for Jerusalem fulfillment of the ancient promises of salvation” (ibid., 14). Thereupon, ‫“ והיה אחרי כן‬explains the exhortation to transmit the assurances to the generations to come,” inasmuch as “3:1–5 makes clear that ‘in the midst of Israel’ Yahweh is active and that ‘his people shall not be put to shame’,” while chapter 4’s summons of the nations to “eschatological judgment” coincides with “the eschatological deliverance of Jerusalem (3:5)” (ibid., 60). Wolff described the book as “‘learned prophecy’ that takes up the received eschatological message . . . and gives it new expression in intense expectation of Yahweh’s future” (1977, 12), “a work of literature” whose language “is determined by the earlier prophetic movement” and whose “sociological function is a sort of ‘literary opposition’ [i.e., a literary critique of prevailing ideologies and institutions]” (ibid., 10). The Joel

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introduced in 1:1 is “the author of our book” (ibid., 25), and the voice in vv. 2–4 is “the same Joel who first shaped into a unified proclamation the multiplicity of individual traditions appropriated in the book” (ibid., 26). For Wolff, because 1:4–18 are transparent to the agricultural calamity that spurred the book’s composition,10 Joel remains the voice that summons members of his society to lament and offers a petition to the deity (vv. 19–20). He is also the herald who calls for the trumpet to sound an alert to the greater calamity that impends, describes its import, and implores an assembly at the temple to seek divine mercy (2:1–17). Joel is both prophet and author. Although I agree with Wolff that Joel is “learned prophecy” and allow the possibility that the Joel of 1:1 was the author (despite my suspicion that the name is a pseudonym: see Troxel 2012, 100), Wolff’s tacit equation of Joel, the author, with the prophetic voice of 1:5–2:17 overlooks the implications of 1:2–3. 1:3 reveals that the book contains a story to be recounted for successive generations. As noted earlier, Jeremias (2007, 13) appealed to the frequent use of ‫ ספר‬in the Danklied to conclude that vv. 2–3 anticipate the successful escape from the Day of the Lord announced in 2:18–19a, making them a “prologue” to chapters 1–2. However, although ‫ ספר‬is common in the Danklied, it also appears in stories that lack a reversal of fortunes (Gen 24:66; 29:13; Num 13:27; 2 Kgs 8:6; Ezek 12:16), in dream reports (Gen 37:9, 10; 40:8, 9; 41:8, 12; Judg 7:13; Jer 23:27, 28, 32), in reports of disreputable deeds or words (1 Sam 11:5; Ps 59:13; 64:6), and it serves as a generic marker of speech (Ps 73:15). Given that Joel 1–2 does not overtly participate in the Danklied genre and nothing else in the context telegraphs the outcome of the story, the role of vv. 2–3 must be inferred from features other than ‫ספרו‬. Joel’s exhortation of his audience to report a story is peculiar if they are also those summoned to lament a calamity in the succeeding verses. Given the gravity of the peril posited in vv. 4–17, why should Joel have assumed that they would live to tell the tale? And why is such an exhortation more pressing than the summons to lamentation and petition that follow? Even if remarkable calamities are often memorialized, those observances typically arise reflexively rather than by a mandate, least of all one promulgated in the middle of the crisis.11 The strongest signal of this story’s tenor is the rationale for its transmission implied in the rhetorical question of v. 2b: ‫ההיתה זאת בימיכם ואם‬ 10. Compare Barker’s assertion (2014, 79) that 1:2–3 “set apart the current situation for continual remembrance” (my italics). 11.  Compare the institution of Purim at the end of the story of Esther (9:26–28).

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‫‘ בימי אבתיכם‬Has this occurred in your days or in the days of your ancestors?’, in which the most likely referent of ‫‘ זאת‬this’ is the calamities enumerated in 1:4–2:17.12 The question has been dubbed a “literary topos in the ancient world” (Crenshaw 1995, 86), “a rhetorical means by which the prophet asserts that such an event has never taken place before” (Sweeney 2000, 155), a means to underscore “the gravity of Joel’s address” (Assis 2013, 74), and an “intense mandate for the transmission of what has been endured” (Jeremias 2007, 12).13 Although each of these descriptions is accurate, they fall short of explicating its illocutionary force. A review of similar locutions shows that the question is not a cliché, even though one can point to generic assertions that nothing comparable to a particular event has occurred previously (1  Sam 4:7; 1  Kgs 21:25; 1 Chr 29:25; Neh 6:8; 13:26), as well as assertions that a phenomenon, event, or person is without analogue in the past or the future (Exod 10:14; 11:6; Josh 10:14; 1 Kgs 3:12; 18:5; Isa 43:10; 2 Chr 1:12). The span of time for gauging an event’s uniqueness is sometimes marked by a tempus a quo: since Egypt was founded (Exod 9:18) or became a people (Exod 9:24); since the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt (Judg 19:30); since the nations came into existence (Dan 12:1). The closest parallel to Joel 1:2b is Deut 4:32, which prods its audience with the question, “has anything so great as this ever happened (‫)הנהיה‬ or has its like been reported?” As a point of reference, they are urged to reflect on “the earlier days, which preceded you, since the Lord created humans upon earth, and from one end of heaven to the other.” The phenomena for which they are to seek parallels are hearing God speak from the midst of fire without perishing and having been delivered from peril by divine signs, wonders, and warfare. The implication is that no analogue exists, and the rhetoric engages Israel in considering its exceptional status. Similarly, the question of Joel 1:2b, far from simply underscoring the importance of what is announced, “engages the implied audience and guides them toward accepting the perspective that the text will present” (Barker 2014, 78). It spotlights not just a remarkable event, but “that which is absolutely new” (Wolff 1977, 26).14 12.  A similar kataphoric ‫ זאת‬stands at the outset of the verse: ‫שׁמעו זאת‬. For Nogalski’s contention that the second ‫ זאת‬refers anaphorically to Hosea’s call to repent (1993b, 15–16) see Troxel 2015, 161. 13. Compare Bewer 1911, 74; Kapelrud 1948, 12; Ahlström 1971, 130; Allen 1976, 49; Ogden 1987, 8; Barker 2014, 78. 14.  The parallel examples of summoning an audience to consider the incomparability of an event within a specified time frame undermines Wolff’s inference that this call implies a “determining the times” that bears “the early signs of apocalypticism” (1977, 26).

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Because “there was, and is, nothing in the least unprecedented about a plague of locusts” (Barton 2001, 42), the referent of kataphoric ‫זאת‬ seems to lie beyond chapter 1. Rudolph (1971, 42) found its referent in the reversal of fortunes announced in 2:18–19a. However, locating what is extraordinary in either 1:4–20 or 2:18–27 bypasses the reinstatement of the assertion while describing the army in 2:2 ‫כמהו לא נהיה מן העולם ואחריו לא יוסף עד שׁני דור ודור‬ Its like has not occurred in the past, nor will one appear in the train of years after it. Even though this statement also extends the frame for the event’s incomparability into the future, its position before the description of the Lord’s army likely signals what ‫ זאת‬in 1:2 anticipates: the Day of the Lord. But if the referent of ‫ זאת‬appears only in chapter 2, why is 1:4–20 part of the story? And what role is played by the locusts of 1:4 that appear again only in 2:25? Wolff’s assertion that a locust plague inspired the composition of this book (1977, 13) assumes an identity of the voice of 1:2–3 and that of vv. 4–20. In my view, however, by prefacing the story with the claim that what he is about to relate is without parallel in the audience’s experience or their inherited memory, Joel creates a gulf between his audience (alongside whom he stands) and what he recounts: these events supersede any in their lifetime or recounted by their ancestors. If this claim is taken seriously, Joel thereby marks his story as irreal, utilizing a literary genre that has been dubbed “the fantastic.” Joel’s use of the fantastic Although discussion of this genre has come to focus on science fiction, one of the scholars who laid the early theoretical basis for its study spoke of it as “a particular case of the more general category of the ‘ambiguous vision’” (Todorov 1973, 33). For Todorov, the modifier “ambiguous” reflected the genre’s key characteristic: “The reader’s hesitation” (ibid., 31). While reading a story whose features are commonplace, the reader is suddenly confronted with extraordinary phenomena that require her/him to decide whether they are reconcilable with commonly assumed “rules of nature” (ibid., 25). Todorov identified two possible resolutions of this hesitation: the extraordinary could be accommodated within the laws of nature, making the event “uncanny,” or the reader could find the event so exceptional that it must stand outside those laws, making it a case of the “marvelous” (ibid., 41). The key element is not the supernatural, but hesi­

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tation as to how to evaluate a wonder (Brooke-Rose 1981, 63).15 Todorov insisted that the “fantastic,” the “uncanny,” and the “marvelous” constituted distinct genres, even if the “fantastic” inevitably transitions to one of the other two (1973, 41–42). His dissection of these categories reflects structuralism’s obsession with “classifying and categorizing, differentiating and counter-differentiating” (Armitt 1996, 18). As Armitt (ibid., 20) observes, our interest in stories of “the fantastic” has “to do with the complex way in which an individual tale simultaneously flirts with while overreaching this limiting straightjacket that we know as genre.” Recognition that genres are often complex (Frow 2015, 43) allows perception that the reader’s moment of hesitation “is not so much an evanescent genre as an evanescent element” within a genre (Brooke-Rose 1981, 63)—and one not necessarily requisite for participation in the genre. Todorov’s rooting of this genre in the “ambiguous vision” makes it useful for analysis of biblical stories like the arrival of the three men at the compound of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18. The scene depicts a commonplace extension of hospitality to visitors. The unveiling of a supernatural presence within the story appears with a promise attributed to a single voice (v. 10), which is then given greater definition by the narrator’s identification of the Lord as speaker (v. 13). Although the appearance of the divine in embodied form is a staple of biblical literature (Sommer, 2009), the initially ambiguous identity of the men accords with the demand that “all types of fantastic . . . need to be solidly anchored in some kind of fictionally mimed ‘reality’, not only to be as plausible as possible within the implausible, but to emphasize the contrast between the natural and the supernatural elements” (Brooke-Rose 1981, 234). A noteworthy feature of this story, however, is that the narrator tells the audience at the outset that it concerns a divine visitation: “Then the Lord appeared to him among the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.” Such a notice is typical of introductions to biblical narratives of the fantastic. The story of the annunciation to Manoah and his wife in Judges 13 is preceded by the narrator’s report that the ‫‘ מלאך יהוה‬the messenger of the Lord’ appeared to Manoah’s wife (v. 3). Within the world of the narrative, however, Manoah, who was absent at the annunciation, assumes that the messenger is a human intermediary (‫‘ אישׁ האלהים‬a man of God’) dispatched by the Lord (v. 8). When the ‫ מלאך יהוה‬reappears, he refuses 15.  Needless to say, the motif of “ambiguity” is shared by other genres, so that the genius of the genre is a specific sort of ambiguity: how a wonder is to be comprehended (Brooke-Rose 1981, 65). This equally distinguishes it from works of the absurd (such as Kafka), where “everything is abnormal and bizarre” (ibid., 67).

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Manoah’s offer of a meal, proposing a sacrifice instead, after which a narrator’s aside reports that Manoah did not recognize the man’s true identity (v. 16). Ambiguity mounts when the man rebuffs Manoah’s request to disclose his name on the grounds that it is ‫‘ פלאי‬marvelous’ (v. 18). But it is only when Manoah offers sacrifice to the Lord ‘who works marvels’ ‫ מפלא לעשׂות‬and the man ascends in the sacrificial flame that his identity is clarified, and Manoah and his wife fear for their lives. They placate their fear by reasoning that the death penalty for seeing the Lord must have been abrogated in their case. Here again, uncertainty over the apparition is allayed in advance by the narrator’s report that the event is an appearance of the ‫( מלאך יהוה‬v. 3). The narrator preempts hesitation in the interest of theological clarity: this extraordinary event is a legitimate revelation of Israel’s deity. Allowing for a complex genre that portrays an event as a “marvel” from the outset explains the Hebrew Bible’s participation in it. Similarly, the fantasy of Joel 2 is labeled, at its outset, a report of the encroachment of the incomparable Day of the Lord. That declaration reinforces expectations of the surreal, heightened by images borrowed from other texts that describe the Day of the Lord: “a day of darkness and gloom; a day of cloud and thick darkness” (Zeph 1:15). The world turns frighteningly unfamiliar, with insect-like creatures that constitute an army, an example of what Todorov calls the “exotic marvelous,” in which “supernatural events are reported without being presented as such” inasmuch as they are intrinsically alien to the implied audience’s world (1973, 55). This shift is not simply aesthetic. The fantastic in chapter 2 appears in a world comparable to the audience’s world, but subjected to what Mendlesohn calls an “intrusion fantasy” that introduces chaos (2008, xxi) and takes “us out of safety without taking us from our place” (ibid., xxii). This is not to suggest, however, that the fantastic first appears in chapter 2. Its presence in 1:4 is perceptible with the help of Mendlesohn’s taxonomy of strategies “by which the fantastic enters the narrated world” (2008, xiv), the most relevant of which is a narrator’s summons to pass through a verbal portal that permits the reader to “settle into the fantasy world and accept it as both fantasy and as ‘real’” (ibid., 2). Joel summons his audience through a portal into a world of events unparalleled in their experience or knowledge (v. 2). The world they enter resembles their own, save for a succession of four species of locusts (v. 4) that, as Jerome, Rashi, Kimchi, and Ibn Ezra recognized, was remarkable for its co-occurrence of four species of locust. This befits Todorov’s category of the “hyperbolically marvelous,” in which “phenomena are supernatural only by virtue of their dimensions, which are superior to those that are familiar to us”

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65

(1973, 54). This “hyperbolic marvel” prompted Jewish interpreters to attempt to distinguish it from the “hyperbolic marvel” of the locust plague of Egypt (see above, p. 14). A perennial question in the study of Joel has been the relationship of the “hyperbolic marvel” of chapter 1 to the “exotic marvel” of chapter 2. The allusion to Exodus 10 in 1:2–3 is not the sole frame of reference for Joel’s story,16 as stressed by the fresh evocation of incomparability in introducing a scene patterned on the supernal horde of Isaiah 13 (see Jeremias, 2000). Many explanations have been tendered for how the wonders of chapters 1 and 2 are related: • 2 is distinct from 1 and vividly forecasts the Babylonians’ sack of Jerusalem (Ogden 1987, 27; so similarly Luther [above, p. 18] and Calvin [above, p. 21]) • 2 is distinct from 1, offering a portrayal of the Day of the Lord as a theophany cloaked as an army (Sweeney 2000, 161–64), even as it subtly resonates with features of the locusts of chapter 1 (Dahmen 2001, 59) • 2 describes a crisis so intensified beyond chapter 1 as to depict something new: an apocalyptic army (Wolff 1977, 42) • 2 continues the description of the calamity begun in 1 (Bewer 1911, 95; Rudolph 1971, 55; Stuart 1987, 248; Barton 2001, 70) • 2 focuses on the locusts of 1 as embodiments of divine power (Weiser 1985, 113) • the locusts of both 1 and 2 embody the Day of the Lord (Allen 1976, 68) • 2 offers a hyperbolic description of an actual locust swarm that the prophet interpreted as a sign of the imminent Day of the Lord (Robinson 1964, 62) Jeremias (2007, 22) argued that framing the question in terms of continuity or discontinuity creates a false dilemma. Although chapter 2’s army utilizes language found in theophany reports and “prophetic announcements of the ‘Day of Yahweh’ or severe danger from foes,” its portrayal also draws on images from chapter 1 (compare 2:2, 11 to 1:6, 2:3 to 1:19), echoes its proclamation of the nearness of the Day of the Lord 16. For a detailed analysis of correspondences to Exodus 10, establishing both the volume and explicitness of the markers, see Strazicich 2007, 63–66. Hagedorn’s objection (2011, 246 n. 124) that the similarities are too imprecise, given that “in Ex 10 the locust plague is directed towards Egypt . . . whereas in the book of Joel Israel is affected,” overlooks the fact that the activated text in an allusion acquires a “resignified meaning in the present work” that shifts the referents of the language (Strazicich 2007, 5).

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(compare 1:15 to 2:1), and uses comparisons that “can refer just as easily to locusts as to a human army” (ibid., 22–23). He concludes that “a pure identity with the distress of chapter 1 can thus be as little intended as an entirely independent, new distress over against the locusts” (ibid., 23). The decisive features in chapter 2 are its anticipation of a future distress, over against the present crisis of chapter 1, and the way its language and conceptions intensify the distress into something extraordinary and irresistible (ibid.). Assis (2013, 45–46) has argued for a similar synergy between chapters 1 and 2 based on an “interactional view” of metaphor, in which “the two meanings can function within the text simultaneously.” “Lexical ambiguity” arises from competing meanings that do not cancel each other (2013, 46).17 Accordingly, “the term ‘locusts’ in Joel means both real locusts and, at the same time, is meant to evoke in the reader’s mind a political enemy that is represented by locusts” (2013, 47). I will modify Assis’s description slightly, since it is not the case that the “real locusts” of chapter 1 yet evoke a foreign army, even if 1:6 speaks of them as an army in terms that are exploited in chapter 2 (‫עצום ואין‬ ‫)מספר‬. In fact, the “interaction” Assis perceives is better called a “blend.” Barker employs the latter term (2014, 116), although his use of it is problematic. Barker claims that chapter 2 intensifies the threat of chapter 1, since “Not only are the people facing agricultural devastation, they must also face the reality of an invader who gravely threatens their physical security” (2014, 116). This statement echoes Wolff’s distinction between the chapters rather than describes a blend. If we apply the theory of conceptual blends to chapters 1–2, we can gain a clearer understanding of their interrelationship. Conceptual blending is a commonplace cognitive tool, used when we imagine how a piece of furniture would look in our home or when we correlate pieces of information to formulate an answer to a question; both examples involve compressing “two temporally separated mental spaces” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002, 113). We think by categorizing phenomena, assigning them identities: the tall leafy structure in the backyard is a “tree.” But thinking only in terms of individual identities would hamper our ability to conceptualize complex relations (2002, 115). To surmount this, we blend aspects of different “mental spaces” to enable comprehension, such as “families are trees, with branches and new growths.” The simplest diagram of this blend involves two “input” spaces and a blended space: 17. The phrase “lexical ambiguity” stands in a passage Assis cites (2013, 46) from A. Bailin, “Ambiguity and Metaphor,” Semiotica 172 (2008), 159.

Joel as Narrative Trees branches, bark, new growth

67 Kinship units, resemblance generations

Family trees units = branches generations = growth

The blended space “Family trees” allows conceptualizing kinship in concrete terms. As the diagram demonstrates, blends do not tap all possible fields in a mental space but use them selectively (there is, for instance, no correlation between “bark” and “resemblance”). The theory of conceptual blends clarifies the relationship between Joel 1 and 2. The locusts of chapter 1 participate in a blend only in their description as a destructive “nation” (vv. 6–7). In that case, however, the blend is not between locusts and the army of chapter 2, but between the mental spaces of locust hordes destroying crops and of a marauding army.18 Blended imagery is activated most strongly when the comparisons in 2:4–9 join descriptions appropriate to locusts with images of an army. The result is an exotic marvel that gives way to another in 2:19b–27. The Lord’s promises describe conditions equally beyond the audience’s ken: guaranteed abundant rains, fruitful fields and vines, and unfailing protection from foes—all of which is underwritten by the promise that the Lord will have ‘dealt extraordinarily with you’ ‫עשׂה עמכם להפליא‬ (v. 26). Such conditions may be commonplace in some promises of ideal weal (for example, Isa 11:6–9; Amos 9:13–15; Zeph 3:16–20), but not in the experience of Joel’s audience. They are aliens to the story: its exotic wonders can be reckoned only as a marvel. This sequence and composite of signals guides the implied audience in how to evaluate the story in their world. Its value for them resides in the actions taken by the people who populate the world of the story. The event of a prophet calling for cultic acts at the temple bears verisimilitude to their world. And the voice calling for those acts is of a type familiar to them. It is not identical with Joel’s voice, but is mediated by him. 18.  Hagedorn (2011, 248) contends that ‫ גוי‬can only designate a human army, since elsewhere it denotes only “a contemporary political power,” and never animals, even though animals are sometimes depicted as an ‫( עם‬e.g. Prov. 30:25–28; Joel 2:2). This assumes that the profiles of ‫ גוי‬and ‫ עם‬make them impervious to use in novel metaphors, despite their frequent interchangeability otherwise.

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Joel as narrator The Joel who speaks throughout the book is a covert narrator.19 His voice intrudes on the serial speech reports only in 2:18–19a and (I will argue) again at the end, in 3:5a. His covert role gives prominence to reported speech in a way similar to the Book of Haggai. After Hag 1:1 places Haggai in Darius’s second regnal year and specifies that the divine word came through him to Zerubbabel and Joshua, “thus says the Lord of hosts” introduces the observation, “This people says, ‘The time has not yet come for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt’” (v. 2). Verse 3 then abruptly has Haggai address the people with a fresh formula: “And the word of the Lord came through Haggai the prophet, saying, . . .” If the question placed to the people in v. 4 (“Is it time for you to dwell in paneled houses, while this house lies desolate?”) originally followed directly on v. 2 (as Steck [1971, 360 n. 18] argued20), v. 2’s report of the people’s words could be taken as an indictment spoken directly to them. Setting aside such speculation, the diction and position of v. 2 create ambiguity about whether it is a soliloquy (compare 2:14) or Haggai’s private address to Zerubbabel and Joshua (Floyd 1995, 478). A similar blurring of the lines between narrator and words by the prophet or others is evident in Hag 2:10–19. Verse 10 begins with a date formula and the announcement that “the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying, .  .  .” This is followed by a messenger formula (v. 11a), after which the Lord directs Haggai to pose a question to the priests (vv. 11b–12a). Without reporting the prophet’s compliance, v. 12b relays the priests’ answer (“And the priests answered and said, ‘no’”), thereby blurring the lines between divine speech, Haggai’s speech, and the narrator. “And Haggai said” at the head of v. 13 introduces his followup question, followed by the priests’ answer. Verse 14 begins with “And Haggai responded and said,” introducing a soliloquy lamenting the behavior of “this people,” after which vv. 15–19 turns to address the people, although without explicitly marking that shift. Such intertwining of speech and narrative prohibits disentangling a set of putative oracles by Haggai from a secondary framework (Floyd 1995, 479; compare Kessler 2002, 53–55).21 Similarly, the syntactic enmeshment 19. On the perceptibility of the narrator on a continuum from covert to overt, see Rimmon-Kenan 2002, 97–101. 20.  By contrast, Wolff (1988, 33) considered v. 2 a creation of the redactor, who combined an oracle from Haggai (v. 2b) with the messenger formula and found it necessary to provide a fresh messenger formula in v. 3. 21. Pace Mason 1977, 419–20, and Tollington 1993, 23, 180.

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of Hag 1:1–2 resists dissection of these verses (Floyd 1995, 476).22 Although Hallaschka (2011, 43–44) rightly judges them redactional, they are so at the level of composition, where they serve “to introduce the book’s foundational dramatic conflict and to open the curtain progressively on its principal characters” (Kessler 2002, 121).23 The narrator of Haggai may have used a more oblique means than Joel 1:4 to set the context for Haggai’s first address, but once recognized, Hag 1:2 is just as intrusive. And although Haggai’s narrator distinguishes himself from the book’s namesake and sets the backdrop for each scene (often providing date formulas), he stays largely hidden behind the words he reports. Similar to the intrusions of Haggai’s narrator to set a new scene, Joel breaks the narrative frame to guide his audience only in 2:18– 19a and at its end (3:5a). The story is Joel’s to tell and theirs to retell. But why tell it? The narrative’s logic Recognizing Joel’s story as fantastical accounts for several of its curious features. First, it explains why it is a composite narrative. As already noted, even the calls to lament show signs of being cobbled together rather than being whole cloth. The intrusions of 1:6–7 and 1:15 are deliberate plants that prepare readers to blend the description of the invading theophanic army of chapter 2 with the destructive locusts of chapter 1.24 This also explains the repetition of the question about the unparalleled character of the impending Day of the Lord in 2:2. The observation that 1:4–20 do not rise to the level of the claim of uniqueness in 1:2 is valid, but 2:2 reactivates the claim at the point where it is most poignant, while adding 22.  Tollington (1999, 196 n. 8) judged Floyd’s characterization of Haggai as a complex narrative that blocks recovering Haggai’s oracles unconvincing, but did not explain why. Hallaschka (2011, 40 n. 170) rejected Floyd’s argument merely by citing Tollington. 23.  Hallaschka defines the goal of redaction criticism as an “Endtexlesung” (sic) that emphasizes equally fractures in the text with the connections and unity created through redaction (2011, 41). However, he too facilely traces a path back to a Grundbestand in Hag 1:1–15a, where he finds in vv. 4 and 8 a remnant of a Haggai speech, to which the core of v. 1 has been prefixed; vv. 5–7 are later insinuations between 4 and 8; v. 9, v. 10, and v. 11 are successive expansions; references to Zerubbabel and Joshua were later inserted into v. 1 at the same time that vv. 3–4, 12a, 14, and 15 were furnished; only later were vv. 12b–13 added (ibid., 43–53). Although he reasons from palpable shifts in theme or diction that could signal redaction, he brands them foreign based on the assumption that coherence entails parsimony. 24.  The recognition of this story as a fantasy also explains why 1:6–7 can assume that the Lord is a victim of the locusts: they have destroyed his vines and fig trees. It equally clarifies why he can stand over against his invading army to destroy it (under the epitome of Israel’s nemesis, “the northerner”) in 2:20 and promise restoration of what the locusts ate in 2:25.

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that this event will never be repeated, because the form in which it depicts the Day of the Lord coming is unrepeatable, given the Lord’s disposal of it in v. 20. Recognizing that what unfolds from 1:4 is a story makes clear that 1:2–3 already presuppose “that the agricultural distress has turned” (Jeremias 2007, 12), as becomes explicit in the narrator’s report of 2:18–19a. The distinction between chapter 1 as past event and chapter 2 as future is valid only within the world of the narrative. From the standpoint of this narrator (like any narrator), his story is finished before it has begun: time



Superscription (1:1)

Joel’s exhortation to transmit his story (1:2–3) Joel’s story (1:4–2:27)

summary of precipitating event (1:4)

reported speech of an anonymous prophet (1:5–2:17) exhortations to lament calamities (1:5–20) warning of imminent, greater calamity and exhortation to “turn to me” (2:1–17)

summary of outcome (2:18–19a)

reported speech of the Lord (2:19b–27) imminent restoration of crops and expulsion of foe

Acknowledging these markers in 1:2–3 also sheds light on the summons to ‫‘ הזקנים‬the elders’ and ‫‘ כל יושׁבי הארץ‬all the inhabitants of the land’ at the outset.25 As Wolff noted, this invokes “the ancient ‘call to receive instruction’ (Lehreröffnungsruf), a form especially popular in wisdom circles, used to arouse attentiveness” for didactic purposes (1977, 20). Heeding all due caveats about ascribing locutions to a wisdom “school,” there is little controversial in speaking of the didactic character of vv. 2–3. A call to transmit a previously unfamiliar story implies instruction; the transmission of it through the generations implies tradition learned; and 25.  The stipulated responsibility to transmit this story justifies distinguishing ‘the elders’ as the people’s leaders, over against the hoi polloi, ‘all the inhabitants of the land’ (A. K. Müller 2008, 30–31). Nothing in the immediate context commends construing ‫ הארץ‬as ‘the earth’ and finding here a footing for a universal “Day of the Lord” (pace Müller, ibid.).

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the requirement to transmit it suggests some pedagogical relevance to the story. Joel’s story can justifiably be labeled didactic in its intent. Jeremias astutely observed that the overturn of the agricultural disaster “does not yet, however, signal the removal of the deadly ‘Day of Yahweh’ lying behind the distress” (2007, 12), since a subsequent generation must submit themselves via a cultic assembly to escape annihilation. The fact that 2:2 describes the following scenario as non-repeatable, that 2:20 destroys the invaders, and that 2:27 promises assurance of the Lord’s presence in Israel to save them from humiliation might be read as a final disposal of the threat. However, such a reading would undercut the story’s abiding value for future generations. If the threat has passed, why is preserving its memory so urgent? I contend that Jeremias’s detection of a pedagogical aim of the narrative is fulfilled only in Joel chapter 3, which will be the focus of the next chapter.

Chapter 4 Eschatology in the Book of Joel Joel 3:1 has long been considered the book’s fulcrum. Rabbinic interpreters, finding the Assyrian and Chaldean invaders in chapters 1–2, understood chapters 3–4 as forecasts of the subjugation of such foes in the Messianic age and interpreted the promised bestowal of the spirit as marking an era purged of the ‫( יצר הרע‬see above, p. 6). A similar reading lies behind Jerome’s dismissal of the claim by “the Jews” that Joel 4 forecasts their thousand years’ reign over the nations in Jerusalem (PL 25:986), with Gog and Magog dispatched by the Lord (PL 25:984). On the other hand, Ephrem equated the promised effusion of the spirit (3:1–2) and the omens in heaven and earth (v. 3) with events during the reign of Hezekiah, but also ones that “would occur again in the days of Zedekiah, and the days of Gog” (Assemani 1743, 249), the fate of the latter being the subject of chapter 4. Similarly, Theodoret (2006, 98) assigned the gathering of the nations in chapter 4 to a hostile coalition assembled by Gog after the exile. Ibn Ezra rebutted Rabbi Yehoshua’s interpretation of ‫והיה אחרי כן‬ (3:1) as auguring the messianic era, while Kimchi considered the portents of vv. 3–4 signs of a coming war with Gog, Magog, and their affiliates, who become the focus of chapter 4 (see above, p. 16). Wellhausen identified chapter 3 as the place where “prediction begins,” with the notion of the imminent Day of the Lord giving way to a “dogmatically fixed eschatology” that robs it of any threat, leaving only “an article of faith” (1892, 111–12). The bluntest epitome of this view is Barton’s verdict that “the rot sets in . . . where we have the telltale formula ‘Then afterward’,” introducing a chapter where “one image of postexilic Jewish eschatology follows another in no particular order” (2001, 13). Even if ‫ והיה אחרי כן‬is not a colorless temporal phrase marking chapter 3 as an expansion, it signals a temporal gap between the events narrated in chapters 1–2 and a new era. What role does this caesura play in the book? In what sense is chapter 3 eschatological? Did Wellhausen correctly 72

Eschatology in the Book of Joel

73

identify chapter 3 as giving way to a “dogmatically fixed eschatology” that reduces the Day of the Lord to “an article of faith”?

Scholarship on Chapters 3–4 after Wellhausen Diagnoses of chapters 3–4 as secondary have spotlighted contradictory assumptions between them and chapters 1–2. Although the features identified by Vernes (1872, 53–54) and Rothstein (1896, 333–34 n. 1) apply less to chapter 3 than to chapter 4, recent scholarship has marshaled more precise observations about what differentiates chapter 3 from 1–2 and has largely concurred with Plöger (1968) that it was inserted after chapter 4 was in place. These observations can be subsumed under four questions. 1.  Is chapter 3 a unified composition? Varied analyses of chapter 3 as composite have been offered: • Merx (1879, 17–18) found no intrinsic connection between vv. 1–2 and vv. 3–4 (which he labeled “an inherited piece of Jewish eschatology”), while he identified v.  5 as an independent statement rooted in Isaiah’s dogma of the inviolability of Jerusalem. • Bewer (1911, 123) viewed vv. 1–2, 3–4, and 5 as disconnected signs of “the approaching day of Yahweh” (compare Kapelrud 1948, 143; Fohrer and Sellin 1965, 470). • H.-P. Müller (1966, 242–43) observed that vv. 1–2, despite being addressed to the people, show no interest in their circumstances, while vv. 3–4 are not addressed to the people, and v. 5 abandons the pretense of divine speech. Comparably, Jepsen (1938, 86) regarded v. 4 as having already left behind divine address and attributed both it and v. 5 to an “Apokalyptiker.” • Robinson regarded v. 1 as a poetic fragment to which the prose sentence of v. 2 was added (1964, 65–66), while labeling vv. 3–4 “an apocalyptic fragment” that received “a prose expansion” in v. 5 (ibid., 67). • Barton (2001, 93) considered vv. 1–2 and vv. 3–5 distinct units, making it unlikely that the portents “are meant to follow the outpouring of the spirit . . . nor to precede them, for that matter” but are merely “another fragmentary prophecy of the end of time” (ibid., 97). Chapter 3 can be dissected into distinct units on formal grounds. Verses 1–2 are united by the inclusio ‫אשׁפוך את רוחי‬, by ‫ וגם‬at the start of

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v. 2, and by the parallel phrases ‫( על כל בשׂר‬v. 1) and ‫על העבדים ועל השׁפחות‬ (v. 2). The paired portents on earth (v. 3) and in heaven (v. 4) bind vv. 3–4, but distinguish them thematically from vv. 1–2. Meanwhile, the forecast of v. 5 can be read as independent of vv. 1–4. Are these simply fragments conjoined “in no particular order” (Barton 2001, 13) or do they form a literary whole, whatever their origins? Plöger (1968, 102) rejected proposals that chapter 3 comprises fragments, arguing that ‫ והיה‬at the outset of v. 5 introduces “a concluding explanation and summary of the veracious ideas already referred to” (cf. Dahmen 2001, 84). Similarly, Rudolph (1971, 73), noting the shift of speaker from the Lord to the prophet in v. 5, concluded that “the prophet expounds the word of the Lord from vv. 1–4.” This perception can be confirmed with the help of cognitive linguistics. The construction ‫ והיה‬+ N(oun) P(hrase) + yiqtol appears 35 times in the Bible, with all but one (Exod 33:7b) found in reported speech. The four appearances of this construction in Deuteronomy are embedded in lengthy speech units (12:11; 18:19; 20:11; 25:6), while each of the 30 remaining instances culminates a speech unit by drawing a consequence or inference from the preceding discourse (Troxel 2013b, 579). This construction’s functions and distribution constitute what cognitive grammarians term a ‘schema’: a recurring pattern of constituents that reflect an “entrenched cognitive routine” (Langacker 2008, 218; see Troxel 2013b, 580). The pattern of constituents in Joel 3:5 makes it a member of this schema, functioning to draw an inference from what precedes it: “Then what will happen is that all who call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered” (Troxel 2013b, 589–91). Although this inference could theoretically apply only to vv. 3–4, ‫ ונתתי‬at the outset of v. 3 links vv. 3–4 to vv. 1–2, since weqataltí verb forms are not temporal, per se, but signal succession from the preceding action (Joüon and Muraoka 2006, §119c, d). Accordingly, v. 5 ties together the statements of vv. 1–4: the prophetic abilities bestowed in vv. 1–2 are a tool for the people to interpret the omens of vv. 3–4 as presages of the Day of the Lord, thereby spurring them to “call on the name of the Lord” (so Rudolph 1971, 72–73; Wolff 1977, 68–69; Bosshard-Nepustil 1997, 281; Dahmen 1971, 79; Jeremias 2007, 41). Although it is possible that the author of vv. 3–5 utilized received tradition in vv. 1–2, it seems hypercritical to deny him vv. 1–2 simply because they are separable.1 1.  Wöhrle (2006, 423–24) infers that the shift from divine speech and the appearance of images found elsewhere in the book betray vv. 4–5 as a redactor’s adaptation of inherited tradition in vv. 1–3. However, the technical phrase ‫ יום יהוה‬does not necessarily exclude v. 4 from divine speech, while inferring that the use of images found elsewhere in Joel prove

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75

As I have argued elsewhere (Troxel 2013b, 589–90), the pre-verbal, nominalized clause ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא בשׁם יהוה‬is pragmatically marked for topic, inasmuch as it contextualizes the clause by implicitly referring back to those who have utilized the provided prophetic skills to interpret the signs, while ‫ ימלט‬provides the most salient information (focus).2 But who are these petitioners? That question must be subdivided. First, does ‫כל אשׁר‬ ‫ יקרא בשׁם יהוה‬imply that salvation no longer devolves on Israel as a whole, but is secured only by those individuals who choose to “call on the name of the Lord”? Second, how is that group related to the ‫ כל בשׂר‬of v. 1? Does ‫ כל בשׂר‬imply that salvation is universally available? 2.  Who constitute ‫?כל אשׁר יקרא בשׁם יהוה‬ A frequent claim is that whereas Joel 1–2 assume that all Israel will be delivered, 3:5 posits salvation only for those who confess allegiance to the Lord. Although Bewer identified the ‫ כל בשׂר‬who receive the spirit as Jews, he opined that ʹ ‫“ כל אשׁר יקרא‬is not every Jew simply because he is a Jew, but every God-fearing Jew who trusts in Yahweh and calls on Him for help,” thereby implying “Israel’s purgation” (1911, 123–24).3 Plöger detected that already in 3:1 “a hidden division of Israel is being prepared,” since “all Israel” (= ‫ )כל בשׂר‬can only be “the Israel that has responded to the eschatological faith” (1968, 103), in whom the ‫ רוח‬instills a confession that will save them. Similarly, Jeremias posited that the gift of the spirit to all Israel (= ‫ )כל בשׂר‬merely “makes possible, first and foremost, a way of deliverance” that must be activated through “liturgical confession” (1993, 39).4 On the other hand, Rudolph protested that “this relative sentence signifies the confessors of Yahweh religion as a whole and not some spiritual group within the chosen people” (1971, 73–74; similarly Bergler 1988, 302 n. 42), while Wolff maintained that Joel claims to have “led endangered Jerusalem to a new confession of loyalty to Yahweh” (1977, 68, my italics).5 Although this debate centers on whether ʹ ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא‬is distributive—“every/each one who calls”—or global—“all who call”—no vv. 4–5 to be redactional implies that their author was incapable of composing anything (namely, vv. 1–3) not conforming to diction elsewhere in the book. 2. For discussion of preposed phrases and pragmatic marking, see Troxel 2013b, 584–87. 3. Although Bewer ranked much of chapters 3–4 supplements by an inferior hand, he considered 3:1–4a, 4:2a, and 4:9–14a to derive from Joel (1911, 51–52). Thus, he regarded ‫ כל בשׂר‬as original to Joel, but ʹ ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא‬as part of an expansion. 4.  Bosshard-Nepustil (1997, 281), Dahmen (2001, 83), and A. K. Müller (2008, 20) have argued that chapter 3 was composed to answer the question “Who can withstand the Day of the Lord?” (2:11) by assigning the means of escape to the individual’s decision. 5. An expansive meaning for ´ʹ ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא‬was also assumed by Vernes 1872, 49; Kapelrud 1948, 142; H.-P. Müller 1966, 243.

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interpreter seems to have brought to bear on this debate discussion of the semantics of ‫כל‬. Linguistically, ‫ כל‬is a “universal quantifier,” attributing a property to all the members of a set: “All dogs bark”; “Every human requires nourishment.” A series of cross-linguistic studies by linguist David Gil established that languages having a universal quantifier (not all do) always have a simple quantifier, equivalent to “all” (1996, 108), but only a subset of those languages also have quantifiers like “every” and “each” that require a distributive meaning (ibid., 107). Nevertheless, languages that have only a simple quantifier (such as ‫ )כל‬can signal distributive meaning via pragmatics (illocutionary force). Naudé (2011), building on Gil’s work, correlated the semantics of ‫ כל‬in BH with the definiteness and quantity of the noun phrase.6 On the one hand, when ‫“ כל‬has scope over definite singular and plural countable nouns,” it is “specific and inclusive,” signifying “all” (ibid., 127–28). This criterion encompasses both mass nouns (denoting undifferentiated material), such as ‫‘( כל הארץ‬all the earth/land’), and count nouns in the plural, such as ‫‘( כל בני ישׂראל‬all the children of Israel’). On the other hand, when ‫“ כל‬has scope over indefinitive singular and plural nouns,” it is “nonspecific and implicitly inclusive” (ibid.), as exampled in 1 Sam 14:52: ‫וראה שׁאול כל אישׁ גבור וכל בן חיל ויאספהו אליו‬ And Saul took notice of every warrior and every valiant man and collected him to himself However, Naudé’s criteria become problematic when applied to Exod 1:22’s report: ‫ויצו פרעה לכל עמו לאמר כל הבן הילוד היארה תשׁליכהו וכל הבת תחיון‬ which Naudé (2011, 130) translates: Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live” Noting that all three nouns preceded by ‫ כל‬are singular and definite, he argues that “‫ כל‬in this construction functions as a collective quantifier and indicates ‘the totality of the individual members of the (specific) group of people (= Egyptians), sons and daughters (= that are born)’” (ibid.). Although “every son/daughter” marks “the totality of the individual members,” this English quantifier carries a distributive shade of meaning. If 6. Although Naudé’s primary concern is with cases when the quantifier follows its noun phrase, his observed functions of ‫ כל‬are valid when it precedes its noun phrase.

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77

we analyze definite article + grammatically singular noun in the latter two instances as designating species (so Joüon and Muraoka 2006, §139g), the illocutionary force of Pharaoh’s command concerns any particular Hebrew infant they meet, consistent with his instruction to the Hebrew midwives in v. 16: ‫אם בן הוא והמתן אתו ואם בת היא וחיה‬ if it is a son, you will kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live Although v. 16 uses indeterminate nouns to identify the infant’s gender in a hypothetical case, it sets policy that extends to each and every birth. Thus, “every boy” and “every girl” in v. 22 is simultaneously concerned with the class and the individual instance. A comparable example is 2 Sam 15:35, where David proposes that Hushai insinuate himself as spy in Abshalom’s palace to report on the king’s plans: ‫והיה כל הדבר אשׁר תשׁמע מבית המלך תגיד לצדוק ולאביתר הכהנים‬ Since ‫ הדבר‬is definite, we might translate ‫ כל הדבר‬as a comprehensive report: The procedure will be that all the matter that you hear from the king’s house you will tell to Zadok and Abiathar, the priests. Although at the clause level this polarity based on definiteness makes sense, the discourse setting problematizes it, inasmuch as vv. 34–36 implies that Hushai will commit serial espionage. A purely grammatical analysis suggests that ‫ הדבר‬denotes the “species or category,” but the broader context justifies translating ‫ כל‬as equally distributive: “every report.” The salient criteria include both formal markers and pragmatics. Particularly helpful is the role cognitive grammar allots quantifiers in its theory of semantics. Its fundamental principle is that context identifies which features from a word’s semantic field are foregrounded. Consider two sentences: “The car sped around the race track” and “The car carried the family from Detroit to Chicago.” In both, ‘car’ denotes a four-wheeled vehicle with an engine, capable of transporting people quickly. However, a car on a race course foregrounds concepts of power, danger, and high speed, whereas a car on a family trip foregrounds ideas of comfort, multiple occupants, and safety. Similarly, a clause like “all the city was attacked” foregrounds a unit, while the sentence “all the cities were attacked” foregrounds a set. On the other hand, “every city was attacked” foregrounds the individual cities that compose the set. The sentence “each city was attacked” also foregrounds

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individual cities, but the relationship differs: “every city” keeps the set in view, whereas “each city” foregrounds the individual city. Moving farther along the scale, “any city was attacked” implies a set from the individual cases. This range of meanings is available via ‫כל‬, with a noun’s definiteness playing a key, but not exclusive, role. For example, Cain’s complaint about his punishment in Gen 4:14 reads: ‫הן גרשׁת אתי היום מעל פני האדמה ומפניך אסתר והייתי נע ונד בארץ‬ ‫והיה כל מצאי יהרגני‬ Consider that you drive me today from the land, and from your presence I will be hidden, and I will be a wanderer and vagabond in the earth. And the consequence will be that all/everyone who find/s me will kill me. I offer both a simple and a distributive meaning for ‫כל‬, but neither is satisfactory. The set implied by ‫( כל מצאי‬whose 1cs suffix makes the verbal noun definite) comprises those who might happen upon Cain. Nevertheless, Cain’s fear is not that every person who meets him will murder him: one will suffice. His apprehension is that, deprived of the Lord’s protection, he will die at the hands of an unidentified (but specific) member of this set. With this foregrounded aspect in mind, we might well translate ‫כל‬ ‫ מצאי‬with ‘any given person who meets me (might kill me)’. In Joel 3:5, ʹ ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא‬restricts salvation to those who call upon the name of the Lord. Although the quantifier has scope over a phrase equivalent to a grammatically singular noun, there is ambiguity over whether that phrase is definite or indefinite. Clauses headed by ‫ כל אשׁר‬and followed by a verb appear 303× in the Bible, with the ‫ כל אשׁר‬phrase serving as the object of the verb in the preponderance of cases. Especially frequent are the phrases ‫‘ כל אשׁר עשׂה‬everything he did’ (84×) and ‫כל אשׁר צוה‬ ‘everything he commanded’ (61×), both of which are always definite, as are all other cases in which ‫ כל אשׁר‬is direct object. Only 43× does ‫כל אשׁר‬ serve as the subject of the main clause (typically in a compound subject),7 and in a few instances it could be indefinite, but such judgments are often complex. For example, in Josh 2:19a, after the spies instruct Rahab to gather her parents, siblings, and dependents into her house before the city falls, they admonish her: 7.  Gen 6:17; 7:8, 22; 11:6; 20:7; 31:21; 46:1; 47:1; Lev 6:11, 20; 11:32, 33, 35; 14:36; 15:11, 20; 18:29; 27:9, 32; Num 16:33; 18:13; 19:14, 16, 22; 30:10; Deut 8:13; Josh 2:19; 6:17; 1 Sam 9:6; 2 Kgs 20:17 (= Isa 39:6), 19; Ezek 47:9; Joel 3:5; Zeph 3:7; Pss 96:12; 115:8; 135:18; Job 2:4; Ruth 2:11; Qoh 3:14; Ezra 10:14; 2 Chr 15:13.

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‫והיה כל אשׁר יצא מדלתי ביתך החוצה דמו בראשׁו ואנחנו נקים‬ And what will happen is that every-/anyone who exits the doors of your house outside, his blood will be on his head, while we will be innocent. The fronted noun phrase ‫ כל אשׁר יצא‬designates an unquantified subset of Rahab’s family as a hypothetical case. This might lead us to regard ‫כל אשׁר‬ ‫ יצא‬as indefinite and adopt the translation ‘anyone who’. However, to this case is juxtaposed an alternative in the second half of the verse: ‫וכל אשׁר יהיה אתך בבית דמו בראשׁנו אם יד תהיה־בו‬ And every-/anyone who shall be with you in your (the) house, his blood will be upon our head if a hand lands upon him. As in the first instance this involves a fronted (pre-verbal) phrase. The contrast between these hypothetical cases makes each case paradigmatic, foregrounding not individuals qua individuals, but as representatives of sets. Each example is definite by virtue of its deictic role, so that we might translate ‘all those who leave’ over against ‘all those who remain.’ Discourse pragmatics determines the force of ‫ כל‬in such clauses. Similarly, whether ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא‬in Joel 3:5 is indefinite (‘anyone who calls’) depends on what the context foregrounds. And given that the construction at the outset of v. 5 appears to draw an inference from vv. 1–4, they provide the context. But they also carry a crux: the meaning of ‫כל‬ ‫ בשׂר‬in v. 1. 3.  Who are ‫?כל בשׂר‬ Despite the longstanding consensus that ‫ כל בשׂר‬designated Jews,8 Kimchi and Abarbanel considered ‫ כל בשׂר‬to signal that all humanity would benefit from the ‫רוח‬, even if prophetic abilities would be restricted to Jews. Similarly, Hulst (1958, 49) urged that because every other instance of ‫כל‬ ‫ בשׂר‬designates all humanity or all living beings, Joel 3:1a requires a similar meaning. Dahmen (2001, 80) and Wöhrle (2006, 425) accepted Hulst’s argument and, like Kimchi and Abarbanel, distinguished between the effusion of the spirit on all humanity in v. 1a and the assignment of prophetic 8.  Acts 2:39; R. Tanḥuma [Num. Rab. xv:25]; Merx (1879, 17); Marti (1904, 136); Bewer (1911, 123); Kapelrud (1948, 131); Plöger (1968, 103); Rudolph (1971, 71); Wolff (1977, 67); Jeremias (1993, 35; 2007, 42); Crenshaw (1995, 165); Barton (2001, 96); A. K. Müller (2008, 207 n. 21).

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abilities in v. 1b.9 Dahmen (2001, 80) found a commissioning of Israel “to impart the knowledge of God to the peoples in Jerusalem, on Mount Zion,” while Wöhrle (2006, 425–26) detected a distinction between “your sons,” “your daughters,” “your old men,” and “your young men” who engage in prophecy (v. 1) and “the slaves and the maidservants” who also receive the spirit (v. 2) but are not Israelites (compare Bergler 1988, 302). However, Dahmen’s uncertainty about whether 3:5 allows deliverance for the nations (2001, 87) and Wöhrle’s failure to specify a role for Israel’s prophets in the chapter raise the question of what purpose this distinction would serve in the discourse. Wöhrle’s contention that the articular nouns ‫ על העבדים ועל השׁפחות‬leave behind the force of the pronominal suffixes of “your sons,” “your daughters,” etc. is tenuous, since the article can bear the force of a pronoun already explicit in the context (see Waltke and O’Connor 1989, 13.5.1e; Joüon and Muraoka 2006, §137 f2). Given the frequency of the anarthrous pair ‫ עבדים ושׁפחות‬to designate a class (Gen 30:43; Deut 28:68; 2 Kgs 5:26; Isa 14:2; Jer 34:16; Qoh 2:7; Esth 7:4; 2 Chr 28:10), it is difficult to detect a force for the article here other than marking the same definiteness as the preceding pronominal suffixes.10 Despite the fact that this would the only time ‫ כל בשׂר‬implies a set narrower than ‘all humanity’, Bewer’s summation remains cogent: “All flesh may mean all mankind, and we should interpret it thus, if the following context did not restrict it to the Jews” (1911, 123). In fact, understanding ‫ כל בשׂר‬as hyperbolic for all Judeans parallels the narrator’s use of a semantic play in 2:17’s appeal to the shame that will attach to the Lord if he fails to protect his client people (see Tucker 2007, 474; compare Hobbs 1997, 501–3): ‫בין האולם ולמזבח יבכו הכהנים משׁרתי יהוה ויאמרו חוסה יהוה על עמך‬ ‫ואל תתן נחלתך לחרפה למשׁל בם גוים למה יאמרו בעמים איה אלהיהם‬ Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the servants of the Lord, implore with tears: “Take pity, Lord, on your people and do not surrender your possession to disgrace ‫ למשׁל בם‬the nations. Why should those among the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’” The phrase ‫ למשׁל בם‬has proved an interpretive crux. Wolff (1977, 52), Bergler (1988, 86 n. 85), and Wöhrle (2006, 398–99 n. 18) asserted that ‫ משׁל בם‬must mean ‘rule over’, since that is 9.  Hagedorn (2011, 269) judged the scope of ‫ כל בשׂר‬to be determined by ‫כל אשׁר‬ ʹ ‫ יקרא‬in v. 5, which allows that at least “part of the people” would find deliverance. 10.  In Jer 34:11 the articular pair ‫ וישׁבו את העבדים ואת השׁפחות‬correlates with the relative clause ‫אשׁר שׁלחו חפשׁים‬.

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81

the meaning of ‫ ב‬+ ‫ משׁל‬elsewhere. However, as Rudolph (1971, 53) observed, the meaning ‘take up a proverb against’ is supported by the divine pledge not to let his people be a ‫‘ חרפה‬disgrace’ among the nations in v. 19 (so also Barton 2001, 82–83; A. K. Müller 2008, 108), and the narrator may well have exploited the ambiguity (Crenshaw 1995, 143), preserving the association of disgrace with domination.11 The narrator’s use of that wordplay supports a perception that he also used ‫ כל בשׂר‬hyperbolically for the bestowal of the spirit on all Judeans, which is also the point of the merisms ‘your sons and your daughters, your elders . . . your young men, servants and maidservants’. This accent on all the people echoes 2:16’s summons of elders and children, suckling babes, even bride and groom from their nuptial privacy, so that all Jerusalem’s denizens might offer petition at the temple. Similarly encompassing is the summons in 1:5–14 to drunkards (v. 5), the city (v. 8), ploughmen (v. 11), and priests (v. 13) to lament, with the latter group ordered to convene an assembly of all the land’s inhabitants (v. 14). The only path to deliverance that chapters 1–3 recognize is all the people beseeching the deity at the temple (compare Jeremias 1993, 41). When v. 5 draws together the strands of vv. 1–4, ´ʹ ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא‬echoes the hyperbolic ‫ כל בשׂר‬of v. 1. Positing that those who call on the name of the Lord are not coextensive with those who receive mantic powers in vv. 1–2 must interpret the quantifier ‫ כל‬against the context. It would be equally sophistic to divine such a distinction among those addressed in 2:16, reasoning that the summons could not compel everyone to gather, even though the divine speech that follows hints at no division between those who found salvation and those who did not. In both chapters, those who receive salvation are coextensive with those prodded to supplicate the Lord. Accordingly, we can translate ‫ כל אשׁר יקרא בשׁם יהוה ימלט‬with ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved,’ with ‘everyone’ foregrounding the set rather than its components. ‘Calling on the name of the Lord’ remains the only path to salvation, but the mantic powers bestowed on all the people will prod them to do so. 4.  Why does the form of prophecy change? Chapter 3’s scenario depicts prophecy differently than chapters 1–2, where a prophetic figure must decode the calamities of locusts and drought to expose a portent of the impending Day of the Lord (1:15). The idea that the people would no longer require a prophet for this purpose has suggested a gulf between chapters 1–2 and chapter 3. 11.  Equally attesting his use of paronomasia is the homonymic wordplay on ‫ הובישׁ‬in 1:10–11 (Crenshaw 1995, 100; Jeremias 2007, 16).

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Redditt epitomized the problem by noting that 3:1–2 implies that prophecy “would no longer be limited to the elite, but would be poured out on all classes” (1986, 233). Such a “‘democratized’ view of prophecy” (ibid.) recalls Moses’ wish that all the people might be prophets, endowed with the Lord’s ‫( רוח‬Num 11:29), as was noted by R. Tanḥuma, son of R. Abba, in Num. Rab. xv:25. However, the loosing of prophecy from an office undermines the role assumed by the prophetic voice in chapters 1–2 (Jeremias 1988, 96). However, even if this represents a change “scarcely imaginable in the minds of central prophets” (Redditt 1986, 233), the inference that this conception of prophecy in the future would have been inconceivable for the voice of chapters 1–2 is disputable. On the one hand, the problem of defining the range of social locations and concerns of prophets in ancient Israel urges caution about decreeing what stance a particular functionary would or would not have assumed (Meyers and Meyers 1993, 375). A prime example arises from Micah’s contrast of his own words with those of ‫הנביאים‬, for whom he forecasts failure (Micah 3:5–7). Likewise, Zech 13:2–6, introduced by the formula ‫( נאם יהוה צבאות‬its only appearance in Zechariah 12–14), forecasts the removal of prophets from the land and foresees parents putting to death a child who practices prophecy for having spoken “falsehood (‫ )שׁקר‬in the name of the Lord.” Although the latter might suggest that these are “false prophets” (compare Jer 14:14), because Zech 13:2–6 “contains the highest density of quotations and allusions to prophetic writings in Zech 12–14,” the anticipated annihilation of those wearing a ‘hair mantle’ and bearing ‘wounds’ might have in view oral prophecy, now regarded as inferior to written prophecy (Lange 2005, 184; compare Steck 1991, 42; Nissinen 2006, 36). More significant in evaluating Joel 3’s “democratization” of prophecy is the narrative structure of chapters 1–3. The prophetic voice in chapters 1–2 belongs to a character in the story who, from the viewpoint of the narrator, is part of the backdrop against which the Lord promises that one day all the people will detect and decode signs of the the Day of the Lord on the horizon. From that vantage point, those called on to transmit the story in 1:2–3 are no more the implied audience than are those called to lament disaster in 1:5–14. Rather, the implied audience stands in the time envisioned by 3:1. This audience is assured that they, also, can face the Day of the Lord, because they will have mantic powers to foresee it so that they, like those alerted by the prophet in 2:1–17, can find shelter by “calling on the name of the Lord.” In this sense, the Mosaic ideal of democratized prophecy (Num 11:29) might lie closer to the heart of

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the narrator than the image of the solitary prophet that he employs to establish the precedent for finding deliverance from the Day of the Lord. Only if we assume that the role of the prophet in chapters 1–2 reflects the author’s view of prophecy can we conclude that chapter 3 violates his ideological tolerances.

The Contribution of Chapter 3 to the Book of Joel The feature of chapter 3 most significant for the book is the foundation given for the promise in v. 5a: an established oracle introduced with ‘as the Lord has said’: ‘for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as the Lord has said’. Whether the oracle derives from Obad 18 or a tradition behind both passages (see Crenshaw 1995, 169–70; Barton 2001, 98), the author grounded the scenario of 3:1–5a in a venerable oracle that promised a ‫‘ פליטה‬delivered people’ in Jerusalem (v. 5bα), which (in light of “call on the name of the Lord”) seems metonymic for the temple as the place for petition, the same role it plays in chapters 1–2. If the narrator frames his story with a command to hand down an heirloom account of extraordinary circumstances in which the Day of the Lord was averted, together with a promise that a subsequent generation will be given the wherewithal to detect and find deliverance from a new form of the Day of the Lord, then 3:1–5bα is the heart of the story for its envisioned audience: the putative future generations who will hear the story. They can follow the same path their forebears took to find deliverance when threatened by the Day of the Lord.12 This account reinforces Wolff’s characterization of the book as having the Day of the Lord as its central theme (1977, 12) and, likewise, justifies Dahmen’s statement that “The book of Joel is—especially in chapters 3–4—broadly eschatological prophecy” (2001, 37), just as Rudolph considered the eschatology of chapters 3–4 so strengthened from chapters 12.  ‫ ובשׂרידים אשׁר יהוה קרא‬in 5bβ is most naturally read parallel to ‫בהר ציון ובירושׁלם‬ ‫תהיה פליטה‬, while its awkward syntax betrays it as an addition (Wolff 1977, 57; Rudolph 1971, 70; Jeremias 1993, 42–44; Wöhrle 2008, 424) that means to expand the ‫ פליטה‬beyond Jerusalem, whether in the diaspora (Wellhausen 1892, 212; Marti 1904, 137; Rudolph 1971, 74; Bergler 1988, 302–3) or among the nations, as “whom the Lord calls” might indicate (Jeremias 1993, 44–45; Dahmen 2001, 87; Beck 2005, 179–80). Also possible is Hagedorn’s proposal (2011, 267 n. 263) that the addition means to solidify the identification of ‘all flesh’ in v. 1 as the Jewish community, who alone are called. Wöhrle’s contention that ‘whom the Lord calls’ pointedly stands over against ‘everyone who calls’ so as to restrict membership in the ‫( פליטה‬2006, 428) does not due justice to the contrast marked by the front position of ‫ובשׂרידים‬, parallel to ‫בהר ציון ובירושׁלם‬.

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1–2 (1971, 89) that he treated them under the rubric of “Die Endzeit” (ibid., 69).13 Jeremias was more specific about what makes the eschatology of chapters 3–4 more robust than in 1–2. The first two chapters “speak primarily of experiences lying in the past . . . in which Israel’s life and death was at stake” (2007, 4), even if the Day of the Lord transcends the locust plague (ibid., 6), just as “2:18–27 contains elements of salvation that exceed the reversal of the agricultural distress” (ibid., 7). By contrast, chapters 3–4 leave behind any opacity to announce “‘eschatological’ events in the strong sense, that is, acts of God that introduce his future, aim at Israel’s well-being, and as such are conclusive, unique and irrevocable” (ibid., 4). Behind this discussion lies a history of characterizing the book as eschatological. In proposing that the book better fit a post-exilic than a preexilic context, Vatke (1835, 462–63 n. 1) referred to its use of the Day of the Lord as a “fixed expectation” that bears a sense of “transcendence and approaches the later view of world judgment (Joel 3:4; Zech 14:4–7).” He did not mean this disparagingly, however, for he regarded the post-exilic era as the zenith of Israel’s religious development, producing a synthesis of the cultic and the prophetic (ibid., 552–53). On the other hand, Wellhausen, despite confessing “to have learned best and most” from Vatke (1892, 13), regarded the post-exilic period as the tragic triumph of Torah over prophecy (ibid., 398). Jeremiah was “the last of the prophets: those who came after him were prophets only in name” (ibid., 403), merely reflecting on and elaborating the oracles of the true prophets (ibid., 404). Wellhausen’s adoption of Vatke’s judgment infused a derogatory tone in his description of the book as “dogmatically fixed eschatology” that reduces the day of the Lord to “an article of faith” (ibid., 211, my italics). Duhm also considered eschatology a late development in Israel’s religion. Although he credited Isaiah with “the creation of eschatology” (1892, 9) by insisting that salvation could occur only by a divine act after the present order has been destroyed (ibid., 47–48), he relegated Isaiah’s anticipation of a new Davidic ruler to private speculations that were not part of his public proclamation (Fullerton 1922, 19). As benign a view of eschatology as this might suggest, Duhm’s earliest comments on Joel align it with the “particularistic” and “more narrow-minded” bent of post-exilic prophecy (1875, 323). His later reassessment decreed 2:18–4:27 a late 13.  Rudolph argued that Joel, having found that he misinterpreted the agrarian crisis as harbinger of the Day of the Lord, composed chapters 3–4 as a revised proclamation of the Day of the Lord based on the promise that Israel would be forever secure (2:27) and the fearful day of the Lord directed against the nations (1971, 79).

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appendix of a “thoroughly apocalyptic character” that displayed the “base rhetorical style” of the “synagogal preachers” (1911, 187), whence the “Day of the Lord” motif was insinuated into 1:15 and 2:1d–2b (ibid., 185). Similarly, Bewer (1911, 64) attributed references to “the Day of the Lord” to an inferior editor whose mind “was full of eschatological thoughts and phrases,” subsequently branded by Jepsen as “der Apokalyptiker” (1938, 86). Such low esteem of ‘eschatology’ in Joel is intelligible within the history of the term’s use. It first appeared in a sixteenth-century dogmatic theology by Abraham Calovius, who coined Eschatologia sacra as the rubric for death, resurrection, the last judgment, and the consummation of all things (Fahlbusch 2001, 122). By the mid-nineteenth century, the term was broadly appropriated to treat topics like heaven, the immortality of the soul, and “the imminent end of the world” (ibid.). Its wide adoption within biblical scholarship of the nineteenth century spurred Greßmann (1905, 1) to urge its restriction to “the complex of ideas . . . that relate to the end and renewal of the world.” After early discussions of eschatology in the Hebrew Bible treated it as if it were a uniform concept (Sæbø 1992, 322), von Rad’s differentiation of the prophets according to their reliance on discrete traditions brought attention to its different and changing forms (1962–65, 2:322–23). He rejected equating ‘eschatology’ with expectations for the future generally, positing that eschatology exists only where a deep fissure stands between a present state of affairs and a new one (ibid., 115). In particular, eschatology occurs when traditions of the Lord’s actions on Israel’s behalf are declared “null and void,” so that even if the Lord’s future acts on behalf of Israel are described as analogous to his past acts, they supplant the old as the foundation of Israel’s salvation (ibid., 118). However, not all expectations of a radically new era hinge on replacing or reconfiguring Israel’s traditions. The expectations of death only at a ripe old age (Isa 65:20), of peace between peoples (Isa 2:4), or of the coexistence of natural enemies among the animals (Isa 11:6–9) rest on more general ideas about injustices and deficiencies in the current ordering of life. Israel’s eschatology is rooted in the conception (endemic to the ancient Near East) of the world as an equilibrium won by the deity’s triumph over forces of chaos (Collins 1998, 129). Eliminating the inequities and miseries that mar life requires that the deity again vanquish chaos. Although the concept of a new era birthed by a definitive change of affairs seems essential to ‘eschatology’, the notion that this involves the “end of the world” or of history does not accord with the range of expectations for most texts regarded as “eschatological,” and certainly none in the

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latter prophets (Lindblom 1953, 80). In particular, defining ‘eschatology’ etymologically as “study of the end” ill fits texts that have generally been called ‘eschatological’, inasmuch as such tableaus typically look beyond a looming crisis to an ideal world beyond it (Collins 1974, 27). Even so, it is possible to overstate the fissure between a present age and a new one, as does von Rad’s assertion that the eschatological break “goes so deep that the new state . . . cannot be understood as the continuation of what went before” (1962–65, 2:115). Eschatological projections are never so discontinuous with the present as to yield an entirely new world, nor are they so comprehensive as to enable schematic description. The depth of the caesura between present and future varies. Vriezen (1953, 226) proposed an evolutionary typology beginning with a “pre-eschatological period,” when Israel’s hopes were concerned not “with the renewal of the world but with Israel’s greatness.” It was the prophets of the eighth century who brought “the period of awakening eschatology” (ibid., 227), inasmuch as they stressed that Israel’s restoration could come about only “as a miracle of God,” as did Isaiah of Jerusalem (ibid., 207). A strain of “actualizing eschatology” was introduced by Deutero-Isaiah (ibid., 227), who did not merely envision the coming of divine rule, but heralded as at the doorstep a salvation “that far transcended what may be called a historical event” (ibid., 217). Only in the next period, however, do we find a “transcendentalizing eschatology” that conceives of salvation coming “either spiritually in heaven or after a cosmic catastrophe in a new world” (ibid., 225). Even within this stage of development— which he also dubbed “the apocalyptic period of dualistic eschatology” (ibid., 227)—earlier forms of eschatology perdured (ibid., 225). Collins (1974, 30–37) offered a more precise delineation of “apocalyptic eschatology,” based on the fact that only apocalypses envision the transcendence of death, whether through resurrection, post-mortem survival, or participation in the life of the angels during one’s lifetime. Although Joel’s expectations do not fit that scenario, the scholarly consensus that they carry charged expectations raises the question of how to describe the book’s place among the types of eschatological scenarios in the prophetic books.

Eschatology in Joel 1–3 Collins labeled the type of eschatology found in Joel (as well as Isaiah 24–27) “cosmic eschatology” (2003b, 48), over against the kind of “national, this-worldly, eschatology” prominent in earlier forms of prophecy,

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but evident also in the post-exilic works of Haggai and Zechariah 1–8 (2003a, 82). While doubting that cosmic eschatology “is peculiar to the post-exilic period,” he detected “a difference of degree in the prominence of this kind of eschatology after the exile” (2003b, 48). He classified Joel as “cosmic eschatology” because its “description of the Day of the Lord is difficult to correlate with any historical event and seems to envision an end of history as we know it,” much as Isa 24–27 “speaks of God swallowing death and killing Leviathan,” while providing “few hints as to its historical reference” (ibid.). Admitting dissatisfaction with the rubric of “cosmic eschatology,” he posited that “the way forward is to study the specific texts and try to nuance the distinctions” (ibid., 48–49), which is what I will attempt here for Joel. It is worth recalling that early readers of Joel showed little interest in his ‘Day of the Lord’ as a future event. When Peter characterized Joel’s forecast as pertinent to “the last days” (Acts 2:17), it was to assert that its promises had been fulfilled in the events his audience had witnessed (v. 16). As Joel forecast, the Spirit had been poured out and salvation had dawned for “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord” (v. 21), for “everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (v. 39). Joel’s “great and glorious day of the Lord” had arrived. Targum Jonathan’s translation of Joel 2:1 asserted that the Day of the Lord has arrived, while its translation of 2:3 equated it with punishment for the wicked. Although the rabbis found in Joel occasional allusions to conditions in the age to come (see above, pp. 6–7), the only indication of a turn of the era they observed was that the bestowal of ‫( רוחי‬3:1) would remedy the absence of the divine presence, once the ‫ יצר הרע‬had been uprooted (Deut. Rab. vi:14). The patristic commentators shared a conviction that Joel’s forecasts had already been realized, whether in assaults by Assyria, Babylon, and the Scythians or in the Gospel message. They did not detect in the Day of the Lord anything like a culmination of history. Jerome described it as judgment equally “fulfilled in each person on the day of death (hoc in singulis die mortis impletur)” (PL 25:965). On the other hand, he (along with Theodoret and Cyril) identified the Day of the Lord in 1:15 as the divine wrath expended on Jerusalem through their enemies. Although Ibn Ezra reported the interpretation of R. Yehoshua that ‫ והיה אחרי כן‬in 3:1 introduces descriptions of the messianic era, he, Rashi, Kimchi, and Abarbanel shied away from reading chapters 3–4 as portraying a future ideal age. Luther and Calvin were equally oblivious to a grand eschatological scheme in these chapters. Calvin equated the Day of the

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Lord with Christ’s kingdom throughout time, while Luther saw in chapter 4 divine judgment enacted through the spread of the Gospel. Accordingly, perceptions of a pervasive eschatological tenor in Joel are attested miserly before the nineteenth century, when biblical studies adopted the term ‘eschatology’ from theology. Although the relative novelty of this theologoumenon prompts the question of whether its use for Joel is anachronistic, we must recall that while the history of interpretation is instructive for situating our reading, it is not determinative. Thus, for instance, nearly all scholars have jettisoned the perception that the four classes of locusts represent Israel’s foes, making available alternative explanations of how the book’s oracles function. Recognizing that ‘eschatology’ is a theological category that became attractive in the nineteenth century does not discredit its heuristic value in studying prophetic oracles, although it does require that we identify what in the book we might label ‘eschatological’. The use of ‘eschatology’ must be judged by how its definition fits the figures and themes in the book. It is reasonable to conclude that Joel’s scenarios are invigorated by the Day of the Lord motif that is laced with some sense of transcendence, as Collins suggested (2003b, 48). Whereas chapter 1 begins with commonplace events of a locust infestation and drought, these are said to be merely harbingers of the Day of the Lord (v. 15). When 2:1 sounds the alarm over the approaching Day of the Lord, it describes an army massing to attack and bearing an unusually fearsome mien. And yet, its imagery is not fully accounted for by describing a cognitive blend of the source domains of an army and locusts. The other source domain that affects the scene described in 2:1–11 is the allusion to the divine army summoned for attack in Isaiah 13.14 But whereas Isa 13:2–8 bespeaks an ominous force that the Lord assembles ‘from the ends of the earth’, Joel’s blend robs the audience of any humanoid imagery for its army, just as the depiction of the Lord as king served by attendants in Isaiah 6 simultaneously prohibits the audience from simply picturing a human king and his court. Joel 2’s use of “the fantastical” makes use of “cosmic” imagery, as Collins observed (2003b, 48). Is eschatology simply a label for a sharpened use of themes? Sæbo, for instance, observed that whereas Amos and Isaiah used the Day of the Lord to designate imminent events, postexilic prophecy adopted it as “the nucleus around which crystallizes a complex eschatological drama” (1990, 31). The evolutionary implication of this model underlies, in fact, some descriptions of Joel’s eschatology as symptomatic of its compositional history. 14.  For my rebuttal to Wöhrle’s dispute of this allusion see Troxel 2015, 166–67.

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Roth (2005, 102) claimed that ‘the Day of the Lord’ in the earliest layer of Joel 1–2 lacked eschatological tenor due to a “de-eschatologizing” (Enteschatologisierung) of the phrase to make it serviceable in instruction about how to reverse a calamity. A subsequent editor fashioned chapter 4 (minus vv. 4–8, 18–21) as a “Textcollage zum Tag Jhwhs” in order to restore to it its proper eschatological tenor (ibid., 71). Chapter 3 was added subsequently as a transition from chapter 2 to chapter 4 (ibid., 103). This, however, leaves vague the character of chapter 3, as does Macchi’s description of chapter 4 as an “eschatological schema of a general judgment of the nations” (2009, 180), while simply attributing chapter 3 to “later rereadings” (ibid., 172). Deist, on the other hand, described Joel as a compendium of different theologies of the Day of the Lord, assigning its role in 1:2–20 and 2:18–27 to a polemic against the Baal cult, while 2:1–17, inserted later, embellishes the Day of the Lord with “imagery drawn from the theology of theophany” (1988, 69). However, only with the addition of Joel 3 was eschatology introduced by situating the Day of the Lord in the distant future (ibid., 71). The subsequently subjoined chapter 4 redirected the military assault of chapter 2 against the nations (ibid., 73), transposing “the theology of the Day of the Lord contained in the first half of the book” into “apocalyptic thought” (ibid., 74). The various hypotheses about chapter 3 as a bridge between 1–2 and 4 (beginning with Plöger, 1968) acknowledge that 1–2 and 3 are conceptually closer to each other than either is to 4, even though chapter 3 seems to sharpen the portrayal of the future. Nevertheless, Beck’s surmise (2005, 182) that the outpouring of the Spirit “shows an eschatological perspective that was not yet palpable previously in chapters 1–2” and Dahmen’s identification of an “interval of eschatological expectation” between ‫והיה‬ ‫ אחרי כן‬in v. 1 and ‫ לפני בוא יום יהוה‬in v. 4 that segments the future into “discrete inner-historical phases within which God’s salvation and God’s judgment are realized” (2001, 37) highlight perceptible shifts from chapter 2. The promise of the outpoured spirit that equips each person to detect the next approach of the Day of the Lord so as to engage appropriate cultic action crosses a threshold to an era when prophecy realizes Moses’ wish (Num 11:29). But if ‘eschatology’ entails a change from the status quo, it would seem that it already exists in chapter 2’s promises of regular rain that produces full threshing floors and overflowing wine vats (vv. 23–24) and the assurance of satiety that will forever thwart mockery by the nations by making the Lord’s presence ever evident (vv. 26–27). This seems not merely a temporary reversal of a previous plight, but the institution

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of a new, stable state of affairs, with no expectation that the calamities of 1:4–2:17 will be repeated. The promise of 3:1–5 certainly advances the deity’s pledge of continued well-being in 2:27. Although chapter 3 offers no automatic salvation, it assures that each and every Judean will be equipped to perceive the omens of a fresh instantiation of the Day of the Lord and enact the tried-and-true prophylaxis of cultic petition. Perhaps even more strikingly, there is no echo here of the uncertainty expressed by ‫‘ מי יודע‬who knows?’ in 2:14: salvation is assured for ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord’. This absence of doubt about the outcome merits a review of the rhetoric of 2:12–14. As Assis (2013, 139) notes, there is a tight interlacing of vocabulary in vv. 12–14 that links the prophet’s appeal to ‘rend your hearts’ with the Lord’s call to turn ‘with all your heart’ and coordinates the possibility of the Lord’s ‘turning’ with the ‘turning’ of the people. The desperation of this call is embodied in both ‫‘ וגם עתה‬and even now’ and the only appearance of ‫ נאם יהוה‬in the book. As Assis observes, the intrusion of the divine voice is particularly notable following the revelation of v. 11 that the army on the march is under the command of the Lord, who ‘sounds his voice before his army’ (ibid.). That the first voice heard is a divine invitation to turn is tacit assurance that repentance ‫בכל לבבכם‬ ‘with all your heart’ will be efficacious. The prophet appends as further motivation a confession of the Lord’s character: ‘For he is gracious and merciful, exceedingly patient and a paragon of loyalty, and ready to relent from the calamity [he has purposed]’ (2:13). As is widely acknowledged, the first two sets of paired words derive from Exod 34:6. To them is appended an assertion that the Lord is ‘ready to relent from calamity’ ‫ונחם על הרעה‬. The appearance of ‫והנחם על‬ ‫ הרעה‬in Exod 32:12 led A. K. Müller (2008, 123) to conclude that Joel “bound the hope in God’s repentance of Ex 32:12 with the mercy formula of Exod 34:6” (cf. Barker 2014, 155). However, ‫ נחם על הרעה‬is not peculiar to Exodus 32 and finds a better parallel in Jeremiah 18’s parable of the potter (Fishbane 1985, 346), where the Lord asserts that, if a nation he has pledged to uproot ‘turns from its evil’ (‫ מרעתו‬. . . ‫)ושׁב‬, ‘then I will relent from the calamity that I had plotted to do to it’ (‫ונחמתי על הרעה אשׁר‬ ‫חשׁבתי לעשׂות לו‬, Jer 18:8). Although the Lord’s acquiescence to Moses’ petition not to destroy his people in Exod 32:12–14 utilizes ‫נחם על הרעה‬, Joel 2:13’s claim that the Lord is willing to relent if the people repent stands closer to Jeremiah 18. The confession of the Lord’s mercy and goodwill addresses the pressing peril, for “even now” he stands ready to

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relent. All the more so, then, the exclamation, “Who knows? He may turn and relent,” seems out of place in the wake of these assurances. A common explanation of “Who knows?” is theological: this rhetorical question clarifies that “God remains always sovereign and does not allow himself to be restricted in his freedom” (Rudolf 1971, 59; compare Weiser 1985, 116; Stuart 1987, 252; Jeremias 2007, 32). For even though Joel’s characterization of God is “based on the past experiences of the covenant people time and time again . . . past experience is not an infallible guide to God’s future action” (Allen 1976, 81). This explanation usually invokes comparison of the question ‘Who knows?’ elsewhere. Crenshaw categorized the ten occurrences of ‫ מי יודע‬according to whether they entertain the possibility of a “response that will change the situation for human good” or assume that such a possibility is forfeit (1986, 275). Most similar to Joel 2:14 are 2 Sam 12:22 and Jonah 3:9. 2 Sam 12:22 is part of David’s answer to the question of why he fasted and pleaded for his son’s life as the child lay ill but resumed normal activities once he had died: “While the child was alive I fasted and wept, for I thought ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the child live.’” Despite the Lord’s decree of the child’s death (v. 14), David considered a petition for divine mercy a reasonable act, despite having no assurance that it would be effective. In Jonah 3:9 the king of Nineveh justifies his order for all people and animals to wear sackcloth and fast as tokens of repentance in response to Jonah’s proclamation of Nineveh’s impending destruction, with “Who knows? God may turn and relent.” Comparably, Zephaniah, after forecasting a “day of the Lord’s wrath” sweeping away all the earth’s inhabitants, without deliverance (1:18), offers a sliver of hope for “the humble of the land who do his commands,” if they “seek the Lord” in advance: “Perhaps (‫ )אולי‬you will be hidden on the day of the Lord’s wrath” (2:3). In each of these texts, “Who knows?”/“perhaps” expresses uncertainty about the outcome of an act. The audience of Joel 2:12–14 has received the Lord’s exhortation to “turn,” implying that doing so will be effective, and they have heard the prophet’s assurance that relenting from calamity is part of the Lord’s pedigree.15 For this circumstance, “Who knows?” cannot be chalked up to boilerplate language about divine sovereignty. Why should the prophet 15.  It is noteworthy that the author of Jonah, in reusing Joel 2:13–14 (Fishbane 1985, 345; Schart 1998, 288–89; Jeremias 2007, 107; A. K. Müller 2008, 128–34; pace Strazicich 2007, 152–53 and the agnosticism of Dozeman 1989, 209–18), separates the question from the creedal statement, making the latter Jonah’s touchstone for certainty that Nineveh would go unpunished.

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tender a last minute offer of escape on behalf of the deity (‫ )נאם יהוה‬and then append the caveat, “Of course, we don’t really know what the Lord will do”? However, if the implied audience is not those addressed in the world of the story, then “Who knows?” is not calibrated to caution the addressees within the story, but to create hesitation in the mind of the narratees. It is a literary conceit comparable to a “suspended note” in music that creates dissonance during a key change in the underlying harmony, drawing the hearer towards the expected resolution.16 Not only is the dissonance of “Who knows?” put to rest by the report of 2:18, but the Lord’s assurances of ongoing protection for his people (2:26–27) abrogate questions of whether the confession of the Lord’s mercy might prove unreliable in the future. Thus, the narrative culminates with the assurance that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But once again, if this assurance is already implied by the close of chapter 2, how is chapter 3 distinctly eschatological?

Joel 3 as ‘Eschatology’ Collins’s caution that passages labeled eschatological are seldom simply about the end of something, but look to what lies beyond it (1974, 27) is a salutary corrective to a definition that hews too closely to etymology. However, it is problematic to equate eschatology solely with what lies in an ideal future. The fissure of “the end” is the essential hinge of eschatology, without which there would be no “beyond it.” As in Joel 2, the threat on the horizon in Joel 3 is the Day of the Lord, a phrase roundly regarded to have made its earliest appearance in Amos 5:18, where it encodes popular anticipation of deliverance, an expectation that Amos refutes. Sæbø has argued (1992, 325) that focusing on Amos 5:18 as the font of prophetic eschatology diverts attention from the more likely root of it in Amos 8:1–2. Sæbø accepts that the Lord’s response to Amos’s report of seeing a basket of ‘summer fruit’ ‫—קיץ‬namely, that this signifies an ‘end (‫ )קץ‬for my people, Israel’—involves wordplay, but notes that its evident opaqueness (since it must be clarified with ‘I will no longer pass him by’) suggests that ‫ קץ‬was a “quotidian word” pressed into service to announce the end of divine patience with Israel (1992, 326). This amounts to ‘eschatology’, Sæbø argues, not because ‫ קץ‬fits etymologically, but because Amos an16.  The use of dissonance through a “suspended note” in compositions by Beethoven and Mozart (among others) is elucidated by Tommasini, 2014.

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nounces an unexpected fissure beyond which lies a radically altered world (ibid., 327). In support of his perception, Sæbø notes (1992, 328) that ‫ הקץ‬serves as a technical term in Ezek 7:2, where the prophet is ordered to proclaim ‘The end (‫ )הקץ‬is encroaching on the four corners of the earth’, upon which the Lord elaborates by saying, ‘Now is the end (‫ )הקץ‬upon you, and I will send my wrath against you and judge you according to your ways, and I will pay back to you all your abominations’ (7:3). In this case, ‫ הקץ‬seems to connote an event whose frightful and lethal character is already implied by ‫קץ‬, as the deictic force of the article suggests: a particular kind of end is on the horizon. Sæbø points also to Hab 2:3, where Habakkuk is given a ‘vision’ ‫חזון‬ to proclaim, with the reassurance that it “remains for the appointed time (‫ ”)למועד‬and “testifies to [or ‘pants for’] the end (‫ )לקץ‬and will not fail” (1992, 329). As a response to Habakkuk’s complaint about Babylon’s impudence, this reassurance confirms the approach of ‫ הקץ‬not as a vague date in the future, but as an appointed time that will bring deliverance. It is but a step further, Sæbø argues (ibid., 330), to Daniel, where ‫ קץ‬and ‫עת קץ‬ designate a crisis, a fissure between the era of suffering and that of divine rule that will bring vindication. In Joel, the Day of the Lord marks the most profound fissure possible. The story reveals that the Lord’s mercy and compassion will, nevertheless, transport those who call on him to a new security beyond that fissure. Eschatology does not first appear in chapter 3, because the divine speech of chapter 2 already “decisively, singularly, and irrevocably” (Jeremias 2007, 4) establishes Israel’s well-being; eschatology is the trajectory of Joel’s story. Neither does eschatology unfold in the disjointed sense proposed by Deist (1998), but it becomes progressively more apparent as the story takes its implied readership from a scene of agrarian crisis to the horizon of the Day of the Lord, described in transitory form (“whose like . . . will never again be through the ensuing years,” 2:2), through to its aversion by the assembly of Jerusalem’s people to petition the Lord at the temple. He responds by obliterating the threat he himself has brought and promises a prosperous and unmolested future, secured by his presence in Israel’s midst. Although it would be exaggeration to call this “boilerplate” eschatological language, it matches the type of promises in passages such as Amos 9:13–15 and Zeph 3:16–20. ‫ והיה אחרי כן‬situates the implied audience to hear a promise that outstrips this. When the Day of the Lord—averted but not disposed of once-andfor-all in chapter 2 (Jeremias 2007, 12)—makes its next appearance (as

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prophetic forecasts make clear that it must [ibid., 6; A. K. Müller 2008, 198]), they will be equipped to recognize its coming and reenact the solution the story shows tried and true. The form the Day of the Lord will take is not bound to the form it showed in the story of chapter 2, even as its precursors will not again be locusts and drought, but marvels in heaven and on earth. Nevertheless, Jerusalem’s inhabitants will find protection against it in the same act their ancestors employed. The attainment of salvation in Jerusalem will transport them across the supreme fissure imposed by the Day of the Lord. Here is eschatology sharpened beyond chapter 2.

Chapter 5 Joel and Genre Joel’s superscription provides the primary rubric for reading: it is a prophetic book. However, it differs from the collections of oracles, disputes, and narratives found in other members of the corpus, such as Amos and Hosea, whose construction and meanings redaction criticism has helped clarify. The way Joel is to be read is signaled through its use of narrative markers, its reuse of other passages, its creative activation of cognitive blends, and its employment of the fantastic. As in the cases of Jonah and Haggai, the shape and meanings of this work yield more readily to reading it as a composite narrative than to peeling back its putative accretions to find a parsimonious core. For all that Jerome got wrong, he correctly recognized Joel as narra­ tio. Joel’s exhortation of the audience to transmit a story of locusts (1:2–4) sets a frame for the reader, and 2:18 reinforces that frame as Joel narrates the outcome of the crisis. By characterizing his story as pertaining to events not “in your days or in the days of your ancestors” the prophet invites his audience to enter an unfamiliar world and simultaneously insinuates a distinction between his voice as narrator and voices within the story. Even though the story is characterized as outside the audience’s ken, the rubric “The word of the Lord that came to Joel” compels their consent to its validity, as does its reuse of already esteemed material. Invoking “the forms of rhetorical behavior which would be appropriate to its circumstances” (Frow 2015, 16), it gives an account of calamity described and addressed by a prophet speaking to the afflicted within the world of the story. The narrative is thoroughly prophetic. But Joel does more than tell a story: he summons his audience to take the story to heart. As Wolff noted, vv. 2–3 utilize “the ancient ‘call to receive instruction’ (Lehreröffnungsruf), a form especially popular in wisdom circles” followed by a “three-part commission to pass on the word of it from generation to generation” reminiscent of “the sapiential concern for the ongoing life of tradition” (1977, 20). These form-critical observations 95

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highlight the didactic overtones of the exhortation.1 The prophetic genre adopts the genre of instruction to introduce a story that constitutes a lesson to be learned and handed down. In 1:4, Joel sets a scene of agricultural calamity he characterizes as extraordinary, in the first instance, by dint of its onset at the mandibles of no fewer than four species of locusts. A hyperbolic marvel defamiliarizes a world otherwise familiar to the narratees. The calamitous consequences of this unusual infestation are detailed by the prophet within the story, exhorting varied groups to lament the loss of wine, crops, and vegetation, as well as the toll taken on livestock and, in particular, the temple. For this the book taps into another genre, that of the lament, whose recognition once prompted identification of Joel as a cultic prophet. The use of this genre presupposes a socio-rhetorical setting familiar to Israel’s descendants during the first millennium bce. The announcement that the Day of the Lord is near (1:15) signals that something more ominous is at the doorstep. Even if the currency of discourse about the Day of the Lord is attested by Amos 5, Zephaniah 1, and Isaiah 13, they depict it as a mere expectation. Chapter 2 announces its intrusion, attested by the sound of a shofar that evokes trembling at the horrible specter. A blend of the latent image of the locusts as agents of destruction with the image of a divinely led army (derived from Isaiah 13) conjures a phantasm of impending doom sponsored by the Lord. Only in vv. 12–17 does the story depict a world more familiar to the audience, in the prophetic call to turn before it is too late, summoning the whole community to the temple so that the priests might represent them in a petition for the deity’s mercy and the defense of his honor as their protector. It is at this point that the prophetic narrator resurfaces, reminding us of the pastness of both the calamity of chapter 1 and the horror of 2:1–11 by reporting the outcome of the people’s obedience to the exhortation to assemble. Although the format of community petition, followed by an oracular reassurance from the deity, would have been familiar to the audience, the content of the Lord’s promise correlates with events labeled unparalleled and unprecedented. The irreality of the scenario is extended through a shift of focus in the divine promise to a still later era when the Day of the Lord will recur, albeit signaled by novel precursors. Just as the impending Day of the Lord in 2:1–11 necessitated a petition for divine mercy, the forecast of its reappearance assumes that a similar remedy will 1.  The intermingling of subgenres is not a sign of contamination, but of the common practice of embedding instances of other genres within a primary genre to benefit from their established rhetorical effects (Frow 2015, 50–51).

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be used. Just as those Jerusalemites gathered en masse, so all its denizens in that era, equipped to recognize the omens of the Day, will gather at the temple to seek the Lord’s protection. In place of a call to remember the deity’s character in hopes that he will be merciful, this prospect is governed by a bona fide oracular guarantee of survivors in Jerusalem. The narrative’s attribute of “pastness” is important to its function, since it characterizes not only the disasters of chapter 1, the impending Day of the Lord that outstrips them, and the Lord’s promise to dispel their effects upon the people’s appeal, but also the short-term and long-term divine promises of 2:19b–3:5a. By implication, the promises of 2:19b–27 are considered a fait accompli in the world of the narrative, while the shift to a Day still future in 3:1 leaves open the question of its arrival vis-à-vis the audience. This, in turn, resonates with the initial mandate for Joel’s hearers to transmit the story to successive generations. The point of the story is not to commemorate deliverance experienced, particularly since it is placed within the brackets of “[not] in your days nor in the days of your ancestors” (1:2), but to provide instruction for a coming generation. In fact, the implied audience is not the putative auditors of Joel’s mandate but its beneficiaries, who will live in the indeterminate future when the Day of the Lord will again threaten. The story is for their advantage, as signaled by the allusion to the story of the locusts during the Exodus, when unrepeatable horrors resulted in deliverance for Israel. Joel’s story is just as foundational, as is indicated also by the only explicit citation of an oracle from outside the book (3:5), whose function is to underwrite the promise that all in Jerusalem, assembled to invoke the Lord’s name at the temple, will be saved. The fact that this citation breaks off the divine speech begun in 2:19b, that it stands at the story’s culmination, and that it applies to those in the indeterminate future argues that it is spoken not by the prophetic voice within the story but by the narrator who mandated transmission of the story and who resurfaced to introduce the divine speech of 2:19b–3:4. But why spin a story this elaborate if the oracle of 3:5 already had validity on its own? As noted previously, the application of “apocalyptic” to the book of Joel has proved inapt in light of we now know of apocalyptic as a genre. Nevertheless, there is a useful parallel between Joel and that genre, insofar as apocalypses seek to reassure their audiences that the world—whether in its underlying structure or in the march of history—makes sense when seen from a transcendent perspective (Collins 1998, 41–42). Joel’s purpose seems similar, although we have no way of knowing why the Day of

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the Lord became the vehicle to provide reassurance for its readers. Whoever added chapter 4’s scenario of the Day of the Lord directed against the nations provided one possible scenario in which such reassurance might be applied. It is also noteworthy that Joel, like the apocalypses, chooses to proclaim reassurance in the form of a story. Whether through the story of Enoch’s tour of heaven, revealing that the world has an order that is guaranteed by strictly enforced standards, or through Daniel’s visions that provide a reassuring tour of history culminating in the triumph of the wise, a narrative provides grounds for reassuring the audience. These parallels cannot support a claim that Joel is an apocalypse, since it lacks the sort of supernatural revelation, particularly with the aid of an angel, that is part of that genre’s “Gestalt structure” (Newsom 2007, 25). However, as noted in the preface to this book, the issue is not belonging to a genre but the use of “prototypical examples which serve as templates” for cognition (ibid., 24). Although I would not claim that Joel borrowed “prototypical examples” of apocalyptic, it could be said (in a limited sense) that Joel is one witness to templates that came to be part of the genre of apocalyptic. More significantly, Joel is a narrative laced with eschatology. Sæbø observed that in the post-exilic era “the announcement of salvation became increasingly pedagogically developed as didactic eschatology, even as –logia, in which periodization could occasionally take the form of a multi-phase drama, as proves to be the case particularly in Ez 38f., in the so-called Isaiah Apocalypse, Isa 24–27, and in Joel as well as Zech 12–14” (1992, 329). He correctly located Joel among works of “didactic eschatology” in its instruction of how to respond in the Day of the Lord, whose imminence can be divined by those furnished with special graces and whose prophylaxis is tried and true. Joel is a prophetic didactic narrative focused on the Day of the Lord anticipated as both a day of deliverance and a day of woe. It makes use of a variety of subordinate genres and resonances with other texts to provide reassurance for an unidentifiable primary audience that salvation awaits those in Jerusalem, as the Lord has promised. Speculation about the social location of the historical author or his intended audience seems fruitless. The confident citation of the oracle of 3:5b as the touchstone for the story reflects a period when the significance of oracles was plumbed. The phrase “just as the Lord has said” serves as a reminder that this scenario is rooted in a venerable divine promise. On the heels of all the other allusions and quotations of oracular material

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throughout the story, this explicit citation serves as an appropriate sockdolager. For the final time, the prophetic narrator steps into the audience’s view to tell them why they should take the story to heart. Although his story does not promise automatic salvation, it assures access to salvation for those assembled at the temple, inasmuch as the Lord has promised a ‫פליטה‬, a community of ‘the saved’, in Jerusalem.

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Index of Authors Abarbanel, Isaac ben Judah  13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 79, 87 Adriaen, M.  7 Ahlström, G. W.  xi, 28, 30, 55, 61 Allen, L. C.  28, 38, 52, 55, 61, 65, 91 Armitt, L.  63 Assemani, G. S.  8, 9, 11, 72 Assis, E.  28, 52, 55, 61, 66, 90 Bakhtin, M.  48, 49 Barker, J.  xi, 28, 52, 53, 54, 55, 60, 61, 66, 90 Barton, J.  29, 42, 55, 56, 62, 65, 72, 73, 74, 79, 81, 83 Beal, T.  1 Becker, U.  41, 52 Beck, M.  29, 42, 56, 83, 89 Beentjes, P. C.  58 Ben Zvi, E.  ix Ben-Porat, Z.  50 Bergler, S.  xi, 28, 43, 44, 45, 52, 75, 80, 83 Berlin, A.  34, 36 Bewer, J. A.  26, 31, 50, 55, 61, 65, 73, 75, 79, 80, 85 Bitzer, L. F.  ix, 52 Bloch, R.  49 Bloomquist, G.  54 Bosshard, E.  29 Bosshard-Nepustil, E.  32, 56, 74, 75 Brooke-Rose, C.  63 Brown, D.  51 Budde, K.  55 Burrows, M.  39, 41 Buth, R.  36

Calvin, J.  2, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 65, 87 Carr, D. M.  34 Cathcart, K. J.  5 Chary, T.  42 Chilton, B. D.  5 Cogan, M.  52 Coggins, R.  42 Collins, J. J.  43, 85, 86, 88, 92, 97 Cook, J. A.  35 Craven, T.  39 Credner, K. A.  23, 24, 42 Crenshaw, J. L.  2, 14, 28, 50, 52, 55, 57, 61, 79, 81, 83, 91 Cyril of Alexandria  7, 9, 10, 11, 87 Dahmen, U.  29, 56, 65, 74, 75, 79, 80, 83, 89 Davis, E. F.  41 Deist, F.  89, 93 Dennefeld, L.  28, 52 De Vries, S. J.  57, 58 Dozeman, T. B.  91 Driver, S. R.  25, 52 Duhm, B.  26, 31, 51, 84, 85 Engnell, I.  52 Evans, C. A.  50 Fahlbusch, E.  85 Fauconnier, G.  66 Fishbane, M.  90, 91 Fitzmyer, J. A.  4 Floyd, M. H.  41, 42, 54, 68, 69 Fohrer, G.  73 Fox, M. V.  32

115

116

Index of Authors

Frow, J.  ix, x, 50, 52, 63, 95, 96 Fullerton, K.  84 Gadamer, H.-G.  1 Gelston, A.  2 Gibson, J. C. L.  35 Gil, D.  76 Goldenberg, R.  6 Goldstein, E.  41 Gordon, R. P.  5 Greenstein, E. L.  13 Greßmann, H.  85 Grossman, A.  13 Haar Romeny, R. B. ter  33 Haenchen, E.  4 Hagedorn, A. C.  xi, 32, 65, 67, 80, 83 Hallaschka, M.  69 Harris, R. A.  13 Hays, R. B.  50 Hengstenberg, E. W.  23, 24, 25 Hill, R. C.  7, 8, 9 Hitzig, F.  55 Hobbs, T. R.  80 Holladay, W. L.  56 Hulst, A. R.  79 Ibn Ezra, Abraham  13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 55, 64, 72, 87 Ishoʿdad of Merv  12 Jauss, H. R.  1, 2 Jepsen, A.  26, 31, 54, 73, 85 Jeremias, J.  28, 42, 50, 52, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 65, 70, 71, 74, 75, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 91, 93, 94 Jones, B. A.  2 Joüon, P.  74, 77, 80 Kapelrud, A. S.  xi, 28, 30, 51, 52, 57, 61, 73, 75, 79 Kedar-Kopfstein, B.  2 Kessler, J.  68, 69 Kimchi, David  13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 42, 64, 72, 79, 87

Knapp, A.  ix Kratz, R. G.  34 Kristeva, J.  48 Kronholm, T.  57 Krüger, T.  34, 35, 36, 37, 39 Kuenen, A.  24, 25, 42 Langacker, R. W.  74 Lange, A.  82 Leene, H.  56 Levine, A. J.  39 Lindblom, J.  86 Lüdemann, G.  4 Luther, M.  17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 65, 87, 88 Luz, U.  1 Macchi, J.-D.  89 Malina, B. J.  52, 54 Marti, K.  40, 79, 83 Mason, R. A.  42, 68 McLeod, F. G.  8 Mendlesohn, F.  64 Merx, A.  x, 1, 42, 43, 55, 73, 79 Meyers, C. L.  82 Meyers, E. M.  82 Migne, J.-P.  7 Moore, C. A.  39 Moshavi, A.  35 Müller, A. K.  xi, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 70, 75, 81, 90, 91, 94 Müller, H.-P.  27, 28, 30, 52, 53, 55, 57, 73, 75 Müller, R.  33 Muller, R. A.  23 Muraoka, T.  74, 77, 80 Naudé, J. A.  76 Newsom, C. A.  ix, x, 98 Nissinen, M.  82 Nogalski, J. D.  28, 29, 32, 61 Nowak, W.  42 O’Connor, M.  80 Ogden, G. S.  50, 61, 65 Oswald, H. C.  18

Index of Authors Pakkala, J.  33 Patterson, D. N.  39 Plöger, O.  27, 28, 29, 49, 73, 74, 75, 79, 89 Prinsloo, W. S.  28, 52 Rad, G. von  85, 86 Rashi  13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 23, 42, 64, 87 Redditt, P. L.  28, 49, 82 Rimmon-Kenan, S.  68 Roberts, M.  14 Robinson, T. H.  54, 65, 73 Rosenberg, A. J.  14 Roth, M.  29, 89 Rothstein, W.  25, 28, 58, 73 Rudolph, W.  28, 51, 52, 55, 56, 62, 65, 74, 75, 79, 81, 83, 84 Saadia Gaon  13 Sæbø, M.  57, 85, 92, 93, 98 Sanders, J. A.  49 Sasson, J. M.  36, 41 Schart, A.  28, 29, 32, 41, 42, 91 Schwesig, P.-G.  29 Sellin, E.  73 Smith, W. R.  42 Sommer, B. D.  63 Steck, O. H.  68, 82 Steiner, H.  55 Stipp, H.-J.  33 Strazicich, J.  3, 4, 48, 49, 50, 65, 91 Stuart, D.  65, 91 Sweeney, M. A.  55, 61, 65

117

Theodore of Mopsuestia  8, 10, 11, 12 Theodoret of Cyrus  7, 9, 10, 11, 72, 87 Todorov, T.  ix, 62, 63, 64 Tollington, J. E.  68, 69 Tommasini, A.  92 Troxel, R. L.  x, 29, 32, 36, 40, 56, 58, 60, 61, 74, 75, 88 Tull Willey, P.  50 Turner, M.  66 Ulmer, R.  43 Vatke, W.  23, 24, 84 Vernes, M.  25, 28, 56, 58, 73, 75 Vriezen, T. C.  86 Walsh, J. T.  37, 56 Waltke, B. K.  80 Watson, D. F.  54 Weiser, A.  28, 56, 65, 91 Wellhausen, J.  24, 40, 72, 73, 83, 84 Wichelns, H. A.  52 Wilcox, P.  20 Wöhrle, J.  xi, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 74, 79, 80, 83, 88 Wolff, H. W.  28, 30, 36, 38, 41, 51, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 70, 74, 75, 79, 80, 83, 95 Zahn, M. M.  32, 33

Index of Scripture Hebrew Bible Genesis 4:14 78 6:17 78 7:8 78 7:22 78 11:6 78 15:14 57 18:10 63 18:13 63 20:7 78 20:8 36 21:8–14 36 23:19 57 24:66 60 25:26 57 29:13 60 30:43 80 31:21 78 34:7 36 37:9 60 37:10 60 40:8 60 40:9 60 41:8 60 41:12 60 43:15 36 46:1 78 47:1 78 Exodus 1:16 77 1:22  76, 77 9:24 61 9:24–25 3 10 65

Exodus (cont.) 10:2  6, 42, 43, 46 10:4ff. 43 10:14  14, 42, 61 11:6 61 32 90 32–34 47 32:12  47, 47, 90 32:12–14 90 32:14 47 32–34  47, 48 33:7 74 34:6  34, 47, 34, 90 Leviticus 4:3 6 6:11 78 6:20 78 11:32 78 11:33 78 11:35 78 14:36 78 15:11 78 15:20 78 18:29 78 27:9 78 27:32 78 Numbers 5:14 7 11:17 2 11:25 2 11:29  15, 82, 89 13:27 60 16:33 78

118

Numbers (cont.) 18:13 78 19:14 78 19:16 78 19:22 78 30:10 78 Deuteronomy 4:32 61 8:13 78 11:13 43 12:11 74 18:19 74 20:11 74 21:16 57 24:9 6 25:6 74 28:10 16 28:38 43 28:68 80 Joshua 2:19 78 6:17 78 10:14 61 Judges 9:33 57 7:13 60 13:3  63, 64 13:8 63 13:16 64 13:18 64 15:18 38 16:4 57

Index of Scripture 1 Samuel 19:30 61 4:7 61 5:10 38 9:6 78 11:5 60 14:52 76 24:6 57 28:12 38

Isaiah (cont.) 14:2 80 24–27  86, 87, 98 39:6 78 43:10 61 45:5 42 45:17 42 57:19 4 65:20 85

2 Samuel 2:1 57 8:1 57 10:1 57 13:1 57 12:22 91 12:24 91 15:34–36 77 15:35 77 19:5 38 21:18 57 22:7 38

Jeremiah 1:7 56 3:17 58 4–5 42 4–6  47, 48 4:28 48 14:14 82 18 90 18:8 90 19:1–2 56 21:7 57 23:27 60 23:28 60 23:32 60 27:2–11 55 28:10 55 28:13–14 56 28:15–16 56 28:16 56 33:15  53, 58 34:11 80 34:16 80 49:6 57 50:4  53, 58 50:20  53, 58

1 Kings 3:12 61 8:52 38 18:5 61 21:25 61 22:32 38 2 Kings 5:26 80 6:24 57 8:6 60 20:17 78 20:19 78 Isaiah 1:26 57 2 16 2:4 85 11:6–9  67, 85 13  47, 65, 96 13:2–8 88 13:6  42, 46 13:9 46

Ezekiel 7:2 93 7:3 93 12:16 60 30:3 42 36:26 16 37:1–10 56 37:12–14 56 38f. 98 38:19 3

119 Ezekiel (cont.) 47:1–12 3 47:9 78 48 17 Joel 1:1  ix, 39, 53, 60, 81 1:1–2 81 1:1–4  30, 81 1:1–14 27 1:1–2:27 24 1:2  10, 14, 38, 43, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 69, 97 1:2–3  28, 31, 32, 46, 54, 55, 60, 62, 65, 70, 82, 95 1:2–4  27, 44, 53, 54, 55, 60, 95 1:2–12 30 1:2–20 89 1:3  6, 42, 59, 60 1:4  5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 18, 21, 51, 55, 59, 62, 64, 69, 70, 96 1:4–5  26, 31 1:4–10 27 1:4–17 60 1:4–18 60 1:4–20  59, 62, 69 1:4–2:17  56, 59, 61, 90 1:4–2:27 70 1:5  11, 20, 27, 44, 46, 81 1:5–14  30, 81, 82 1:5–20  54, 70 1:5–21 46 1:5–2:17  60, 70 1:5–2:27 55 1:6  6, 20, 65, 66 1:6–7  21, 67, 69 1:7  12, 14 1:8  2, 14, 26, 31, 81

120 Joel (cont.) 1:9  2, 37 1:9–13 44 1:10  26, 31 1:10–11 81 1:11  2, 8, 81 1:11–18 27 1:11–2:23 2 1:12  26, 31 1:12–17 96 1:13  2, 14, 44, 81 1:14  2, 27, 45 1:14–16 44 1:15  5, 11, 14, 18, 26, 27, 31, 42, 44, 45, 46, 59, 66, 69, 81, 85, 87, 88, 96 1:15–20 30 1:16  26, 31 1:16–18  2, 20, 30 1:17–20 44 1:19  2, 26, 65 1:19–20  20, 30, 60 2:1  5, 11, 18, 27, 31, 44, 45, 66, 82, 87 2:1–2  26, 31, 44, 85 2:1–11  30, 44, 46, 47, 59, 88, 96 2:1–17  60, 70, 82, 89 2:2  15, 26, 31, 53, 62, 65, 67, 69, 71, 93 2:3  5, 26, 31, 46, 65, 87 2:4–5  3, 44, 46 2:4–9 67 2:5  2, 18 2:6  26, 31 2:7–8 46 2:7–9 44 2:10  3, 19, 27, 31, 46 2:10–11  26, 44 2:10–17 54

Index of Scripture Joel (cont.) 2:11  5, 15, 21, 26, 27, 31, 36, 37, 44, 46, 47, 65, 75, 90 2:12–14  27, 44, 90, 91 2:12–17  21, 30, 47 2:12–18 27 2:13  2, 5, 18, 47, 90 2:13–14 91 2:14  2, 5, 15, 31, 34, 44, 47, 90, 91 2:15  27, 44, 45 2:15–16 55 2:15–17  44, 45, 58 2:16  31, 81 2:17  15, 19, 21, 25, 31, 45, 55, 80, 90 2:18  7, 10, 12, 15, 21, 26, 27, 30, 45, 51, 53, 55, 92, 95 2:18–19  19, 55, 56, 60, 62, 68, 69, 70 2:18–20 31 2:18–4:21  26, 31 2:18–4:27 84 2:18–27  45, 47, 62, 84, 89 2:19  15, 21, 45, 58, 81 2:19–20 45 2:19–27  45, 57, 67, 70, 97 2:19–3:4 97 2:19–3:5 97 2:20  5, 6, 12, 15, 26, 27, 69, 70, 71 2:20–21 21 2:21 27 2:21–24 45

Joel (cont.) 2:22  7, 8 2:22–24 21 2:23 7 2:23–24 89 2:24  8, 9 2:25  5, 14, 44, 45, 62, 69 2:26  9, 27, 45, 67 2:26–27  45, 89, 92 2:27  26, 27, 29, 31, 42, 46, 48, 56, 58, 59, 71, 84, 90 3–4  x, 6, 9, 45, 49 3:1  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 16, 57, 58, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 80, 82, 87, 89, 97 3:1–2  12, 72, 73, 75, 82 3:1–3  74, 75 3:1–4  26, 75, 79 3:1–5  57, 59, 83, 90 3:2  2, 6, 38, 58, 73, 74, 80 3:3  3, 8, 28, 72, 74 3:3–4  16, 22, 58, 72, 73, 75 3:3–5 73 3:4  3, 5, 24, 27, 31, 38, 58, 73, 74, 84, 89, 97 3:4–5  74, 75 3:5  2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 16, 22, 24, 27, 42, 58, 59, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 83, 97, 98 3:6 3 4:1  27, 31, 53, 58 4:1–8 52 4:2  3, 11, 16, 26, 58, 75 4:3 2

Index of Scripture Joel (cont.) 4:4  2, 9, 24, 28, 30, 37 4:4–8(3:4–8) 28, 30, 89 4:4–24 2 4:8  2, 7, 17 4:9  24, 58, 75 4:9–11 58 4:9–14  26, 75 4:10 6 4:13 3 4:14 27 4:15  27, 58 4:16  17, 27, 58 4:17  27, 29, 58 4:18  2, 3, 7, 12, 57, 58 4:18–20 27 4:18–21  28, 30, 89 4:19  2, 6, 17, 24 4:20–21 9 4:21  17, 31, 53 Amos 1:2 58 5 96 5:18 92 8:1 92 9:13–15  67, 93 Obadiah 10 42 15 42 17 42 18 83 Jonah 1 35–37 1:5  38, 39 1:6 39 1:8 39 1:10  39, 40 1:14  39, 40 1:16  39, 40 2:1  37, 39

Jonah (cont.) 2:2–10 39 2:11–3:5 37 3–4 37–41 3:9 91 3:10 34 4:2 34 4:11 34 Micah 3:5–7 82 4 16 7:18–20 34 Nahum 1:2 34 1:3 34 Habakkuk 2:3 93 Zephaniah 1 96 1:7 42 1:11–14 31 1:15  42, 64 1:18 91 2:3 91 3:7 78 3:16–20  67, 93 Haggai 1:1  68, 69 1:1–2 69 1:1–15 69 1:2  68, 69 1:3 68 1:3–4 69 1:4  68, 69 1:5–7 69 1:8 69 1:9 69 1:10 69 1:11 69 1:12 69 1:12–13 69

121 Haggai (cont.) 1:14 69 1:15 69 2:10–19 68 2:10 68 2:11 68 2:11–12 68 2:12 68 2:13 68 2:14 68 2:15–19 68 Zechariah 1–8  42, 87 9–11 42 9–14 24 12:1 24 12:2 24 12–14  82, 98 13:2–6 82 14 17 14:1 24 14:2 24 14:4–7  24, 84 14:8 3 14:17ff. 24 Malachi 1:9 34 Psalms 59:13 60 64:6 60 73:15 60 96:12 78 115:8 78 135:18 78 Proverbs 30:25–28 67 Job 2:4 78 20:26 7

122 Ruth 2:11 78 Qoheleth 2:7  6, 80 3:14 78 Esther 7:4 80 9:26–28 60

Index of Scripture Daniel 7:7 17 7:19–28 17 12:1 61

1 Chronicles 18:1 57 19:1 57 29:25 61

Ezra 10:14 78

2 Chronicles 1:12 61 15:13 78 17:11 16 20:22–24 16 28:10 80

Nehemiah 6:8 61 13:26 61

New Testament Matthew 24:29 3 Mark 4:29 3 13:24 3 Acts 1:8 3 2  3, 7, 8 2:9–11 3 2:11 3 2:14 3 2:16  3, 87

Acts (cont.) 2:17 87 2:21 87 2:22 3 2:23 3 2:36 3 2:38 3 2:39  4, 79, 87 10:34–11:18 4 10:45 3 Romans 10:13 3

1 Corinthians 1:2 3 Revelation 6:12 3 6:16 3 8:7 3 9:2 3 9:7–9 3 14:14–20 3 22:1 3