Joel 1:7

He hath laid my vine waste,.... That is, the locust, which spoiled the vines in Judea, the singular being put for the plural, by gnawing the branches, biting the tops of them, and devouring the

He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white. He hath ... barked my fig tree.

He, that nation of locusts, , both literally and mystically understood, hath laid my vine waste; made it a desolation, i.e. most desolate, which is more particularly declared in what followeth. And barked my fig tree; peeled off the bark. which is certain destruction to the tree. Made it clean bare; eat off all the rind and green bark, and left the body of both vine and fig tree bare and stripped. And cast it away; as vermin cast out of their mouth the chewings of what they spoil, so here. The branches thereof, all the branches of both vine and fig tree, are by these devouring vermin made white, all their green being eaten off; so miserably desolate will the enemy signified by these locusts make Judah, God’ s vine.

Joe 1:7 He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast [it] away; the branches thereof are made white.Ver. 7. He hath laid my vine waste] The prophet proceeds in aggravating the calamity, that he might make the people the more sensible. There is nothing in the world more stupid and more stubborn than a drunkard. Of such it is that that saying of an ancient is often verified, Ablatus est a peccantibus timor, ne possit esse cautela, Fear is taken away from offenders, that there should be no caution against it. Here therefore let the words of the wise be as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of the assemblies. Let them so preach with Peter, that their hearers may be pricked at heart, Acts 2:37, may be galled and sawed, as it were, Acts 7:54, may startle and tremble, as Acts 24:25, may awaken out of that dead lethargy, whereinto Satan hath cast them, and recover out of his snare who are taken captive by him at his pleasure, 2 Timothy 2:26. True it is, we can hardly get men to believe that hell is so hot, or sin so heavy, or the devil so black or God so unmerciful as the preachers make him. The lion, say they, is not so terrible as he is painted; nor is our case so dangerous as is borne us in hand. Sed non pergamus exaggerare, saith Pareus here. Let God’ s ministers lay load upon men’ s sins, and set forth to the full the miseries that will fall upon them. The prophets did so for temporal (as here most graphically and to the life), shall not we much more for eternal punishments? "Oh" (saith one) "that I could get words to gore your very hearts with smarting pain; that this doctrine might be written in your flesh!" And barked my fig tree] Take away the bark from the tree, and the sap can never find the way to the boughs. These vermin had barked the trees with their teeth, cast the bark out of their mouths upon the ground, and made the branches naked and all white as froth; so that the drunkards, deprived of their sweet draughts, were brought ad effiationem animae (as the Chaldee here expounded Chetsephah), to a yielding up of the ghost, yea, ad laqueum et restim, as the Latins, to the very halter.

(7) My vine.—This expression might well captivate the Jewish ear. God appropriates to Himself this land on which the trouble was, by His providence, to fall, and in wrath remembers mercy. It is “my vine,” “my fig-tree,” the people of God’s own choice, that were afflicted; and the affliction, however fully deserved, was, to speak as a man, painful to the Lord, “who doth not afflict willingly.” Yet the devastation was to be complete. God’s pleasant vine was doomed, and the fig-tree was to be cut down.

Verse 7. He hath laid my vine waste] The locusts have eaten off both leaves and bark. חשף חשפה chasoph chasaphah, he hath made it clean bare; שדד שדה suddad sadeh, the field is laid waste, Joe 1:10; and כשד משדי kesod mishshaddai, a destruction from the Almighty, Joe 1:15; are all paronomasias in which this prophet seems to delight.

7. He hath made my vine into a waste, and my fig-tree into splinters] The vine and the fig-tree are mentioned as the two principal and most representative fruit-trees of Palestine, the vine holding the first place (cf. Hosea 2:12; 1 Kings 4:25; 2 Kings 18:31). For splinters (lit. something broken into pieces), comp. nearly the same word in Hosea 10:7 (R.V. marg.). The words indicate the severity of the visitation. Locusts first attack plants and vegetables; when these have been all consumed, they attack trees, consuming first the leaves, then the bark. Comp. the quotation from Shaw’s Travels, below, p. 88. The effects of such ravages are felt sometimes for many years: “the wine of Algiers, before the locusts in 1723 wasted the vineyards, was in flavour not inferior to the best Hermitage. Since that time the wine has much degenerated, and has not yet [1732] recovered its usual qualities” (Shaw, p. 227). made it clean bare] viz. by stripping off the bark, cf. Psalms 29:9 (the same word). cast it away] There is no pron. in the Hebrew; and the reference is, no doubt, partly to the fragments of bark and wood which have been bitten off by the locusts, but being uneatable by them have fallen to the ground, partly to the barked branches and trunks themselves, which (metaphorically) the insects have ‘cast away.’ “After they have passed, nothing remains but the large branches, and the roots, which, being under ground, have escaped their voracity.” “The bushes were eaten quite bare, though the animals could not have been long on the spot. They sat by hundreds on a bush gnawing the rind and the woody fibres” (Lichtenstein, Travels in S. Africa, p. 241, ap. Pusey). its branches] Genesis 40:10; Genesis 40:12 only, also of the vine: properly, something intertwined. shew whiteness] viz. through the bark being stripped off. “Ambedunt enim, ut Tacitus (Annal. xv. 5) loquitur, quicquid herbidum est et frondosum; ut nee culmus, nec granum ullum remaneat, et arbores frondibus et cortice tamquam vestibus nudatae instar truncorum alborum conspiciantur” (Ludolf, Hist. Aeth. p. 178 f., ap. Credner).

He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree - This describes an extremity of desolation. The locusts at first attack all which is green and succulent; when this has been consumed, then they attack the bark of trees.

5-12. The prophet calls upon all to lament, because all luxuries are cut off (Joe 1:5-7); the worship of Jehovah has suffered through the interruption, or at least threatened interruption, of the