Joel 2:15

Blow the trumpet in Zion,.... For the calling of the people together to religious duties, which was one use of the silver trumpets made for and blows by the priests, Numbers 10:2; sanctify a fast,

Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: Blow the trumpet - to convene the people (Numbers 10:3 : cf. Joe 1:14). The nation was guilty, and therefore there must be a national humiliation.

Blow the trumpet in Zion: see . Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: see .

Joe 2:15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly:Ver. 15. Blow the trumpet in Zion] That all may hear and convene, those of Jerusalem in the temple, and the rest in their several synagogues, Leviticus 23:31, for that yearly fast was a standard to the rest, kept upon extraordinary and emergent occasions, as here, for the preventing of the forethreatened judgment. Papists appoint set fasting days, as Lent, and Friday in every week, eves of holidays, &c., whether the times be clear or cloudy. A. Lapide, also, the Jesuit, keeps a coil against Luther and the Centurists, for decrying their Popish processions and public litanies, which he thinks to be here and elsewhere authorized. A discourse he giveth us here, too, about the use and origin of bells among Christians, answerable to trumpets among the Jews. A symmist of his, Cenalis, Bishop of Auranches, to prove their Pope-holy Church the true Church, maketh no mention at all either of preaching or sacraments, but produceth bells for a sufficient mark of the Catholic true Church. "We have bells," saith he, "whereby our assemblies are ordinarily called together, but the Lutherans have claps of harquebuses and pistolets for signs whereby they congregate," between which and bells he maketh a long anti-thesis, and from hence inferreth that the Church of Rome is the true Church. A proper argument, and yet the man pleaseth himself as much in it as the second Council of Nice did in their profound proofs for idolatry, which, as one well saith of them, were such as that the images themselves, if they were sensible, would blush to hear repeated. Sanctify a fast] Proclaim a religious abstinence from all kind of sustenance, for a season, either from morning till evening, as Judges 20:26 2 Samuel 3:35, or from evening till evening, Leviticus 23:32, or longer, as Esther 4:16 Acts 9:9, as the hand and wrath of God is more or less felt or feared; but the least time that may be is a whole day. There is an old canon that our fasts should continue usque dum stellae in coelo appareant, till the stars appear in the sky. The very Turks in their solemn fasts eat nothing all the day till night; yea, so precise they are, that upon their fasting days they will not so much as wash their mouths in water till the stars appear; which maketh their fasts (especially in the summer, when the days be long and hot) to be unto them very tedious. Christians hold and teach that nature is by fasting to be chastised, and not disabled for service; and that such as cannot fast so long but they shall either endanger health or be unfitted for the spiritual duties of the day, may eat; provided that they abuse not this liberty to the satisfying of the flesh, Colossians 2:23 1 Timothy 5:23. Call a solemn assembly] See Joe 1:14.

(15, 16) Sanctify a fast.—The prophet renews, therefore, his summons to the priests to proclaim a day of humiliation, on which all, without distinction of age or circumstances, are to be required to present themselves before the Lord. There was no room for the plea, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”

Verse 15. Blow the trumpet] Let no time be lost, let the alarm be sounded.

15–17. With the view of making the preceding exhortation (Joe 2:12 f.) more practically effective, the prophet here repeats more emphatically the command of Joe 1:14 : he bids all ranks and classes assemble in the Temple for a solemn religious service, and prescribes at the same time the words in which the priests may intercede on behalf of the nation.

Before, he had, in these same words Joe 2:1; Joe 1:14, called to repentance, because the Day of the Lord was coming, was near, “a day of darkness,” etc.

Joe 2:15-17 are an emphatic re-iteration of the exhortation in Joe 1:14. Joe 2:15 takes us back to Joe 2:1, where the priests are exhorted to blow the trumpet.