Joel 2:3

A fire devoureth before them, and behind them aflame burneth,.... This is not to be understood of the heat of the sun, or of the great drought that went before and continued after the locusts; but of

A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.

A fire, either the heat of the sun more vehement than usual, or the locusts, or Chaldeans and Babylonians resembled by locusts, as fire, shall devour, utterly consume and eat up, before them; that people, . Behind them a flame burneth; what is left behind them is as burnt with a flame; all that the locusts leave behind them is as that which the flame hath scorched, dried, and turned into charcoal; or, all the Chaldeans and Babylonians leave behind them is (as customary with the barbarous invaders) set on fire, and what they cannot bat or carry away they destroy with fire. The land is as the garden of Eden before them; it is every where most fruitful and pleasant, a land where they have not yet come. This is expressed in that proverbial speech, as the garden of Eden: see . And behind them a desolate wilderness; but wherever these locusts, or the armies they signify, come, all is turned into a most desolate wilderness. Nothing shall escape; nothing that was for beauty and pleasure, nor any thing for necessity and support of life.

Joe 2:3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land [is] as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.Ver. 3. A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth] Such waste these vermin shall make, like as it is said of the Great Turk, that wherever he sets his foot there never grows grass again; he doth so eat up the countries where he comes with his huge armies. And the late Lord Brook, in his discourse of episcopacy, notes, that that unhappy proverb among us was not for nought, The bishop’ s foot hath trodden here. In Biscay, a province of Spain, they admit no bishops to come among them; and when Ferdinand, the Catholic king, came in progress hither, accompanied among others by the Bishop of Pampelune, the people arose in arms, drove back the bishop, and gathering all the dust on the which they thought he had trodden, flung it into the sea. What fires they kindled here in Queen Mary’ s days, devouring six or seven hundred, at least, of God’ s faithful witnesses in five years’ time; and what work they made in our remembrance throughout the three kingdoms, to the embroiling of all and their own utter ruin, I need not relate. That renowned author cited before had told them time enough, but that they were destined to destruction, that if they forbear to touch the supreme authority of the land, which they affected, it was but as once Mercury spared Jupiter’ s thunderbolts, which he dared not steal, lest they should roar too loud, or, at least, burn his fingers. The land is as the garden of Eden] i.e. of all kind of pleasures and delights. See Genesis 2:8; Genesis 13:10. Eden inde çäïíç. Strabo speaks spitefully of the land of Canaan, as if it were a dry, stony, and barren country, not worth the seeking after, Rabshakeh shows more ingenuity than this, Strabus et pravus Strabo (as one therefore calleth him), 2 Kings 18:32. Tacitus commends it for a fertile soil, so doth Pliny; but above all, the holy Scripture setteth it forth to be Sumen totius orbis, the bread basket of the whole world, a land flowing with milk and honey, &c., Exodus 3:17 Deuteronomy 32:13. And behind them a desolate wilderness] Not such a wilderness as yielded pastures, and habitations for shepherds, Joe 1:19-20, but utterly desolate, and therefore unhabitable, as under the torrid zone. No place can be so pleasant but sin can lay it waste. "A fruitful land turneth the Lord into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein," Psalms 107:34. There is no footstep left to this day of that gallant garden, planted by God himself; or if any, cecidit rosa, est spina; the place remains in the upper part of Chaldea, but not the pleasantness of the place.

(3) Before them . . . behind them.—As with the locusts, so with the invading hosts of enemies: the country is found a paradise, and left a desert.

Verse 3. A fire devoureth before them] They consume like a general conflagration. "They destroy the ground, not only for the time, but burn trees for two years after." Sir Hans Sloane, Nat. Hist. of Jamaica, vol. i., p. 29. Behind them a flame burneth] "Wherever they feed," says Ludolf, in his History of Ethiopia, "their leavings seem as if parched with fire." Nothing shall escape them.] "After devouring the herbage," says Adanson, "with the fruits and leaves of trees, they attacked even the buds and the very bark; they did not so much as spare the reeds with which the huts were thatched."

3. A fire devoureth before them, &c.] A hyperbolical description of the destructive march of a swarm of locusts: the country which they have passed over is left as bare as if it had been wasted by fire; and the prophet accordingly imagines poetically a fire as preceding and following them on their course. Many travellers have used the same comparison: one says, for instance, “Wherever they come, the ground seems burned, as it were with fire.” Another, “They covered a square mile so completely, that it appeared, at a little distance, to have been burned and strewed over with brown ashes.” And a third, “Wherever they settled, it looked as if fire had devoured and burnt up everything.” Palestine was invaded by locusts in 1865; from June 13 to 15 they poured into Nazareth: “the trees,” an eye-witness wrote, “are as barren as in England in winter, but it looks as if the country had been burnt by fire” (Eccles. Gazette, 1865, p. 55). as the garden of Eden] like a park (LXX. here, as in Gen., παράδεισος), richly watered, and well stocked with majestic trees (Genesis 2:8-10): the comparison, as Ezekiel 36:35 (of the restored land of Israel) “this land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden”: similarly the garden of Jehovah, Genesis 13:10, Isaiah 51:3 (in the parallel clause, Eden); cp. also the trees of Eden, Ezekiel 31:9; Ezekiel 31:16; Ezekiel 31:18. and behind them a desolate wilderness] The destruction wrought by locusts is such as to be hardly imaginable by those who have not witnessed it: see the next note; and cf. Exodus 10:15. shall escape them] escapeth them. Present tenses, in English, represent the scene, as pictured by Joel, most vividly; and are best throughout to Joe 2:11 (cf. R.V.). The fact noted by the prophet is literally true, as almost every observer testifies. “On whatever spot they fall, the whole vegetable produce disappears. Nothing escapes them, from the leaves on the forest to the herbs on the plain” (Clarke, Travels, I. 428 f.). “They had [for a space of 80–90 miles in length] devoured every green herb, and every herb of grass.” “Not a shrub nor blade of grass was visible” (Barrow, S. Africa, pp. 242, 257).

A fire devoureth before them ... - Travelers, of different nations and characters, and in different lands, some unacquainted with the Bible words, have agreed to describe under this image the ravages of locusts.

1. By the blowing of the horn the priests are to warn the people (Amos 3:6) of the near approach of the day of Jehovah and to gather them into the temple to pray. The latter thought is not expanded until Joe 2:15.