For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a lioness.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
He hath made my vine a desolation, and barked my fig-tree; he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away its branches are made white.
God calls the ruined vine and the stripped fig tree His own. Two questions follow: who is the destroyer, and why does God call the loss His?
The verse before this one has God calling it "my land." One writer draws out what that ownership means when the tenants fail:
The Land — 'My Land,' whatever its state or divisions. It is Jehovah's Land, and if the people fail in every way, it falls into His hands. It was only entrusted to Israel — the Gentiles have no right except through Israel's sin, and none at all against the Lord.
The destroyer is a swarm of locusts. One writer takes it as a real event, and as God using insects to humble His people:
But here He shows that His hand was stretched out to deal with His people in a most humiliating way. Faithfulness to His government would have brought blessing in the basket and the store. Instead they had been most unfaithful. So now Jehovah would use even the insect world, so to speak, to deal with His people… I take all this in its plain, literal sense, as something that really happened then.
The weapon was not new. It had fallen on Egypt, and Moses had warned Israel it could fall on them too:
The locust plague which laid Israel's land bare was a judgment from the Lord. It was one of the judgments the Lord sent upon Egypt. Moses had said beforehand that the Lord would use locusts to punish His people (see Deut. 28:38, 42).
The vine is not picked at random. It stands for a people planted to produce something God could enjoy:
The vine was the symbol of God's people as the supplier of fruit for His pleasure. With this in view God brought them out of Egypt and planted them in a land flowing with milk and honey. The temple, the priesthood and the sacrificial system all belonged to God's way of bringing Him the fruit He had supplied Israel with for His delight… Instead of righteousness and holiness there was rebellion against Him and corruption. They gave their praise and worship to idols instead of to Jehovah.
Two trees are named, and writers distinguish between them rather than treating them as one image:
I believe the vine stands more for the religious side, the fig tree for the national… The vineyard was the circumcised people, the nation as a whole. It was planted to produce fruit, but it failed. What marks out the true vine is that its fruit is the test; the question is not one of religious rites.
A stripped branch is left bare and white. The damage did not stop at the orchard. It reached the house of God:
So we are shown, still in figurative language, how everything was dealt with — the vine wasted, the fig tree stripped of its bark, the branches thrown away and made white… The country and its people lost their natural resources as a chastening from God. But everything else suffered too. The religious offerings felt the blight over the land: the grain-offering and the drink-offering. One was the witness of devotion, the other of joy before God. Both were completely cut off from the house of Jehovah.
Commentators differ on what the insects point to. One takes Joel's language as a bridge to one future invader:
Joel treats the present plague as a fact. At the same time he uses language that leads easily into a prediction. A nation would deal with the Jews in a way never seen before. There need be no doubt that the nation in question is the Assyrian.
Another sees a line of empires:
They are a picture of Gentile armies. In the second chapter the Lord calls them "My great army."… From Daniel's prophecy we learn twice that four world powers would conquer Israel and prey on the land: Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Graeco-Macedonia and Rome.
- Mine. God calls the wasted vine and the stripped fig tree His own. He entrusted the land to Israel; He never gave up His claim. So its ruin is His concern first.
- Mine to plant. God brought His people out of Egypt and planted them like a vine. He looked for fruit: worship, righteousness, holiness.
- Mine to strip. When that fruit turned to idolatry, God used insects to humble them, just as Moses had warned.
- Mine, even the worship. The damage reached past the orchards into God's house. The grain-offering and drink-offering stopped, and devotion and joy with them.
- Mine still. The swarm previewed invaders still to come. Commentators differ: one points to the Assyrian, another to a line of world empires. They enter only through Israel's sin, and hold no right against the Lord. The land stays His.