“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
Joel has just sounded the alarm of the day of the LORD and described the invading army. Now, before the blow falls, God opens a door — so what does He want from a people already under judgment, and do fasting and tears count for anything with Him?
Judgment announced, mercy offered
One writer sets this appeal inside a picture of national disaster that runs on to the last judgment. The same chapter carries both the sentence and the offer of mercy:
J. G. BellettIn the second chapter we have again a list of national miseries, but now with a near approach to that great, final, judicial day… The call to repentance is repeated, with the hope that God's anger may be turned away… Calamity comes as the judgment of the Lord in righteousness; repentance comes as the fruit of the Spirit in grace.
So the turning God asks for is itself something He produces, and "yet even now" means the offer still stands.
What "with all your heart" means
Returning with the whole heart is not self-improvement. It starts with God:
William KellyThere is no such leveller as sin, or as death, which is the consequence of sin. But it is a blessed thing when the gracious call of God works repentance, which really means the heart taking the place of owning our own evil and accepting what God then has to say to us. There is nothing more admirable for a soul, unless it be the grace of God which produces it.
Torn hearts, not torn clothes
Fasting, weeping and mourning were the ordinary language of grief in Israel, and the customs went further still. God's problem was never with the feeling itself:
Morrish Bible DictionaryIt was the custom of the Hebrews, as it still is in the East, to make a great display of their mourning. They would beat their breasts, cover their heads, fast, put dust and ashes on their heads, tear their clothes, wear sackcloth, and so on… God does not want those who are bereaved to be without feeling — the Lord wept at the grave of Lazarus — but He would have reality in everything. He had to say to His people, "Rend your hearts and not your garments."
Who will answer the call
Commentators read this call as reaching beyond Joel's own day to a repentance still future for Israel, with two very different outcomes:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinHere is the Lord calling to His people to return to Him with true repentance… During that great tribulation one part of the people will truly repent and turn to Him in the way described in this chapter. God will save this remnant in that day, while the part that does not repent will be cut off in judgment… This mourning and prayer for deliverance comes before the visible appearing of the Lord in the day of His coming.
Their turning leads to more than rescue, and part of this promise has already touched history:
Morrish Bible DictionaryWhen they repent, the Holy Spirit will be poured out upon them and upon all flesh. Peter quoted this in Acts 2, but the nation did not repent then. Only a remnant turned to the Lord and entered into the blessing God was giving. That blessing was not the outward, visible kind it will be in the future.
One man who did it
One king of Judah shows what this verse looks like in a single life:
H. L. RossierManasseh humbled himself, judging his whole way of life before God, and God brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom… Joel, who prophesied under Manasseh, seems to point to this event… It was not a revival in the proper sense of the word. It was a return to God through the affliction that made this wretched man cry to Him and receive deliverance from all his distress… What a blessed thought, that the hearts of the most hardened may become the objects of grace!
Faith in a day of ruin
The same door stands open beyond one nation and one crisis:
J. N. DarbyFrom the moment the remnant take the place where God put them, He listens to their cry. Faith takes the place of the sinner and humbles itself, and then God answers. If the church is in a sad state, faith knows the state the church is in. Faith owns it, humbles itself, and God can answer… Faith makes us conscious of the ruin that sin has placed us in.
Summary
- Yet even now. God announces judgment and offers a way back in the same chapter.
- Grace first. Disaster comes as God's righteous judgment. The repentance that answers it is the fruit of the Spirit — God works what He asks for.
- All your heart. Repentance is the heart owning its own evil and accepting what God says. No gesture can replace it.
- Reality, not display. Fasting, weeping and mourning belong to real grief, but God says to tear the heart, not the clothes.
- Then the blessing. Manasseh humbled himself, and God restored him. A future remnant will turn the same way, and God will pour out His Spirit on them.