I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.
Swarms of insects have stripped the land bare, and in that setting God makes one of the most generous promises in the Old Testament: He will give back the harvests they ate. Commentators ask who sent the swarm, when God keeps this promise, and whether lost years can ever come back.
Four names, one destroyer
The verse names four destroyers. One writer explains that these are not four insects but one creature at four points in its life:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe Hebrew words do not name four different kinds of insect. They name one insect, the locust, at four stages of growth. Gazam means "to gnaw off," Arbeh is "to be many"; this is the common name of the locusts because of their migratory habits. Jelek is "to lick off," and Chasel means "to devour or consume." The locust grows through four stages. First it is the gnawing locust, newly hatched. Then it gets its wings and flies about. After that it begins its destroying, licking off whatever it finds. At last it reaches full growth and devours everything in its path.
The Lord's own army
The most startling thing in the verse is that this destroying swarm belonged to God. He calls it His army and says He sent it. One writer sees the proof of that ownership in how the insects behave:
F. W. GrantThey march in instinctive order under a king no one can see. That shows whose army they are, and who commands them. "His army," the Lord calls them.
Restoration after humbling
The promise does not stand alone. It follows a call to repentance, and writers tie the giving back of the years directly to that humbling:
J. N. DarbyThe Lord would hear His people once they humbled themselves. He would fill their land with plenty, and the nations would no longer look down on them... They would receive the abundance of all the years which had failed. They would know for certain that the Lord was among them. He was their God, and no other. They would never be ashamed.
More than repair
God does not simply balance the books. Commenting on the promise, one writer says the blessing runs past the damage:
William KellySo God will more than undo the harm. He will restore what He did not take away. He will wipe out all their past sorrow and shame with the fullness of His blessing.
A promise still waiting
Writers here read the promise as still future for Israel, not as something already done. The clue is the promise that follows in the same passage, that God's people will never face shame again:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThen the Lord will make good all the harm done by the locusts — the army He used to judge His people. "And My people shall never again be put to shame" (verse 27). This again is enough proof that all this remains unfulfilled.
When a believer has drifted
Writers also apply the verse to any believer who has wasted time. One calls it unmatched for encouragement:
Scripture QuarterlyIn the thousand pages of the Bible, no passage encourages a man or a woman who has drifted away from God more than this single verse in Joel... In every case of spiritual decline and later recovery, we must think back to the very spot where the decline began. There we must judge the root of the evil.
That same writer is careful about what "restore" can and cannot mean for us. Clock time does not come back:
Scripture QuarterlyAs plain time, the years are gone for ever... But the spiritual substance matters far more than the stretch of time that grew it. The restoration applies to that spiritual substance. Mere length of life is nothing if it does not lead us to a greater enjoyment of eternal life.
Summary
- Sent — The locust is one insect in four devouring stages. God calls the whole swarm His army, and their ordered march shows who commands them.
- Stripped — What the insects took was real loss, and the loss came as chastening, not accident.
- Softened — The promise follows humbling. God fills the land with plenty for a people brought low before Him.
- Restored — He gives back what He did not take away, wiping out past sorrow and shame with the fullness of His blessing.
- Still ahead — The passage ends with God's people never again put to shame, so writers hold this restoration as still future. Meanwhile it encourages any believer who has drifted: what returns is spiritual substance, not clock time.