Joel
The prophet who turned a locust plague into a vision of the Day of the Lord — and whose words Peter quoted at Pentecost as the fulfillment of an ancient promise about the outpouring of the Spirit.
A Plague as a Prophetic Text
Almost nothing is known about Joel personally beyond his name and his father Pethuel. His book opens with a locust invasion of catastrophic proportions — one that stripped the land bare, destroyed the harvest, cut off the grain and drink offerings at the temple. He called on the elders and all inhabitants of the land to recognize what had happened: “Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?” (Joel 1:2).
Joel used the visible catastrophe of the locust plague as a prophetic lens for a coming judgment far greater: the Day of the Lord. His call to repentance was urgent and complete: “Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness” (Joel 2:13). The outward act of tearing clothes was useless without the inward tearing of pride and hardness.
The Day of the Lord
Joel described the Day of the Lord in dual terms — as a day of terrible judgment and as a day of divine restoration. The locust army would be driven back, the rain would return, and the years the locust had eaten would be restored: “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25). This promise of restoration — of lost time recovered, of stripped years replenished — has spoken to suffering people across millennia.
The climax of Joel’s restoration promise was a vision of universal spiritual renewal: God would pour out his Spirit “upon all flesh” — sons and daughters would prophesy, old men would dream dreams, young men would see visions. Even servants would receive the Spirit. This was a radical democratization of prophetic experience, no longer confined to a select few.
Fulfilled at Pentecost
When the Holy Ghost fell on the assembled disciples at Pentecost and they began speaking in tongues, the crowd was perplexed. Peter stood and explained: “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16). He then quoted Joel 2:28–32. The outpouring on that day was the beginning of the fulfillment — the Spirit poured out on all flesh, available to “as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39).
Latter-day Saints see a further fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy in the Restoration — the renewed gift of the Spirit through ordinances, continuing revelation, and the global missionary work that has spread to every nation.
Joel 2:28
“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.”
What Joel Teaches
Joel teaches that visible disaster can be a call to repentance rather than merely a tragedy to endure. He took what everyone around him could see — stripped fields, empty granaries, silent temple — and asked his people to read it as a message from God rather than simply bad luck. The prophetic task is often to give spiritual meaning to events others experience only materially.
His promise that God would restore the years eaten by the locust offers particular comfort to those who feel they have lost irreplaceable time to suffering, sin, or circumstance. God’s restoration is not limited to the future — it reaches back into what was taken.
Key Scriptures
- Joel 1 — The locust plague as national catastrophe
- Joel 2:12–13 — “Rend your heart, and not your garments”
- Joel 2:25 — “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten”
- Joel 2:28–32 — Spirit poured out on all flesh
- Acts 2:16–21 — Peter quotes Joel at Pentecost