The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets,...

[1221] A.V., adhering to the Massoretic text, in which the verbs are pointed for the past, has evidently understood them as instances of the prophetic perfect. But “this is grammatically indefensible”: Driver, in loco; see his Heb. Tenses, § 82, Obs. Calvin and others, who take the verbs of ver. 18 as future, accept those of the next verse as past and with it begin the narrative. But if God’s answer to His people’s prayer be in the past, so must His jealousy and pity. All these verbs are in the same sequence of time. Merx proposes to change the vowel-points of the verbs and turn them into futures. But see above, p. 395. ver. 21 shows that Jehovah’s action is past, and Nowack points out the very unusual character of the construction that would follow from Merx’s emendation. Ewald, Hitzig, Kuenen, Robertson Smith, Davidson, Robertson, Steiner, Wellhausen, Driver, Nowack, etc., all take the verbs in the past.

[1222] This is scarcely a name for the locusts, who, though they might reach Palestine from the N.E. under certain circumstances, came generally from E. and S.E. But see above, p. 397: so Kuenen, Wellhausen, Nowack. W. R. Smith suggests the whole verse as an allegorising gloss. Hitzig thought of the locusts only, and rendered הצפוני ὁ τυφωνικός, Acts xxvii. 14; but this is not proved.

[1230] Opinion is divided as to the meaning of this phrase: לצדקה = for righteousness. A. There are those who take it as having a moral reference; and (1) this is so emphatic to some that they render the word for early rain, מורה, which also means teacher or revealer, in the latter significance. So (some of them applying it to the Messiah) Targum, Symmachus, the Vulgate, doctorem justitiæ, some Jews, e.g. Rashi and Abarbanel, and some moderns, e.g. (at opposite extremes) Pusey and Merx. But, as Calvin points out (this is another instance of his sanity as an exegete, and refusal to be led by theological presuppositions: he says, “I do not love strained expositions”), this does not agree with the context, which speaks not of spiritual but wholly of physical blessings. (2) Some, who take מורה as early rain, give לצדקה the meaning for righteousness, ad justitiam, either in the sense that God will give the rain as a token of His own righteousness, or in order to restore or vindicate the people’s righteousness (so Davidson, Expositor, 1888, I., p. 203, n.), in the frequent sense in which צדקה is employed in Isa. xl. ff. (see Isaiah xl.—lxvi., Expositor’s Bible, pp. 219 ff.). Cf. Hosea x. 13, צדק; above, Vol. I., p. 289, n. 611. This of course is possible, especially in view of Israel having been made by their plagues a reproach among the heathen. Still, if Joel had intended this meaning, he would have applied the phrase, not to the early rain only, but to the whole series of blessings by which the people were restored to their standing before God. B.

It seems, therefore, right to take לצדקה in a purely physical sense, of the measure or quality of the early rain. So even Calvin, rain according to what is just or fit; A.V. moderately (inexact); R.V. in just measure; Siegfried-Stade sufficient. The root-meaning of צדק is probably according to norm (cf. Isaiah xl.—lxvi., p. 215), and in that case the meaning would be rain of normal quantity. This too suits the parallel in the next clause: as formerly. In Himyaritic the word is applied to good harvests. A man prays to God for אפקל ואתֹמר צדקם, full or good harvests and fruits: Corp. Inscr. Sem., Pars Quarta, Tomus I., No. 2, lin. 1–5; cf. the note.

[1242] I am unable to feel Driver’s and Nowack’s arguments for a connection conclusive. The only reason Davidson gives is (p. 204) that the judgment of the heathen is an essential element in the Day of Jehovah, a reason which does not make Joel’s authorship of the last chapter certain, but only possible.