Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we finished our 31st book of the Bible. It was written by the minor prophet Joel. We don't know anything about him, even when he lived,

but based on context clues, we can narrow it down to about a 300-year time frame, with the most

recent part of that being post-exile. He makes references to the temple, so we just know it's either

before 586 BC or after 516 BC. Some think this book prophesies the Babylonian invasion, so they place it pre-exile in the same

time period as the prophets we've already been reading.

Others think this was written post-exile, because he addresses his letter to the elders, not to a

king, and that's who would have been in charge of things after they returned from exile.

But based on where it's placed in this

plan, it seems like the people at Blue Letter Bible who put the plan together lean more toward pre-exile.

So imagine this being written around the same time Ezekiel wrote his book. Joel contains a lot

of mystery. In addition to not really knowing who he is or when he lived, he also tends to be more

vague than most other prophets.

He doesn't name any of Israel's sin specifically, unlike other prophets, and he barely mentions

which enemy nations he's referring to. As with most prophecy, this is going to be another

zoom-out book, where we look at the big picture more than the details. The book opens with a plague of locust who've

swarmed the land. In scripture, armies are often compared to invading locusts, but here Joel

flips the metaphor and compares locusts to an invading army. This locust swarm isn't just a nuisance,

it's a total agricultural devastation. Verse 7 says they've destroyed the vines and fig trees,

both of which are things locust only attack

after they've already eaten everything else.

Apparently, vines and fig trees are the locust version of pizza crust.

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