After the Locusts

First you hear it: a low, crackling hum, like rain on a roof, growing louder. Then the sky goes dark in the middle of the day. And then they land. Millions of them. On the wheat, the vines, the fig trees. When they rise again, nothing green is left.

The book of Joel is short, only three or four chapters. Its prophet is Joel, son of Pethuel, and he spoke to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. He doesn't tell us which king was ruling, so no one knows exactly when he lived. But we know what had happened. In a land where almost everyone farmed, a plague of locusts had come. Not once, but in wave after wave. Joel begins by speaking to the oldest people in the land. Listen, you elders. Has anything like this ever happened in your lifetime, or in your parents' lifetime? Tell your children about it, and let them tell their children.

Joel describes it like an invasion. What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust ate. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust ate. What they left, the destroying locust ate. The vines are stripped. The fig trees have had their bark eaten off, so their branches stand white and bare. The wheat and barley are gone. Even the animals groan, wandering around looking for grass. And there is not even enough grain and wine left to bring as offerings at the temple. Joel tells everyone to wake up, and mourn. Priests, put on sackcloth. Call a fast. Gather the elders and all the people to the house of the Lord, and cry out to him.

Then Joel sounds the alarm. “Blow ye the trumpet in Zion.” He pictures the locusts as an army marching on the city, the day of the Lord, a dark and gloomy day. In front of them the land is like the garden of Eden. Behind them, a desert. They look like little horses and sound like chariots on the mountains, like fire crackling through stubble. They run like soldiers, climb the walls, pour into houses and come in through the windows like thieves. And then, in the middle of the terror, God speaks. “Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments.” Tearing your clothes was how people showed grief. But God wants more than a show. Tear open your hearts, he says, and come back to me. For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and full of steadfast love.

So Joel calls everyone together. Gather the people. Bring the old, bring the children, even the babies. Let the bride and groom leave their wedding. Let the priests weep between the temple porch and the altar, and pray, spare your people, Lord. And the Lord answers. He is jealous for his land, and he takes pity on his people. I am sending you grain and wine and olive oil, he says, enough to satisfy you. Don't be afraid, land. Be glad, children of Zion, for God gives you the autumn rains and the spring rains. The threshing floors will be full of wheat, and the vats will overflow. And then the promise: “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.” You will eat until you are full, and praise the name of the Lord, who has done wonders for you. And you will know that I am among you.

Locust plagues like the one Joel describes still happened in the same land in modern times. In nineteen fifteen, a huge swarm of locusts invaded Palestine, including Jerusalem. A writer who lived through it, John Whiting, described it in National Geographic magazine that year, with photographs: the swarms darkening the sky, the bare trees, the young hoppers marching over walls and into houses, just as Joel had said.

You'll find this story in Joel chapter one, verse one, to chapter two, verse twenty-seven. A land stripped bare, a people who turned back to God, and a promise to repay the lost years. So here is a question to carry with you. What would it look like for you to turn back to God with all your heart, not just on the outside?