3), and others, attempt to evade this troublesome inference, by
asserting that fire and flame are here used instead of the heat of the
sun, scorching everything. But this assertion is, at all events,
expressed in a distorted and awkward manner. Fire and flame are never
used of the heat of the sun. According to this view, it ought rather to
be said that the prophet represents the consuming heat, under the image
of fire poured down from heaven. But even this cannot be entertained.
For the parallel passage chap. ii. 3, "Before him fire devoureth, and
after him flame burneth," shows that the fire, being immediately
connected with the locusts, cannot be a cause of destruction
independent of, and co-ordinate with, them. That the locusts are the
sole cause of [Pg 313] the devastation, and that there is not another
cause besides them, viz., the heat, is evident also from the words: "As
the garden of Eden is the land before them, and behind them a desolate
wilderness, and nothing is left by them." The burning anger of God is
represented under the image of a consuming and destroying fire, with a
reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the divine
wrath really manifested itself in that way. Under the image of fire,
_war_ also, one of the principal punishments of God, is often
represented. Thus, fire means the fire of war in Num. xxi. 28: Amos i.
4, 7, 10, etc.; Jer. xlix. 27; Rev. viii. 8, 10. On the latter of these
passages, my Commentary may be compared. If, then, the fire spoken of
in this passage mean likewise the fire of war, and the locusts, the
heathen enemies, the difficulty presented by the connection of these
two things is solved. The comparison of Amos vii. here serves as a key.
In vers. 1-3, the divine punishment is represented by the prophet under
the image of a great army of locusts laying waste the country, which is
just beginning to recover under Jeroboam II. after the former
calamities inflicted by the Syrians; and then in ver. 4, under the
image of a great fire devouring the sea (_i.e._, the world), and eating
up the holy land. This analogy is so much the more important, the more
impossible it is to overlook, in other passages also, the points of
agreement betwixt Joel and Amos. But the symbolical representation goes
still further; it extends even to the details. The beasts of the field
are the barbarous, heathen nations. In ver. 19, the desolations are
described which the fire of war accomplish