Joel
Jo’el (to whom Jehovah is God).
1. Eldest son of Samuel the prophet, 1 Sam. 8:2; 1 Chron. 6:33; 15:17, and father of Heman the singer. (b.c. 1094.)
2. In 1 Chron. 6:36, Authorized Version, Joel seems to be merely a corruption of Shaul in ver. 24.
3. A Simeonite chief. 1 Chron. 4:35.
4. A descendant of Reuben. Junius and Tremellius make him the son of Hanoch, while others trace his descent through Carmi. 1 Chron. 5:4. (b.c. before 1092.)
5. Chief of the Gadites, who dwelt in the land of Bashan. 1 Chron. 5:12. (b.c. 782.)
6. The son of Izrahiah, of the tribe of Issachar. 1 Chron. 7:3.
7. The brother of Nathan of Zobah, 1 Chron. 11:38, and one of David’s guard.
8. The chief of the Gershomites in the reign of David. 1 Chron. 15:7, 11.
9. A Gershonite Levite in the reign of David, son of Jehiel, a descendant of Laadan, and probably the same as the preceding. 1 Chron. 23:8; 26:22. (b.c. 1014.)
10. The son of Pedaiah, and a chief of the half-tribe of Manasseh west of Jordan, in the reign of David. 1 Chron. 27:20. (b.c. 1014.)
11. A Kohathite Levite in the reign of Hezekiah. 2 Chron. 29:12. (b.c. 726.)
12. One of the sons of Nebo, who returned with Ezra, and had married a foreign wife. Ezra 10:43. (b.c. 459.)
13. The son of Zichri, a Benjamite. Neh. 11:9.
14. The second of the twelve minor prophets, the son of Pethuel, probably prophesied in Judah in the reign of Uzziah, about b.c. 800. The book of Joel contains a grand outline of the whole terrible scene, which was to be depicted more and more in detail by subsequent prophets. The proximate event to which the prophecy related was a public calamity, then impending on Judah, of a two-fold character—want of water, and a plague of locusts—and continuing for several years. The prophet exhorts the people to turn to God with penitence, fasting, and prayer; and then, he says, the plague shall cease, and the rain descend in its season, and the land yield her accustomed fruit. Nay, the time will be a most joyful one; for God, by the outpouring of his Spirit, will extend the blessings of true religion to heathen lands. The prophecy is referred to in Acts 2.