Joel closes his book at a valley whose name has never belonged to a place on a map. "Jehoshaphat" means "the LORD judges," so the wordplay matters more than the geography. This is a courtroom. 2"I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel." The nations named are Tyre, Sidon, Egypt, and Edom, and they answer for a specific charge, scattering God's people, dividing up his land, and selling children as if they were cheap goods. God enters as the wronged party bringing his own suit.
The summons uses the language of war, and it reverses one of Scripture's best-known lines on the way. Joel calls the nations to beat plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears. Isaiah and Micah had pictured the nations doing the opposite, turning weapons into farm tools when war ended (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3). Joel's nations arm themselves for a battle they cannot win, since the war they are called to is against God himself.
Then the picture turns from battlefield to harvest, and the valley is renamed. 14"Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision!" The Hebrew word for "decision" can also mean a threshing sledge, the tool that separates grain from stalk. The nations gather to be threshed by a verdict already reached. A bitter echo runs underneath. The overflowing vats that described Judah's restored blessing in chapter 2 now describe the overflow of judgment on everyone who wronged her.
Verse 16 holds the book's whole tension in a pair of sentences. The LORD roars from Zion and the heavens and the earth quake, and yet the LORD is 16"a refuge to his people." The same roar that shook the earth at the start of chapter 2, the sound that once meant terror for Jerusalem's own people, now means shelter for them and only terror for their enemies. It is one voice with two effects, depending on where a person stands when it sounds.
What follows reads like pictures laid side by side, each reversing something chapter 1 took away. 18"the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water." A fountain comes out of the LORD's house to water even the driest valley nearby. Every image chapter 1 used for loss, the withered vine, the cut-off offering, the failed brook, is answered point for point.
The last line of the book names what holds every promise together. 21"the LORD dwells in Zion." God's own presence settled among his people is the ground everything else stands on, deeper than the defeat of Egypt and Edom and deeper than the wine and milk and water. From the locusts that opened the book to the fountain that closes it, Joel has been building toward that one fact, the presence Scripture later says became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
If you are waiting through a dry season, see where Joel stops: on the address, the LORD dwells in Zion, the promise that arrives before any harvest does.
Prayer
LORD, you roar in judgment against everyone who has wronged your people, and that same roar is our shelter and not our fear. Thank you that our security rests on your presence among us, not on our own strength to defeat what comes against us. As we wait for the day every dry place in our lives flows again, keep us trusting that you dwell with us even now, in the valley, before the harvest comes. In Jesus' name, amen.