Yoel: The Politics of the Locust Swarm

  I should stress from the start that this is largely speculation on my part.  I do not have access to much in the way of commentary on Yoel/Joel, so this is based on my reading of the text itself, trying to find meaning in the nuances, using my imperfect grasp of biblical Hebrew (part of the reason I’m studying Trei Assar is to improve my Hebrew).  That said, I think I managed to reason out some problems based on what few sources I do have access to and an eye to the internal coherence of the text itself, so caveat emptor (lector?), but hopefully this is still worthwhile.

  Several questions occurred to me while studying Yoel: who is Yoel?  When did he prophesy?  Unlike many of the other prophets, the text itself does not give a date, even a vague one.  What is his message?  To be blunt, what does he want his audience to do?  Again, unlike other prophets, he is frustratingly vague.  The bulk of his prophecy is a warning about a locust-swarm that will be sent as a punishment if the Israelites do not repent.  The Jewish understanding of prophecy is that many prophets delivered messages, but only those with a timeless, universal meaning (whether the primary meaning or a subtextual one) were preserved as part of Tanakh.  What, then, is the eternal meaning of this message apparently about a single event?  Finally, why does the prophecy suddenly shift to the final redemption towards the end of the book?

  Rashi cites three different opinions on the identity and historical date of Yoel: he was the son of the prophet Shmuel/Samuel*; he was a contemporary of the prophet Elisha; or he prophesied at the time of King Menashe.  My personal preference is for the earliest of these, chronologically: that he was the son of Shmuel.  This would make Yoel the earliest of the ‘literary prophets,’ which would explain many oddities of the text.  While most of the other later prophets criticise the socio-political corruption and organised idolatrous cults among the Israelites, Yoel makes no mention of these.  Moreover, his references to the social hierarchy are very unusual.  There are references to the elders (the high court) and to the priests, so he does not ignore the ruling bodies completely, yet there are no references to the king.  The monarchy originated in the days of Shmuel.  However, this was the ‘golden age’ of the monarchy, under perhaps the most righteous of the Israelite kings (Shaul and especially David and Shlomo).  It is unsurprising that these kings were not criticised by Yoel if they were his contemporaries, but it would be surprising if a prophet at the time of a later, more corrupt political order, was not critical of it and of the monarchs presiding over it.

*  He is named as Yoel ben Petuel (1.1), not Yoel ben Shmuel, but the Midrash lists Petuel as another name of Shmuel’s.  It is not unknown for biblical characters to have multiple names even without Midrashic and Talmudic explanations.

  If Yoel was the son of Shmuel, this may give a fascinating insight into what exactly the prophet was trying to achieve.  His message is very unclear.  He calls for repentance, a return to God (see especially 2.12-14), but does not specify the problem requiring this repentance.  The nuances of his message give us some clues.  Yoel makes several references to gathering all the people together for joint fasting and prayer: young and old, men and women, priests and laity.  And, of course, the most striking, memorable image is his description of the locust swarms that will devastate the land if the people do not repent.  In biblical thought a punishment is symbolic of the moral failure it comes to correct, providing a sign as to what needs to be corrected, while repentance helps to overcome that failure.  Hence the locust swarm provides the key to understanding Yoel’s message.

  The emphasis is first on the total destruction of the crops by the locusts (most of chapter 1).  Perhaps, then, the problem was the development of a materialistic attitude that saw physical existence and pleasure, represented by food, which supports life, as the essence of life.  This would explain the absence of any denunciation of specific sins.  There was no outright sin to criticise, just a growing sense of spiritual complacency.  Hence, the prophet makes a call for the population to re-engage with God through fasting and prayer (this is similar to the Rambam’s advice to combat a hedonistic tendency with a temporary burst of asceticism to regain the centre-ground – and vice versa).

  Yoel also stresses the sheer size and order of locust swarm, which is described with a series of military similes (remembering that horses and chariots are seen as military in biblical imagery) (2.1-11).  Perhaps the problem was growing social atomisation, a tendency towards individual self-containment, the opposite of both a swarm and an army, where the individual is submerged in the whole.  Individual self-containment is not bad in itself (perhaps explaining the absence of any specific criticism), but it is a worrying trend.  The Mishna states, “One who says, ‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours’ has an average character – but some say this is a Sodom characteristic.” (Avot 5.13)  Such an attitude of individual self-containment may be normal, but it can easily lead to selfishness, inhospitality and an unwillingness to help those in need, the sins of Sodom in the Jewish tradition.  Social atomisation is combated with communal involvement, hence the stress on everyone gathering, fasting and praying: young and old, men and women, priests and laity (see especially 2.15-17).

  This may help to explain the Talmud’s interpretation of Shmuel I/I Sam. 8.1-3:

“When Shmuel became old he appointed his sons as judges for Israel.  The name of his eldest son was Yoel and the name of his second son was Aviyah.  They were judges at Be’er Sheva, but they did not follow his ways.  They followed profit, took bribes and perverted judgement.”

The Talmud, while not averse to recording the shortcomings of Jewish leaders, biblical or later, insists:

“[Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan]: He who thinks the sons of Samuel sinned is in error.  It is written: ‘And they did not walk in his ways’ [I Sam. 8.3].  True, they did not walk in his ways, but they did not sin.  How, then, is the passage to be upheld: ‘They followed profit, took bribes’? [ibid.].  They did not act as their father, for Shmuel the righteous travelled through all Israel and dispensed justice in every city, as it is written: ‘And he went from year to year in circuit to Beth-El and Gilgal and Mizpah, and judged Israel’ [ibid. 7.6], but they did not act in this way.  They dwelt in their respective places in order to increase the fees of their messengers and scribes.

On this point the following Tannaim differ.  R. Meir says: They claimed their [legitimate] priestly allowance personally [depriving the poor priests and Levites of their shares, because as they were leaders, they were never refused].  R. Yehudah says: They had commercial relations with private people [they made them trade on their behalf, earning profit for them, and carrying a risk of partiality in legal cases].  R. Akiva says: They took tithes [to a greater extent than they were allowed to do] by force.  R. Yossi says: They took the [priests’] portions [of a slaughtered animal] by force.” (Shabbat 56a, translation from here, but clarified a bit by me)

The Midrash adds that, “They caused the caravans to pass through Be’er Sheva unnecessarily, for their personal benefit, thus earning a profit.  [This may be legal, but] the text counts it as bribery.” (Bereshit Rabbah 8.12 quoted here)

  The contrast with Shmuel makes it necessary to examine for a moment what ideals he embodied.  In a fascinating series of posts (here, here and here) ADDerabbi argues that Shmuel and his mother Chana tried to reinvigorate the priesthood.  At the time, this was the main outlet of organised national Jewish spirituality (the only one, if you ignore the court system), but it was becoming corrupt and distant from the people, even trying to control access to God.  Shmuel himself retained these anti-authoritarian, even libertarian, attitudes, berating the Israelites for wanting a king, warning of the resultant high taxation, forced labour, and large, expensive, conscripted standing armies (Shmuel I 8.11-18).  Of course, he was right.  Even an honest monarchy would need those things, and, as Tanakh continuously points out, the Jewish monarchies quickly became corrupt.

  However, Yoel represents a different take on the centralisation of power.  Where Shmuel saw it as an expensive waste of public money and an invitation to corruption, Yoel sees it as a positive force in the nation.  The era of the Judges, which ended with Shmuel, had seen the Israelite nation fragment.  Already by the time of Dvorah, the tribes were not all willing to help one another against foreign attack (Shoftim/Judges 5.15-17).  By time of the incident of the concubine at Giveah, there was outright civil war between Binyamin and the other tribes (Shoftim 19-21).  Shoftim gives one recurring reason for the breakdown of nation cohesion at that time, indeed, it is the final verse of the book: “In those days, there was no king in Israel; each man did what was correct in his eyes.” (Shoftim 21.25)

  Yoel sees a need for a unifying factor.  When religious-judicial-political authority is migratory, as it was under Shmuel, each individual has equal, easy, cheap access to authority, but such localism ultimately erodes all sense of national identity and the common good.  If the officials and scribes stay in one place, and the people have to go to them, not only is life made easier for bureaucrats (not a minor point: it facilitates the development of more complex, sophisticated and efficient methods of bureaucracy and government, as happened in late medieval Europe, when monarchs started to rule from capitals instead of progressing around the country), but there is a stronger sense of their being one capital, one central authority for the whole nation, a stronger sense that the common, national good should be a factor in policy.  There is also more chance that individuals from different tribes will meet when they are in town for a judgement, adding to national cohesion.  Hence Yoel’s references to gathering all the people including the elders (judicial authority) and having the priests (religious authority) pray at the Temple* – at a central place of worship where all can come (Yoel 2.17).  With some kind of centre, people can see themselves as joined together like the locust swarm: a bunch of individuals, but joined as an almost organic whole.

*  Beit Hashem can refer to either the Mishkan (Tabernacle) or the Temple.  The Temple was built in the reign of Shlomo, and it is conceivable that Yoel saw it, although he would probably have been an old man.  However, the reference to the “hall” near the altar (2.17) would seem to indicate the Temple, rather than the Mishkan, which, as far as I know, did not have such a hall.

  In any society, there is a need to balance the localist and centralist tendencies, which is why both views are laid out in Tanakh in Shmuel and Yoel.  It is not easy, as either side can get carried to dangerous extremes (the anarchy of Shoftim or the authoritarian corruption of the Northern Kingdom and the later days of the Kingdom of Judah).  Hence the Talmud stresses that Yoel repented before became prophet.  Might this indicate a greater understanding of the needs of the public on his part?  After all, the sins attributed to Yoel and his brother by the Talmud (making justice inaccessible; taking legitimate dues (essentially fees for office) by force, or to taking more than permitted; and making economic decisions based on personal interests), while not the wholesale corruption indicated by the pshat (literal) meaning of the verse, do still show a dangerous tendency to place the institutional needs of government ahead of the needs of the citizenry, as well as an inadequate division between the public and private roles of those in office.  By emphasising the gathering of the entire nation in repentance, ordinary men, women and children as well as elders and priests, it seems Yoel has learnt that centralised organisations, whether governmental or religious, are not superior to the people, but rather form an organic whole.

  We are now in a position to explain why a prophecy about a one-off event was recorded for posterity in Tanakh.  Yoel perceived that the minor faults in his day (a lack of religious enthusiasm, a growing materialistic attitude and a lack of social cohesion) would lead to much greater religious, political and social corruption and disunity in future generations if not rectified early on.  In fact, these attitudes were never fully removed from the Israelites, and did indeed cause many later problems, from the idolatry, murder, adultery, political corruption and oppression denounced by the later prophets during the first Temple era through to the socio-political disunity and unnecessary hatred that have afflicted the Jewish people from the second Temple period to the present day.  Hence, the message of the book is continually relevant.

  This helps to explain Abarbanel’s interpretation, that the four different types of locusts (1.4) represent the four nations that exiled the Jewish people from their land (Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans).  This makes sense if the prophet is addressing the underlying moral causes that will lead to such a dramatic political decline.

  This also helps to explain the shift to the final redemption in the closing chapters of the book (3-4).  If the long centuries of exile are a key subtextual theme of the early chapters of the book, it is logical for the closing sections to be prophecies of comfort and reassurance about the final redemption.  This is an era when the problems identified by the prophet in the early part of the book no longer exist, so the emphasis is again on unity, this time unity achieved.  This will include a universal prophetic spirit, where everyone will prophesy, regardless of gender, age or social position (3.1-2).