Joel 1:18

How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(18) How do the beasts groan.—All creation is represented as sharing in the dread perplexity; the beasts are involved in it, as also in Nineveh the animals were united in the proclamation of the general fast by the king’s decree, when he had heard of the preaching of Jonah.

Benson Commentary

Joel 1:18. How do the beasts groan! — “How grievous will be the distress of the beasts of the field! How sadly will they complain through the vehemency of thirst! How will the herds of cattle be troubled and perplexed! For their verdant pastures shall be all scorched up, and they will have none wherein to feed. The flocks also shall be desolate, and ready to perish.” Scarce any thing can be more strongly or more movingly descriptive of the effects of a dearth and drought than this is.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

1:14-20 The sorrow of the people is turned into repentance and humiliation before God. With all the marks of sorrow and shame, sin must be confessed and bewailed. A day is to be appointed for this purpose; a day in which people must be kept from their common employments, that they may more closely attend God's services; and there is to be abstaining from meat and drink. Every one had added to the national guilt, all shared in the national calamity, therefore every one must join in repentance. When joy and gladness are cut off from God's house, when serious godliness decays, and love waxes cold, then it is time to cry unto the Lord. The prophet describes how grievous the calamity. See even the inferior creatures suffering for our transgression. And what better are they than beasts, who never cry to God but for corn and wine, and complain of the want of the delights of sense? Yet their crying to God in those cases, shames the stupidity of those who cry not to God in any case. Whatever may become of the nations and churches that persist in ungodliness, believers will find the comfort of acceptance with God, when the wicked shall be burned up with his indignation.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

How do the beasts groan! - There is something very pitiable in the cry of the brute creation, even because they are innocent, yet bear man's guilt. Their groaning seems to the prophet to be beyond expression. How vehemently do they "groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed," as though, like man, they were endued with reason, to debate where to find their food. Yea, not these only, but the flocks of sheep, which might find pasture where the herds could not, these too shall bear the punishment of guilt. They suffered by the guilt of man; and yet so stupid was man, that he was not so sensible of his own win for which they suffered, as they of its effect. The beasts cried to God, but even their cries did not awaken His own people. The prophet cries for them;

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

18. cattle … perplexed—implying the restless gestures of the dumb beasts in their inability to find food. There is a tacit contrast between the sense of the brute creation and the insensibility of the people.

yea, the … sheep—Even the sheep, which are content with less rich pasturage, cannot find food.

are made desolate—literally, "suffer punishment." The innocent brute shares the "punishment" of guilty man (Ex 12:29; Jon 3:7; 4:11).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

How do the beasts groan? so great was the penury and want of sustenance, that the beasts in the field, pinched with hunger, groaned, made dismal noise for fodder and water; the word beasts is general, and contains all sorts.

The herds of cattle; the greater cattle, which go wandering about, and range over all places, yet can find no pasturage.

The flocks of sheep; which, led by shepherds, might likely be supposed better secured; yet their shepherds find no pasture, and the sheep pine away and starve. These things are mentioned, either as convincing men of their stupidity, who were less sensible of present miseries than brute beasts were, or to provoke them to lay to heart the pressing calamities, or as arguments that lie would pity and relieve innocent brutes, though he punished sinful brutes.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

How do the beasts groan?.... For want of fodder, all green grass and herbs being eaten up by the locusts; or devoured, or trampled upon, and destroyed, by the Chaldeans; and also for want of water to quench their thirst:

the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; the larger cattle, as oxen; these were in the utmost perplexity, not knowing where to go for food or drink:

yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate; which have shepherds to lead and direct them to pastures, and can feed on commons, where the grass is short, which other cattle cannot; yet even these were in great distress, and wasted away, and were consumed for want of nourishment.

Geneva Study Bible

How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

18. The distress of the cattle through lack of pasture (cf. Jeremiah 14:5-6).

are perplexed] wandering hither and thither in quest of food[33].

[33] LXX. for מה נאנחה בהמה express מַה־נַּנִּחָה בָהֵמָּה, “what shall we lay up (Deuteronomy 14:28) in them?” connecting the words with Joel 1:17. But such a clause would be a very weak addition to כי הוביש דגן.

yea (or even) the flocks of sheep, &c.] even the sheep, which do not require such moist or rich pasture as kine, suffer with them.

are made desolate] are held guilty, or (R.V. marg.) suffer punishment. âsham, to be guilty, is sometimes used in the sense of to be held guilty, to bear the consequences of guilt, i.e. to suffer punishment (comp. Hosea 13:16; Isaiah 24:6); and here the term is applied improperly, by a poetical figure, to cattle. The rendering are made desolate is due to the fact that the Jews understood אשׁם in the sense of שׁמם. Merx and Wellh., however, perhaps rightly, read נָשַׁמּוּ, ‘are made desolate’ (Lamentations 4:5), or ‘stand aghast’ (Jeremiah 4:9).

Joel 1:18

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"Is not the food destroyed before our eyes, joy and exulting from the house of our God? Joel 1:17. The grains have mouldered under their clods, the storehouses are desolate, the barns have fallen down; because the corn is destroyed. Joel 1:18. How the cattle groan! the herds of oxen are bewildered, for no pasture was left for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer." As a proof that the day of the Lord is coming like a devastation from the Almighty, the prophet points in Joel 1:16 to the fact that the food is taken away before their eyes, and therewith all joy and exulting from the house of God. "The food of the sinners perishes before their eyes, since the crops they looked for are snatched away from their hands, and the locust anticipates the reaper" (Jerome). אכל, food as the means of sustenance; according to Joel 1:19, corn, new wine, and oil. The joy is thereby taken from the house of Jehovah, inasmuch as, when the crops are destroyed, neither first-fruits nor thank-offerings can be brought to the sanctuary to be eaten there at joyful meals (Deuteronomy 12:6-7; Deuteronomy 16:10-11). And the calamity became all the more lamentable, from the fact that, in consequence of a terrible drought, the seed perished in the earth, and consequently the prospect of a crop the following year entirely disappeared. The prophet refers to this in Joel 1:17, which has been rendered in extremely different ways by the lxx, Chald., and Vulg., on account of the ̔απ. λεγ. עבשׁוּ, פּרדות, and מגרפות (compare Pococke, ad h. l.). עבשׁ signifies to moulder away, or, as the injury was caused by dryness and heat, to dry up; it is used here of grains of corn which lose their germinating power, from the Arabic ‛bs, to become dry or withered, and the Chaldee עפשׁ, to get mouldy. Perudōth, in Syriac, grains of corn sowed broadcast, probably from pârad, to scatter about. Megrâphōth, according to Ab. Esr., clods of earth (compare Arab. jurf, gleba terrai), from gâraph, to wash away (Judges 5:21) a detached piece of earth. If the seed-corn loses its germinating power beneath the clod, no corn-harvest can be looked for. The storehouses ('ōtsârōth; cf. 2 Chronicles 32:27) moulder away, and the barns (mammegurâh with dag. dirim. equals megūrâh in Haggai 2:19) fall, tumble to pieces, because being useless they are not kept in proper condition. The drought also deprives the cattle of their pasture, so that the herds of oxen and flocks of sheep groan and suffer with the rest from the calamity. בּוּך, niphal, to be bewildered with fear. 'Ashēm, to expiate, to suffer the consequences of men's sin.

The fact, that even irrational creatures suffer along with men, impels the prophet to pray for help to the Lord, who helps both man and beast (Psalm 36:7). Joel 1:19. "To Thee, O Jehovah, do I:cry: for fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has consumed all the trees of the field. Joel 1:20. Even the beasts of the field cry unto Thee; for the water-brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness." Fire and flame are the terms used by the prophet to denote the burning heat of the drought, which consumes the meadows, and even scorches up the trees. This is very obvious from the drying up of the water-brooks (in Joel 1:20). For Joel 1:20, compare Jeremiah 14:5-6. In Jeremiah 14:20 the address is rhetorically rounded off by the repetition of ואשׁ אכלה וגו from Jeremiah 14:19.