Joel 1:11-12 Be you ashamed, O you farmers; howl, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley… The husbandmen and vine-dressers should be ashamed, and disappointed of their expectations, through the barrenness of land and trees. 1. Albeit men are bound to labour for their daily bread, yet except God bless, their labour will be in vain, and their expectations by it end in sad disappointments. 2. Sin doth procure great desolation, and doth provoke God to destroy whatsoever is pleasant or profitable to the sinner, and leave him under confusion and sorrow. So much is imported in the first reason of their shame and howling. 3. Albeit men ordinarily count little of the mercy of their daily bread, and of the increase of their labours, yet the want of it would soon be felt as a sad stroke, and will overturn much of their joy and cheerfulness. 4. The matter of men's joy is God's gift, to give or take it away as He pleaseth; and whatever joy, warranted or unlawful, men have about anything beneath God, it is but uncertain and fading, and ought to be looked on as such; for here, when God pleaseth, He maketh joy to "wither away." (George Hutcheson.) Parallel Verses KJV: Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. |
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