11 The Lord gave this message to Joel son of Pethuel. 2 Hear this, you leaders of the people. Listen, all who live in the land. In all your history, has anything like this happened before? 3 Tell your children about it in the years to come, and let your children tell their children. Pass the story down from generation to generation. 4 After the cutting locusts finished eating the crops, the swarming locusts took what was left! After them came the hopping locusts, and then the stripping locusts, too!
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Joel 1:1-4
Commentary on Joel 1:1-7
(Read Joel 1:1-7)
The most aged could not remember such calamities as were about to take place. Armies of insects were coming upon the land to eat the fruits of it. It is expressed so as to apply also to the destruction of the country by a foreign enemy, and seems to refer to the devastations of the Chaldeans. God is Lord of hosts, has every creature at his command, and, when he pleases, can humble and mortify a proud, rebellious people, by the weakest and most contemptible creatures. It is just with God to take away the comforts which are abused to luxury and excess; and the more men place their happiness in the gratifications of sense, the more severe temporal afflictions are upon them. The more earthly delights we make needful to satisfy us, the more we expose ourselves to trouble.