The beasts of the field cry also unto thee,.... As well as the prophet, in their way; which may be mentioned, both as a rebuke to such who had no sense of the judgments upon them, and called not on the Lord; and to express the greatness of the calamity, of which the brute creatures were sensible, and made piteous moans, as for food, so for drink; panting thorough excessive heat and vehement thirst, as the hart, after the water brooks, of which this word is only used, Ps 42:1; but in vain:for the rivers of waters are dried up; not only springs, and rivulets and brooks of water, but rivers, places where were large deep waters, as Aben Ezra explains it; either by the Assyrian army, the like Sennacherib boasts Isa 37:25; and is said to be done by the army of Xerxes, wherever it came; or rather by the excessive heat and scorching beams of the sun, by which such effects are produced:and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness;See Gill on "Joe 1:19"; and whereas the word rendered pastures signifies both "them" and "habitations" also; and, being repeated, it may be taken in one of the senses in Joe 1:19; and in the other here: and so Kimchi who interprets it before of "tents", here explains it of grassy places in the wilderness, dried up, as if the sun had consumed them.
Bible Commentary
Joel 1:20
Joel 1:20
John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible · John Gill (1697–1771) · Public Domain
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Joel 1 — OverviewJoel 1 · Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole BibleThis chapter is the description of a lamentable devastation made of the
country of Judah by locusts and caterpillars. Some think that the
prophet speaks of it as a thing to come and gives warning of it…Joel 1 — OverviewJoel 1 · Treasury of Scripture KnowledgeJoel 1:1, Joel, declaring sundry judgments of God, exhorts to observe them, v.8, and to mourn; v.14, He prescribes a solemn fast to deprecate those judgments.Joel 1 — OverviewJoel 1 · John Gill's Exposition of the Entire BibleIn some Hebrew Bibles this prophecy is called "Sepher Joel", the Book of Joel; in the Vulgate Latin version, the Prophecy of Joel; and in the Syriac version, the Prophecy of the Prophet Joel; and the Arabic version, the…Joel 1:14-20Joel 1:14-20 · Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole BibleWe have observed abundance of tears shed for the destruction of the
fruits of the earth by the locusts; now here we have those tears turned
into the right channel, that of repentance and humiliation before God.…Joel 1:20Joel 1:20 · Treasury of Scripture Knowledgecry: Job 38:41; Psalms 104:21, Psalms 145:15, Psalms 147:9
the rivers: 1 Kings 17:7, 1 Kings 18:5