Joel Chapter 3 verse 18 Holy Bible

Joel 3 : 18 Bible Verse Songs

• New Wine Flow by Ryan Ellis

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 18-21. - These verses picture Judah and Jerusalem as scenes of most abundant blessings, while Egypt and Edom are doomed to irretrievable barrenness and desolation. But, as the language must be understood figuratively, the prosperity of the Lord's laud is set in contrast with the countries of the world-powers; but the contrast includes, as we think, the allotments of eternity as well as the destinies of time. Verse 18. - In that day. These words express the state of things consequent on the judgment just executed. The mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow (margin, go) with waters. Thus the mountains are represented as covered over with vines of richest growth and terraced to the top; the hills as affording most luxuriant pastures and clothed with flocks; the rivers, dried up in summer and reduced to dried-up river-beds, flowing unintermittingly and coursing along with full stream. To exuberance of wine and milk is added, what is no less valuable in a thirsty Eastern land, abundance of water. The source of this abundant supply is a fountain; the fountain-head is the house of the Lord; thence proceeds a broad deep stream, which makes its way to the Jordan valley and across the river to the dry trans-Jordanic valley of acacias, as it is added: A fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim; from which statement we must conclude the figurative signification of the whole of this and the following verses. Parallels for some of the above expressions are not far to seek. Ovid's description of the golden age, in which be speaks of rivers of milk and rivers of nectar and honey dropping from the green palm tree, is cited by Rosenmuller; while the 'Speaker's Commentary' quotes from the 'Bacchae' of Euripides the lines about the plain flowing with milk, flowing with wine, and flowing with the nectar of the bees. Instead of the "hills flowing with milk," we should rather expect the milk to be spoken of as flowing; the hypallage, however, as we may consider it, makes the clause more symmetrical with those between which it stands. Thus Kimchi: "The meaning of 'They shall flow (go) with milk,' is from the abundance of the flowing and running: he applies the name of flowing (going) to the hills, even although that the milk is that which goes and flows." And in reference to the following clause he says, "He uses the name of going to the channels." That is one side of the picture. We are now invited to look on this -

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(18) The mountains shall drop down new wine.--The material prosperity depicted in these verses symbolises the glorious reign of Jehovah when the last enemy has been destroyed, and "God is all in all."A fountain shall come forth.--The spiritual fertilising power of the knowledge of the Lord is compared to the life-giving influence of a stream of water, which causes luxuriance to the trees on its banks. This imagery is exemplified by Ezekiel, who traces the course of the waters issuing from under the threshold of the house of the Lord (Ezekiel 47). (Comp. Zechariah 14:8; Revelation 22:1.)The valley of Shittim.--Heb., acacias. Shittim, in the land of Moab, is symbolical of the barrenness and sterility of land where there is no water; of the dry places of the world, where there are trees lacking moisture: the heathen, to whom God is not known, shall yet become covered with the knowledge of the Lord.