We thus arrive at the conclusion that Joel occupies the right place in the Canon. The assertion that Joel belonged to the priestly order, is as baseless as the similar one regarding Habakkuk, and as the supposition that the author of the Chronicles was a musician. The book contains a connected description. It begins with a graphic account of the ruin which God will bring upon His apostate Congregation, by means of foreign enemies. These latter represent themselves to the prophet in his spiritual vision as an all-destroying swarm of locusts. The fundamental thought is this:--"Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together,"--wherever corruption manifests itself in the Congregation of the Lord, punishment will be inflicted. Because God has sanctified Himself _in_ the Congregation, and has graciously imparted to her His holiness. He must therefore sanctify Himself upon her,--must manifest His holiness in her punishment, if she has become like the profane world. He cannot allow that, after the Spirit has departed, the dead body should still continue to appear as His kingdom, but strips off the mask of hypocrisy from His degenerate Church, by representing her outwardly as that which, by her guilt, she has become inwardly. This thought commonly appears in a special [Pg 298] application, by the mention of the name of the particular people whom the Lord is, in the immediate future, to employ for the realization of it. In the case before us, however, He is satisfied with pointing to the dignity and power inherent in Him. The enemies are designated only as _people from the North_. But it was from the North--from Syria--that all the principal invasions of Palestine proceeded. Hence there is no reason either to think of one of them exclusively, or to exclude one. On the contrary, the comprehensive character of the description distinctly appears in i. 4. It is there, at the very threshold, intimated, that the heathenish invasion will be a fourfold one,--that Israel shall become the prey of four successive extensive empires. Joel's mission fell at the commencement of the written prophecy; and in harmony with this, he gives only an outline of that which it was reserved for the later prophets to fill up, and to carry out in its details, by the mention of the name of each single empire, as the times moved on. It was enough that Joel prophesied the destruction by these great empires, even before any one of them had appeared on the stage of history, and that he was enabled to point even to the fourfold number of them.