The considerations which have given currency to an early date for Joel are of various kinds. The absence of all mention of one great oppressing world-power seems most natural before the westward march of Assyria involved Israel in the general politics of Asia. The purity of the style is also urged, and a comparison of Amos i. 2, Joel iii. 16 (Heb. iv. 16), and Amos ix. 13, Joel iii. 18 (iv. 18), has been taken as proving that Amos knew our book. The last argument might be inverted with much greater probability, and numerous points of contact between Joel and other parts of the Old Testament (e.g. Joel ii. 2, Exod. x. 14; Joel ii. 3, Ezek. xxxvi. 35; Joel iii. 10, Mic. iv. 3) make it not incredible that the purity of his style--which is rather elegant than original and strongly marked--is in large measure the fruit of literary culture. The absence of allusion to a hostile or oppressing empire may be fairly taken in connexion with the fact that the prophecy gives no indication of political life at Jerusalem. When the whole people is mustered in ch. i., the elders or sheikhs of the municipality and the priests of the temple are the most prominent figures. The king is not mentioned--which on Credner's view is explained by assuming that the plague fell in the minority of Joash, when the priest Jehoiada held the reins of power--and the princes, councillors and warriors necessary to an independent state, and so often referred to by the prophets before the exile, are altogether lacking. The nation has only a municipal organization with a priestly aristocracy, precisely the state of things that prevailed under the Persian empire. That the Persians do not appear as enemies of Yahweh and his people is perfectly natural. They were hard masters but not invaders, and under them the enemies of the Jews were their neighbours, just as appears in Joel.[1] Those, however, who place our prophet in the minority of King Joash draw a special argument from the mention of Phoenicians, Philistines and Edomites (iii. 4 seq., 19), pointing to the revolt of Edom under Joram (2 Kings viii. 20) and the incursion of the Philistines in the same reign (2 Chron. xxi. 16, xxii. 1). These were recent events in the time of Joash, and in like manner the Phoenician slave trade in Jewish children is carried back to an early date by the reference in Amos i. 9. This argument is rather specious than sound. Edom's hostility to Judah was incessant, but the feud reached its full intensity only after the time of Deuteronomy (xxiii. 7), when the Edomites joined the Chaldaeans, drew profit from the overthrow of the Jews, whose land they partly occupied, and exercised barbarous cruelty towards the fugitives of Jerusalem (Obad. _passim_; Mal. i. 2 seq.; Isa. lxiii.). The offence of shedding innocent blood charged on them by Joel is natural after these events, but hardly so in connexion with the revolt against