In the history of prophecy the Book of Joel must be either very early or very late, and with few exceptions the leading critics place it either before 800 B.C. or after 500. So great a difference is due to most substantial reasons. Unlike every other prophet, except Haggai, “Malachi” and “Zechariah” ix.—xiv., Joel mentions neither Assyria, which emerged upon the prophetic horizon about 760,[1069] nor the Babylonian Empire, which had fallen by 537. The presumption is that he wrote before 760 or after 537. Unlike all the prophets, too,[1070] Joel does not charge his people with civic or national sins; nor does his book bear any trace of the struggle between the righteous and unrighteous in Israel, nor of that between the spiritual worshippers of Jehovah and the idolaters. The book addresses an undivided nation, who know no God but Jehovah; and again the presumption is that Joel wrote before Amos and his successors had started the spiritual antagonisms which rent Israel in twain, or after the Law had been accepted by the whole people under Nehemiah.[1071] The same wide alternative is suggested by the style and phraseology. Joel’s Hebrew is simple and direct. Either he is an early writer, or imitates early writers. His book contains a number of phrases and verses identical, or nearly identical, with those of prophets from Amos to “Malachi.” Either they all borrowed from Joel, or he borrowed from them.[1072] Of this alternative modern criticism at first preferred the earlier solution, and dated Joel before Amos. So Credner in his Commentary in 1831, and following him Hitzig, Bleek, Ewald, Delitzsch, Keil, Kuenen (up to 1864),[1073] Pusey and others. So, too, at first some living critics of the first rank, who, like Kuenen, have since changed their opinion. And so, even still, Kirkpatrick (on the whole), Von Orelli, Robertson,[1074] Stanley Leathes and Sinker.[1075] The reasons which these scholars have given for the early date of Joel are roughly as follows.[1076] His book occurs among the earliest of the Twelve: while it is recognised that the order of these is not strictly chronological, it is alleged that there is a division between the pre-exilic and post-exilic prophets, and that Joel is found among the former. The vagueness of his representations in general, and of his pictures of the Day of Jehovah in particular, is attributed to the simplicity of the earlier religion of Israel, and to the want of that analysis of its leading conceptions which was the work of later prophets.[1077] His horror of the interruption of the daily offerings in the Temple, caused by the plague of locusts,[1078] is ascribed to a fear which pervaded the primitive ages of all peoples.[1079] In Joel’s attitude towards other nations, whom he condemns to judgment, Ewald saw “the old unsubdued warlike spirit of the times of Deborah and David.” The prophet’s absorption in the ravages of the locusts is held to reflect