Joel in Smiths Bible Dictionary

(to whom Jehovah is God). 1. Eldest son of Samuel the prophet, 1Sa 8:2; 1Ch 6:33; 15:17 and father of Heman the singer. (B.C. 1094.) 2. In 1Ch 6:36 Authorized Version, Joel seems to be merely a corruption of Shaul in ver. 24. 3. A Simeonite chief. 1Ch 4:35 4. A descendant of Reuben. Junius and Tremellius make him the son of Hanoeh, while others trace his descent through Carmi. 1Ch 5:4 (B.C. before 1092.) 5. Chief of the Gadites, who dwelt in the land of Bashan. 1Ch 5:12 (B.C. 782.) 6. The son of Izrahiah, of the tribe of Issachar. 1Ch 7:3 7. The brother of Nathan of Zobah, 1Ch 11:38 and one of David's guard. 8. The chief of the Gershomites in the reign of David. 1Ch 15:7,11 9. A Gershonite Levite in the reign of David, son of Jehiel, a descendant of Laadan, and probably the same as the preceding. 1Ch 23:8; 26:22 (B.C. 1014.) 10. The son of Pedaiah, and a chief of the half- tribe of Manasseh west of Jordan, in the reign of David. 1Ch 27:20 (B.C. 1014.) 11. A Kohathite Levite in the reign of Hezekiah. 2Ch 29:12 (B.C. 726.) 12. One of the sons of Nebo, who returned with Ezra, and had married a foreign wife. Ezr 10:43 (B.C. 459.) 13. The son of Zichri, a Benjamite. Ne 11:9 14. The second of the twelve minor prophets, the son of Pethuel, probably prophesied in Judah in the reign of Uzziah, about B.C. 800. The book of Joel contains a grand outline of the whole terrible scene, which was to be depicted more and more in detail by subsequent prophets. The proximate event to which the prophecy related was a public calamity, then impending on Judah, of a two-plague of locusts --and continuing for several years. The prophet exhorts the people to turn to God with penitence, fasting and prayer; and then, he says, the plague shall cease, and the rain descendent in its season, and the land yield her accustomed fruit. Nay, the time will be a most joyful one; for God, by the outpouring of his Spirit, will extend the blessings of true religion to heathen lands. The prophecy is referred to in Acts 2.