{"id":76778,"date":"2020-07-01T15:45:43","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T12:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=76778"},"modified":"2020-07-01T15:45:43","modified_gmt":"2020-07-01T12:45:43","slug":"devastated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/devastated\/","title":{"rendered":"Devastated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joel 1 predicts that God will send a plague of four types of locusts that will descend upon Israel and consume all its crops and fruits. The prophet utilizes a number of metaphors for the insect invasion, including: an invading army (v. 6); and an uncontrolled fire (v. 19-20). Joel also describes the diverse elements of society that will feel acutely victimized by this scourge: the alcoholics deprived of their wine (v. 5); the priests who will have trouble finding wine for their libations (v. 9, 13); the farmers whose fields will be laid waste (v. 11); human beings in general saddened by the incursions affecting their food supply (v. 12); and even animals who will be bereft of pasture land (v. 18, 20.)<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the most obscure, and therefore in my view, most interesting, of the prophetic metaphors for the devastation that will be caused by the insect swarms, appears in v. 8:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLament\u2014like a \u2018Betula\u2019 (<\/span>maiden girl<\/span><\/em>) with sackcloth, for the husband of her youth!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Who is the \u201cyoung bride\u201d and who was to be \u201cher husband,\u201d who passed away so precipitously and is therefore being mourned by her?<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the classical commentators, R. Eliezer MiBeaugency and Metzudat David interpret the verse literally, i.e., since a young woman\u2019s deepest love is reserved for the husband of her youth, and everything had already been prepared for the wedding, but at the last minute, it couldn\u2019t take place, because the groom suddenly dies, this is the same emotion that pervades the society when the produce that had just become ready for harvest, is suddenly devoured by a plague of insects.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Radak, Alsheich, and Abravanel see the verse in terms of its theological import, i.e., the Jewish community, that had always felt protected by its relationship with the Divine, to the point where it viewed Him as their \u201cBetrothed,\u201d bemoans and mourns their apparent abandonment by God, as manifested in the great agricultural losses that they are suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Malbim offers the most visual, detailed, and poetic rendering of this verse. In his view, the \u201cmourners\u201d are the grape vine and the fig tree (<\/span>!<\/span><\/i>) that have been destroyed. He continues that the \u201csackcloth\u201d (that none of the other interpreters explicitly accounted for) corresponds to the pieces of material that typically are used to cover and warm these plants when their bark has been removed and only the trunk remains, in the hope that new shoots and branches will eventually grow from them. Malbim even accounts for the terminology of \u201cBetula\u201d in the verse, by referencing the Talmud in Nidda 8b, which states that a \u201cBetulat Shikma,\u201d a particular type of tree, is one that \u201chas not been felled, i.e., cut to promote growth.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In an article entitled, \u201c<\/span>Malbim\u2019s Secular Knowledge and His Relationship to the Spirit of the Haskala<\/span><\/a>\u201d Dr. David Berger writes of Malbim that : \u201c\u2026<\/span> his life\u2019s work expressed itself in the use of science, logic, philosophy, grammar, and poetry to further and defend religion.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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