1 ) All the prophets have the same opinion, that they aim at the future Christ. They use everything else so that we should draw everything to the future judgment: if a pestilence comes, the judgment will come; if God comes with benefits, the glory will come soon.
First, he describes a certain destruction in the land and urges all to fix their eyes on the Christ who is to come. In the first chapter he tells the present history that he sees; in the second chapter he begins a prophecy. So we will have many troubles at first, and after that the last judgment will come. In the first chapter, therefore, he is startled and presents the plague before his eyes, which he
1) The following is prefixed as a motto: He who feeds the flesh feeds an enemy; he who kills the flesh kills a friend - The world is not worthy to have the gifts of God; it is not worthy to honor 2c.
2) Instead of trakimns in the original, tradainns will have to be read, which the Weimar edition suggests and the Erlanger has set.
in the land, and prophesies that they may turn to God through this plague; if they do not, he indicates that a greater destruction will come. In sacred history, these things can be seen: faith and unbelief against the word of God 2c. Where the word of God is, there is always an example of unbelief in those who despise it, and of faith in the few who believe it 2c.
At what time Joel prophesied, I have nothing certain. I believe that he is older than the other minor prophets. He seems to have worked (floruisse) at the time of the peace, since he calls all that they should see. 3) This order does not seem to me to have been kept among the Hebrews. He seems to have been before Isaiah and Hosea 2c.
3) It will have to be added: [v. 2.) if such plague ever had MtMmdM before.
4) The order of the small prHchets in the holy scripture. This is how it is interpreted in the first relation of Joel (Col. 1419).
*The manuscript Ro. 3 of the Zwickauer Rathsschuldibliothek contains the lectures on Joel to Micha. It is a real colkgien booklet, written by Stephan Roth with a hurried hand. Only for the second chapter of Joel did he do the preparatory work of copying the text of the Vulgate in lines far apart from each other, and then put the shorter word explanations, which Luther would have given, on top of them in the Collegium. He wrote the longer explanations on the second column of the sheet. With the following lessons he gave up this procedure again. "But of course," says the Weimar edition, "the dictation and the occasional free outpouring of Luther is not recorded literally. The sentences are often written only in half, one sto. following the other. How abbreviated appears the conclusion of Jonah s" But for this, the suspicion falls away, as if he had added additions from his own head, as he was guilty of this in other Luther writings, namely in Zechariah. This manuscript was found by D. Buchwald and copied for the Erlangen edition. There our writing is found opp., tom. XX V, p. 7; then with many improvements in the Weimar edition, vol. XIII, p. 67. We translate according to the latter edition.