Prophet Joel the Prophet

Joel was a prophet of Judah in the ninth or early eighth century before Christ, son of Pethuel, whose short book of three chapters announces a great visitation of God upon the land in the figure of a devastating locust plague. The prophet calls the priests to wail and the elders to assemble, the inhabitants of the land to fast and to rend their hearts; the locust is read as a sign of the coming Day of the Lord, which is "great and very terrible — and who can abide it?"

But the same prophecy turns to the great promise that the Apostle Peter would quote at Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts: "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out My Spirit." The pouring out of the Spirit on the apostles in the upper room is the fulfillment of Joel's prophecy.

He is buried in his native Judah, and his short prophecy stands fourth among the Twelve Minor Prophets in the Hebrew canon. His feast falls on October 19.