(to whom Jehovah is God)

1. Eldest son of Samuel the prophet (1 Samuel 8:2; 1 Chronicles 6:33; 15:17) and father of Heman the singer
2. In 1 Chronicles 6:36 Authorized Version, Joel seems to be merely a corruption of Shaul in ver. 24.
3. A Simeonite chief (1 Chronicles 4:35)
4. A descendant of Reuben. Junius and Tremellius make him the son of Hanoeh, while others trace his descent through Carmi (1 Chronicles 5:4).
5. Chief of the Gadites, who dwelt in the land of Bashan (1 Chronicles 5:12)
6. The son of Izrahiah, of the tribe of Issachar (1 Chronicles 7:3)
7. The brother of Nathan of Zobah (1 Chronicles 11:38) and one of David’s guard.
8. The chief of the Gershomites in the reign of David (1 Chronicles 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 (1 Chronicles 23:8; 26:22)
10. The son of Pedaiah, and a chief of the half-tribe of Manasseh west of Jordan, in the reign of David (1 Chronicles 27:20)
11. A Kohathite Levite in the reign of Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 29:12)
12. One of the sons of Nebo, who returned with Ezra, and had married a foreign wife (Ezra 10:43)
13. The son of Zichri, a Benjamite (Nehemiah 11:9)
14. The second of the twelve minor prophets, the son of Pethuel, probably prophesied in Judah in the reign of Uzziah. 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.