12 “Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” 13 Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. 14 Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing—grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God. 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. 16 Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. 17 Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
In verse 12, God speaks and calls on Judah to repent but insists it must be sincere. As the prophet puts it: “rend your hearts, not your garments.” Rending one’s garments and putting ashes on one’s head were signs of mourning. But God stresses that he does not care about outward appearances but about what is in the heart. Joel is saying that it is urgent to repent truly which is the only possible response to the invasion. The people have greatly sinned but God’s mercy is even greater. As so often with the prophets, Joel insists that the form of our worship is not important as long as it comes from the heart. True worship comes from a loving heart.
In verse 13, Joel suggests that repentance may yet save them because of God’s nature. He is not angry and vengeful but “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” This is the way God is described in Exodus 34:6 which shows that it is always the same God even if the people may perceive him differently. Indeed, this God may seem different from the one we see in Hosea but both prophets speak of the same God. However, in Hosea’s time, the Israelites had become so steeped in sin that they had lost the ability to repent. Joel still sees hope for the Judah of his time and if they truly repent, God might spare them. However, more is involved here, since God is always much greater than humans, who, because of our limitations, have difficulty perceiving him and who tend to give him our own characteristics.
In verse 15, the people are given three commands in order to start a service of national repentance. They must be summoned with the horn, and called into a holy assembly where they will fast together. The following verse contains three more imperatives. All must come out and join the national repentance, from the eldest to the youngest. Even the newly married must leave their bridal chamber. The priests must take their traditional position in the temple and then utter a specific prayer. The most important point, though, is that throughout the Old Testament, the most common description of God is the one quoted earlier. Indeed, the word used most frequently and which best sums him up is “steadfast love.” The God of the Old Testament is most definitely the same as the God of the New Testament, even if the people do not always realize this.
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