The pre-exilic minor prophets spent lots of space writing about the impending captivity and the persecution that would come with it. In that time, this type of message was needed so the people could be informed about what they needed to change in order to avoid exile. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t do what was needed, and captivity was in their future.
Fortunately for them, God is good, merciful, kind and gracious. Once His people experienced life without Him and learned the lessons of that kind of life, God was going to bring them back into their land and incredibly bless them. “And it will come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drip with new wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water; a fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord and water the Valley of Acacias” (Joel 3:18 NKJV).
That verse might not immediately strike a chord with us, but try to put yourself in their shoes, shoes that had been exiled and punished for their entire life. For people who had never experienced that kind of favor from God, the message of Joel 3:18 would have been music to their exiled ears.
For them, it would have been a message of life and death (or rather, death and life). For in their eyes, they were dead in the exile, but God used language dripping with life to tell them of their future in His grace. For them, it was a message of resurrection, being brought back from the death of exile. Thankfully, we serve the same God who has a history of bringing life from death—and it means the world to us.
