Rend Your Heart

Joel’s statement “rend your heart not your garment” (Joel 2:13) is to be understood within the larger context of prophet’s call to repentance. It is an exhortation to turn from sin and recommit oneself to the worship of Yahweh.

The tearing of one’s own garment served to be an outward sign of repentance; however, Joel conveys that Yahweh was looking to the heart. The external symbol meant nothing without a genuinely contrite heart.

The urgency of the call to repentance could not be understated by the prophet, for all had been spoken in view of a coming terrible visitation of the Lord, which would bring about a divine judgment liken to the desolation of a swarm of locust. Joel says, “What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten” (Joel 1:4). The prophet then warns: “Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near” (Joel 2:1). The destruction of the forces Yahweh sends to enact judgment is complete, for the prophet says, “The land is like the garden of Eden before them but a desolate wilderness behind them, and nothing at all escapes them” (Joel 2:3). When this judgment comes, it will be for sinners a time of darkness, fire, and anguish.

Sin puts a person in opposition to God, a place of divine judgment and wrath. What a terrible predicament. Even so, as hardened hearts rage against God, and seeds sown in darkness spring forth their vial poison, utter ruin need not be the end of the story.
There is also the call to repentance. The Lord says, “Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments” (Joel 2:12-13a). The symbolism calls for a revolutionary change in ways. Bible commentator Paul E. Leonard writes,

Tearing of garments was the ordinary expression of mourning but such an outward demonstration is inadequate. It is necessary rather to rend your heart. The heart in Semitic thought represents the centre of the whole man with all his attributes, physical, intellectual, and emotional…To rend your heart represents a radical change of mind, the adoption of a different way of looking at all of life. The old patterns are to be destroyed, replaced by new attitudes suitable for those through whom God is making himself known in the world.

The sinner is then encouraged, “Now return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, and relenting of evil” (Joel 2:13b). To those who repent, God says, “Then I will make up to you for the years, That the swarming locust has eaten, The creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you” (Joel 2:25).

When Buddha looked to the world, he came to see a self-evident truth—the world is marred by suffering. This no one can doubt. Still, is it one’s lot in life to suffer as a way of the universe working out karma? Suffering is a reality in a sinful and fallen world, but things can change. Sinners can repent and enter into a right relationship with God, and enter into a place of divine grace. Joel’s promise is ultimately realized in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that sins can be washed away, and Christ is the one who can restore what the locust have eaten.

—WGN

Notes:

1. Paul E. Leonard, The International Bible Commentary, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1979), 887.