Joel

Joel son of Pethuel is the named author of a short prophetic book. Nothing else is known about him, and scholars disagree about when he lived, with dates proposed from the 9th to the 4th century BCE; many favor the Persian period, around 400 BCE.

His book begins with a devastating locust plague and turns it into a picture of the coming day of the Lord. In Joel 2 the locusts are described as an army: they look like horses, run like horsemen, sound like chariots leaping on the mountaintops, and climb walls like soldiers. The book also contains the promise that God will pour out his spirit on all flesh, with signs in the heavens, blood, fire and pillars of smoke, which Acts 2 quotes at Pentecost.

Revelation 9 builds on Joel's imagery for its locusts shaped like horses prepared for battle, with breastplates of iron and wings that sound like chariots. Some modern readers see helicopters; scholars read both passages as poetic images of invasion and judgment.