SUNDAY, AUGUST 23 · VERSE OF THE DAY
I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you.
— Joel 2:25
Context
Joel wrote after a literal locust plague had stripped Judah bare — fields, vineyards, orchards gone. The Hebrew piles up four different locust terms (swarming, hopping, destroying, cutting) to hammer home the totality of the loss. What's jarring: God calls the locusts 'my great army that I sent among you.' This isn't random misfortune. It's covenant discipline — the curses Moses warned about when Israel abandoned their end of the agreement. But Joel doesn't stop at judgment. Right after naming God as the sender of destruction, he pivots to promise restoration. Same actor, both movements. The verse sits in a section where God says 'return to me' and then immediately starts describing the repair he'll do. It's tender and unnerving at once.
What it's actually saying
The verb 'restore' here is shalam — same root as shalom. It means to make whole, to repay, to complete what was broken. 'The years the locusts have eaten' is literarily precise: multiple breeding cycles, multiple seasons of crops lost, cumulative ruin. God's not just replacing one harvest. He's paying back compounded loss. The phrase 'my great army' earlier in the chapter reframes natural disaster as divine instrument, which makes this verse hit differently — the one who orchestrated the loss is the one offering to restore it. No third-party rescuer. This is the logic of the prophets: God wounds and God heals, and the wounding itself is meant to wake you up to the relationship you've been ignoring. The restoration isn't just economic; it's covenantal — God reengaging after estrangement.
How to apply it today
If you've experienced loss that felt like compound interest — not one bad thing but a cascade, years eaten — this verse doesn't minimize it or spiritualize it away. It names the years. It counts them. That matters. The question it raises: are you willing to let the same force that allowed the loss be the one that rebuilds? That requires a weird trust. Concretely, you might write down what actually got taken — not in vague God-talk, but the real inventory. Then sit with the possibility that repair might come from a direction you've resented. Not as a quid-pro-quo, but as the way reality apparently works when you're dealing with a God who doesn't subcontract.
Sit with this
List two or three things you've lost that still ache — relationships, years, versions of yourself. Write next to each one: 'The years the locusts ate.' Then ask: what would restoration even look like for this? Not resolution, not explanation — restoration. Let yourself not know the answer yet.
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