Joel - Part 10
First posted: December 21, 2025
In this series of articles, we are meditating on the book of Joel and what God is shouting to today's deaf generation through Joel's prophecy. In this article, we shall focus on Joel 1:13.
Index
Uncompromising mourning priests
In Joel 1:13, the Spirit of God declares the following:
"Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God" (Joel 1:13)
It is interesting to consider that many of the Hebrew words used by the Lord in the verse above have already been used by Him in preceding verses, as if to emphasise them in a new way. For example, the word "gird" at the start of the verse was translated from the Hebrew word hagar, which, as we have shared before, speaks of regenerating one's soul to prevent it engaging in Amorite fornication, i.e.- in the manipulation and misuse of others for personal gain, and it also speaks of covering the wombs of one's soul to prevent it conceiving thoughts and patterns of behaviour that come from evil spirits rather than God. In other words, to hagar oneself means to protect your soul's womb from the matriarchal pastors' constant obsession with seeing believers as means to enlarge their earthly kingdoms, i.e.- their earthly ministries and organisations.
The word "lament" in Joel 1:13 above was translated from the Hebrew word saphad, which is not used in the book of Joel prior to verse 13. The word saphad literally means "to mourn", most often in the context of someone's death. Its first appearance, for example, is in Genesis 23:2, when speaking of Abraham mourning the death of Sarah. Its second appearance is in Genesis 50:10, when speaking of all the house of Joseph, his brothers, and his father's house mourning the death of his father Israel (a.k.a. Jacob). The third and fourth appearances of saphad are outside of the Torah, all the way in 1 Samuel 25:1 and 1 Samuel 28:3, when speaking of all the Israelites mourning the death of Samuel. Interestingly, 1 Samuel 28:3 also speaks of Saul opening the womb of his soul to using familiar spirits and "knowers" to get information from dead Samuel, meaning that his saphad mourning for Samuel was superficial and did not include hagar-ing (i.e.- girding) his soul unto God. He was so interested in gaining "intel" from Samuel to safeguard his earthly kingdom from his enemies that he was willing to open a door for evil spirits that would hinder God's Kingship over Israel.
Given that the usages of saphad between Genesis and 1 Samuel speak of the death of Sarah, Israel, and Samuel, we can conclude that saphad's usage in Joel 1:13 refers to the mourning of the death of someone with great spiritual relevance. Therefore, we can say that, in Joel 1:13, the Lord is calling us to mourn the death of the spiritual potential and callings of God's people as a result of the soul-matriarchy atmosphere that rules over the Church.
The word "priests" at the end of the phrase "Gird yourselves and lament, ye priests" was translated from the Hebrew word kohen, which, as we saw before, also appears in Joel 1:9 and speaks, in a positive sense, of "pomegranate" believers who choose to exercise the evangelistic and prophetic endowments to serve Yehovah pastorally in a concerted effort to grant Him what pleases Him. These kohens will not be interested in furthering their own or any earthly man's kingdom. Instead, they will gird their loins to protect their soul wombs to ensure the Spirit of God's Kingship in their lives. Because their soul wombs are shielded from Canaanite unity and compromise, they will refuse to "reconcile" with the Church and treat its current state as "acceptable", and they will mourn the spiritual deaths of the potential "Sarah"s, "Israel"s, and "Samuel"s that the Church induces daily and with no remorse. God's kohens will mourn these deaths because they know that these deaths are very displeasing to God, and they know that these deaths are the consequence of God's Kingship not being expanded across the Earth.
Howling due to no grace at the altar
The word "howl" in the phrase "howl, ye ministers of the altar" of Joel 1:13 above was translated from the Hebrew word yalal, which, as we saw in Joel 1:11, speaks of confessing the Hittite emptiness of the Amorite conquests carried out by the matriarchal Church. These Amorite conquests pursue temporal, Girgashite ends of no eternal value, enlarging the matriarchals' earthly ministries instead of God's Kingship on Earth. The word "ministers", on the other hand, was translated from the word shawrath, which, as we saw in Joel 1:9, speaks here of a servant who is bent on pastorally pleasing God. The word "altar" was translated from the Hebrew word mizbeah, which is derived from the verb zabah meaning "to slaughter". Hence, mizbeah has the connotation of a place of death. Interestingly, the first appearance of mizbeah in Scripture is in the following verse, translated as "altar":
"And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar" (Genesis 8:20)
Notice that, after the Earth had been regenerated through Noah's flood, Noah offered two types of flesh: "beast" and "fowl". The word "beast" was translated from the word behema, which has the connotation of something large and strong (as evidenced by the English word "behemoth" that is derived from it), meaning that it points, in a positive sense to the evangelistic endowment of "tallness and strength". By contrast, the word "fowl" was translated from the Hebrew word owph, which literally means "flying creature", thereby pointing to the prophetic endowment that allows us to spiritually fly above the earthly and temporal. As we have shared before, the 2 "grace" ministries are the prophetic and the evangelistic ministries. Hence, what Noah was doing at the altar in Genesis 8:20 symbolised the commitment to sacrifice our prophetic and evangelistic grace unto God, being willing to have that sacrifice consumed in an altar fire so as to further God's evangelistic will and prophetic purposes on Earth. This is why the Spirit emphasises that both the behema ("beast") and the owph ("fowl") were "clean", meaning that they represented evangelistic grace without Amorite contamination and prophetic grace without Hittite contamination (since Amorites are "evangelists gone bad" and Hittites are "prophets gone bad"). Hence, Genesis 8:20 correlates perfectly with the yalal howling of Joel 1:13 (mentioned above) since that howling is on account of the Amorite and Hittite spirits that run rampant in the matriarchal Church, prompting believers to use grace for banal, earthly purposes.
Therefore, we can conclude that the ministers of the altar are to howl because the Amorite and Hittite spirits are being allowed to keep the evangelistic behema and prophetic owph in God's people away from the altar. In other words, the altar is empty, devoid of the offering of evangelistic behema flesh and prophetic owph flesh from God's people, especially the so-called "ministers", for they are using that flesh for their own earthly benefit under the influence of Amorite and Hittite spirits. This is why the true ministers, the true servant shawraths howl, lamenting the altar's emptiness.
The above explains why the Lord ends Joel 1:13 with the phrase "for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God". The phrase "meat offering" was translated from the Hebrew word minha, which, as we saw in Joel 1:9, refers to offering up one's evangelistic grace unto God in order to conquer and expand His Kingdom. The phrase "drink offering", on the other hand, was translated from the Hebrew word nesek, which, as we also saw in Joel 1:9, refers to offering up one's prophetic grace unto God in order to bring His Presence upon the Earth. When the matriarchal "ministers" and their followers use the grace endowed to them for their earthly ends, the minha and the nesek are absent from the altar, and those who want to please God (His true shawrath ministers) have no choice but to howl and lament.
Lamenting in the dark
As we saw above, the Hebrew word for altar, mizbeah, is derived from the verb zabah meaning "to slaughter". Hence, mizbeah has a dark connotation, a connotation of death. Hence, embracing the altar requires embracing the darkness of God that the pastoral matriarchy souls so deeply abhor (Zechariah 11:8). This is why Joel 1:13 tells the true shawrath ministers of God to "lie all night in sackcloth", meaning that they must be willing to abide in the darkness of the night to lament the Church's condition and forge its latter-day regeneration.
The phrase "lie all night" was translated from the verb lun meaning "to lodge, pass the night, abide". Interestingly enough, the first 2 appearances of lun in Scripture are in verse 2 of the following passage, translated as "tarry all night" and "abide all night":
"1 And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; 2 And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night. 3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat." (Genesis 19:1-3)
[The words "night" in "tarry all night" and "abide in the street all night" do not appear in the original Hebrew text but are part of the translation of the Hebrew word lun; this is because lun implicitly refers to the place where one passes the night]
Notice that the 2 angels wanted to lun in the street, meaning that they wanted to pass the night in an uncomfortable place. This correlates with the lun-ing in sackcloth (or "lying all night in sackcloth") of Joel 1:13. However, Lot insisted that they lun with him in the comfort of his home. As you may know, this opened the door for the events described in Genesis 19:4-11 where the men of Sodom surrounded Lot's house with the intention to rape the 2 angels, which then prompted Lot to come out and idiotically offer his 2 daughters to them as "substitute rape victims". This then prompted the Sodomic mob to violently rage against Lot, which then led to the 2 angels supernaturally rescuing Lot from the mob by pulling him into the house, after which they neutralised the mob by supernaturally blinding them. This writer does not yet have full clarity on this, but it is as if Lot's hospitality, well-meaning as it was, actually revealed that Lot's heart did not understand the full magnitude of Sodom's evil (even though it clearly oppressed his soul, as per 2 Peter 2:7). He did not understand that Sodom's evil was so deep that there was no real room for nights of contentment or happiness and that there was only room for mourning and passing the night in "sackcloth" discomfort. This is evidenced by the fact that Lot prepared a feast for the angels. It is almost as if Lot thought that the arrival of the 2 angels was a sign of hope for Sodom and that the unrighteousness of the city would somehow be reversed through a period of redemptive judgements by these 2 angels. Lot's later reluctance to leave Sodom for good (Genesis 19:16) seems to point to this subconscious unwillingness to admit that Sodom was beyond hope and that its Canaanite system was beyond repair and needed to be completely destroyed.
Some could argue that Lot's intention to house the 2 angels was to protect them from the evil that he knew ran rampant throughout Sodom. True as this may have been, it is clear that Lot did not truly provide any real protection to the angels, for he would have more than likely been overpowered by the mob surrounding his house had they been able to charge against him. Instead of Lot protecting the angels, it was the angels who protected him and his daughters from significant damage that night, and their ability to instantly blind the mob proves that they would have been more than able to defend themselves had they lodged all night in the street. Had Lot truly accepted that the Canaanite pastoral matriarchy of Sodom was beyond rescue and needed to be destroyed as soon as possible, he would have immediately understood that the 2 angels' arrival in Sodom meant that that night was not a night for feasting and drinking but, instead, was a weary night to make hurried preparations (in "uncomfortable sackcloth") to leave Sodom before it was destroyed. By subliminally refusing to understand this, he put himself and his family in danger, and he unnecessarily exposed the 2 angels, who represented God Himself, to attempts at violent and unholy Canaanite defilement. Whilst inside Lot's house, the 2 angels were covered by the weakness of Lot's soul, and the crowd outside could not perceive the strong Spirit authority in them. Had that crowd encountered the 2 angels in the uncovered street, they would have immediately perceived the deadly authority of their Spirit at the slightest attempt to attack them.
Why, then, did the angels accept Lot's invitation to enter his home after initially insisting on staying out in the street? Because God was forced to adjust His plans to Lot's misunderstanding of the entire situation. As shown by Genesis 19:2, Lot thought that the 2 angels were in Sodom for a quick visit and would be "on their ways" the next day. He did not realise that Sodom's level of unrighteousness had reached such an intolerable level that it required immediate destruction. This writer believes that Lot actually hoped that, by showing the angels hospitality, he would cause Sodom to curry favour with God, somehow proving that Sodom was a place that, despite its flaws, was capable of showing some hospitality to God's visitation. The Lord, however, knew otherwise, and He also knew that Lot needed to know this as well if there was any chance of rescuing him and his family from Sodom. This is why the 2 angels reluctantly accepted Lot's invitation, which then triggered the series of events that forced Lot to come face to face with the level of violent, Canaanite unrighteousness in Sodom that he would constantly downplay in his heart and mind during his time there. Though weary of Sodom's unrighteousness, he actually thought that he could "reason" with the Sodomic mob outside his door, and he was so desperate to prove to the angels the Sodomites' "salvageability" that he was willing to offer his daughters to the mob so as to spare the angels from their Canaanite violence.
Had Lot been in tune with God's heart, he would have accepted the angels' decision to stay out in the street, and the angels would have then had spiritual room to turn the conversation towards "exit strategies". In other words, the angels would have had the chance to tell Lot that he needed to prepare his family to leave as soon as possible, and Lot would have then returned to his home, not to feast, but to "pack his bags" and warn his family, including his sons-in-law, about the impending destruction. At the end of the day, this is what Lot ended up doing, but he did so after wasting time preparing a banquet on a day that was not for feasting but for mourning, and he unnecessarily exposed himself and his daughters to the possibility of a violent death. When Lot offered up his daughters to the angry mob, he opened a spiritual door that led to the unfortunate incest described in Genesis 19:30-38, all of which would have never happened had his attitude towards the angels' visitation been different from the get-go. And, as we have shared before, Lot's decision to take refuge in Zoar (after escaping Sodom) was a manifestation of what was wrong in Lot's heart, which led to this spiritual door of incest being opened.
This writer can only wonder whether Lot's wife would have also resisted the temptation to "look back" (Genesis 19:26) had Lot's attitude been different that dark night (and in the days and months before that). Maybe Lot would have been able to slowly impart to his wife an awareness of how truly evil and beyond repair Sodom was, and she would have been in "good riddance" mode as she left with Lot and his daughters on that day (instead of looking back with nostalgia in her soul). Clearly, Lot did not impart this awareness to her, for one cannot impart to others what one does not possess oneself.
God willing, in the next posting, we will continue meditating on Joel.