Joel 3:3
They have also cast lots for My people,
Traded a boy for a harlot
And sold a girl for wine that they may drink.
The day of the Lord, which has been announced several times by the prophet, is the day when the Lord will come to judge, and on that day He will sentence all His enemies.
But it is also the day when He will give salvation to His people who called on Him in need.
Cast lots for my people
That means that they divided God’s people among themselves as their captives by lot. Compare this to the distribution of captives by lot (Obadiah 1:11, Nahum 3:10).
What sins the Gentiles have committed. They have mistreated and raffled God’s people.
A boy for an harlot
Instead of paying a harlot for her prostitution in money, they gave her a Jewish captive boy as a slave.
A girl for wine
So valueless did they regard a Jewish girl, that they would sell her for a draft of wine.
Harlot … drink.
What the enemy stole and captured from God’s people was used on harlots and drink.
Whoever had obtained his share of the loot by drawing lots then squandered it.
The prophet uses serious words here. A boy was given as slave, so they could be with a whore for a while, and a girl was used to pay to get drunk of wine.
They irresponsibly sought brief satisfaction from their sensual lusts.
They had been very abusive to the people of Israel, had scattered them among the nations and forced them to seek for shelter wherever they could find a place, or carried them captive into their respective countries and there industriously dispersed them, for fear of their incorporating for their common safety.
They parted their land, and took every one his share of it, as their own;
They have cast lots for my people, and sold them.
When they had taken them prisoners, they made a gain of them.
When they had them, they sold them, yet with so much contempt that they did not increase their wealth by their price, but sold them for their pleasure rather than their profit; they gave a boy taken in war for the hire of a harlot, and a girl for so many bottles of wine as would serve them for one sitting, a goodly price at which they valued them, and goodly preferment for a son and daughter of Israel to be a slave and a drudge in a tavern or a brothel.
Observe here, how that which is got by one sin is commonly spent on another.
The spoil which these enemies of the Jews gathered by injustice and violence they scattered and threw away in drinking and whoring; such is frequently the character, and such the conversation, of the enemies and persecutors of the people of God.
The Tyrians and Philistines, when they seized any of the children of Judah and Jerusalem, either took them prisoners in war or kidnapped them, they sold them to the Grecians (with whom the men of Tire traded in the persons of men, Ezekiel 27: 13), that they might remove them far from their own border, (Joel 3:6). It was a great reproach to Israel to be thus bought and sold among the heathen.
Although we live in a different time, there is plenty of a culture of consumption and a mentality of pleasure.
Do we really live with the Lord? Or are we also such an enemy of Him. Woe to those who mock God.
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