Peter’s Mistake (1)
And it shall happen afterward: I will pour My spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your elders shall dream dreams, your young men see visions. And even upon male slaves and slavegirls in those days will I pour My Spirit. Joel 3:1-2 Robert Alter
Afterward – You are certainly familiar with part of these verses. Peter uses them to explain what is happening when the spirit descends on the people gathered at the Temple mount (Acts 2:17 ff.). However, several strange things needed to be investigated before we can agree with Peter’s application.
The first thing to notice is that the Hebrew Bible doesn’t divide Joel’s prophecy in the same way that the Christian Bible does. Did you see that Alter’s translation is of Joel 3:1-2, but the reference in the Christian Bible is to Joel 2:28-29. In fact, the Christian Bible doesn’t have a Hebrew chapter 3 in Joel. It combines all of chapter 3 into chapter 2, moving directly to what is chapter 4 in the Hebrew Bible as if it were chapter 3. That’s curious. Why would the organizers of the Bible do this? The answer is King James. In 1611 the King James Bible combined the Hebrew chapter 3 with the Hebrew chapter 4. Modern translations that follow the King James do the same. The Hebrew Bible does not.
So now the question is: “Why did the scholars of 1611 decide to combine these chapters?” Of course, we can only speculate, but . . . let’s consider the influence Peter’s application has on the Church at large. If we are replacement theologians (which the King James people were), then Peter’s declaration has to be about the Church, not about Israel. That means that Joel’s prophecy must be read as if it is fulfilled in the birth of Christianity. Chapter 2 is about God’s restoration of His people after they have received due punishment for their sins. The key to understanding the statement about pouring the spirit on all flesh is the interpretation of the phrase “and it shall happen afterward.” Note Alter’s comment:
Rashi, Kimchi, and most modern interpreters take this to be an indication of the end-time, but it is rather a quotidian expression, as if one were to say, ‘the day after tomorrow’ or ‘in a month or so.’ Could it be an indication that Joel thought the end-time was very close?[1]
We might ask the same question of Peter. Did Peter think that the end-time was very close? Probably. There are many indications that all the apostles and Paul believed the Messiah would return quickly and finish the job. If Peter understood Joel in this way, then his application is really a theological interpretation that he is living in the end-time. But Joel (and Peter) believed that this “end-time” was about the Jews. That just won’t do. Once the Church adopted Replacement theology, the prophecy couldn’t be Jewish. It had to be Christian. Therefore, what God glowingly said about the favor His people would receive (chapter 2) had to be combined with the evidence Peter used in Acts to ensure that it was the Church that Joel meant, not the Jewish people. Voilá la, no chapter 3.
Did you know that the numbering of the chapters and verses was influenced by theological presuppositions? Amazing, isn’t it? You thought you could weed out the theology by just paying attention to the Hebrew vocabulary, but now you see that even the order is arranged according to dogma.
And that’s not all, as we shall see.
Topical Index: afterward, ʾaḥar kēn, Joel 3:1, Joel 2:28-29
[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Vol. 2 Prophets, A Translation with Commentary (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019), p. 1249.
