Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 84 · March 25
Whose Decision
“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.”
"Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision."
For generations, preachers have read those multitudes as crowds of people who cannot make up their minds about God. The appeal is to get off the fence before it is too late. But read the verses on either side of this line, and you find that the decision in this valley belongs to someone else.
Two verses earlier, God says what the valley is for: "Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about." The nations are summoned there, and the One seated in the valley is the Judge. The verse in between uses harvest words of the harshest kind: "Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow." The fats are the vats where the juice from the winepress is collected.
The Hebrew word behind "decision" comes from a root that means to cut. In other places the same word is used for a threshing sledge, a heavy board with sharp teeth underneath that was dragged over grain to break it open. So the decision in that valley is a verdict God hands down, and the multitudes are the ones it falls on.
That takes away a favourite verse for calling people forward. What it leaves is the hope this chapter really offers, two verses later, in the middle of all the shaking: "The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel." The Hebrew word behind "hope" there means a refuge, a place to run to.
There is a real decision for you to make about the day of the Lord, and Joel puts it in the chapter before, while there is still time to make it. "Turn ye even to me with all your heart." "And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God." To rend is to tear. Joel gives the reason in God's own description of Himself: "for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness." That invitation is open to you where you are sitting today, long before any sickle, and the God who makes it is the refuge of His people.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 84 is Upheld (Psalm 145:14).