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.
Every English Bible prints decision there, and generations of preaching have taken the multitudes to be crowds of undecided people hesitating on the edge of a choice, with the appeal being to come down off the fence before it is too late. Read what stands on either side of the line and the valley turns out to belong to somebody else.
Two verses earlier God says what the place 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 to it, and the one seated in it is the judge. The verse in between is harvest language 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 Hebrew word behind decision comes from cutting, and it is used elsewhere for a threshing sledge, the toothed board dragged over grain to break it open. The decision in that valley is a verdict being handed down, and the multitudes are the ones it is handed down on.
Which takes away a favourite altar-call text and leaves what the chapter is actually holding out, two verses later, in the middle of the same 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.
There is a real decision to be made about the day of the LORD, and Joel put it earlier in the book, while there was still a harvest standing in the ground. Turn ye even to me with all your heart. And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God. Joel gives a reason for that, and it is God's own description of his character. That invitation is open where you are sitting, and it is not being made under the sickle.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 84 is Upheld (Psalm 145:14).