The Day of YHWH is Coming! Reflections on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17, Ash Wednesday, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Friday, January 2, 2026
It is customary to assign Gen.3 as the Hebrew Bible text for Ash Wednesday, since Gen.3:19 provides the preacher with the words she intones while painting that ashy cross on her parishioners’ foreheads: “Dust you are, and to dust you will return.” It is a stark phrase, quite in contrast to the usual positive words we anticipate when we come to church. We expect, “God loves you, and so do I,” rather than a reminder that we are in the end dust and can expect to remain dust both now and after we die. This may be a primary reason why only a few people come to Ash Wednesday services, beyond the fact that they are, of course, on Wednesday. What would lure a person to venture out on a dark Wednesday evening only to be told that they are merely and only dust? Masochism? Pessimism? Fear of that familiar proverb: “Pride precedes a fall?” Don’t want to get too haughty now. Don’t wish to imagine that one is too great, too wonderful, too cool for school. Nothing like an ashy cross to bring us all down a peg or two!
I do not wish to guess what motivates anyone willingly to come to a worship event where they know full well that the message of this day is not “all is well with you,” but rather you are far less than you imagine yourself to be. In fact, you are just dust, a walking, talking, breathing concatenation of particles of soil, a form you have always had and always will have. Well, there is that resurrection promise, but that is six weeks away. For now, you simply must face the facts about who you are—dust. Though the preacher will surely speak the words of Genesis over the people who come, this year’s text to the contrary comes from the prophet Joel.
Joel is Hebrew for “YHWH is God,” a name that sounds suspiciously made-up, not unlike the obviously conjured Haggai (“festivals”), or even Micah (“who is like YHWH?”). We know nothing of the historical provenance of this figure, though many scholars imagine a 5th century BCE background, that rather cloudy time in Israel’s history, well after the Babylonian exile, and well before the time of the Greek takeover of the land in the 4th century. What we do know about this prophet is that he experienced an enormous plague of locusts, a not uncommon event in the desert lands of Judah, and saw in that infestation the coming of YHWH in anger and fury. The marauding insects, grasshoppers gone mad, that devoured every plant-like thing in their ferocious path, were for Joel nothing other than YHWH’s divine rage against a sinning people.
“Blow the shofar in Zion,
and raise the alarm in my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of YHWH is coming—it is near!
A day of gloomy darkness,
a day of thickly dark clouds,
like a blackness covering the mountains,
a vast and mighty nation
unlike anything from the past,
nor like any from future generations.”
Like Amos centuries before (Amos 5:18-20), Joel warns the people that if they imagine that YHWH’s coming will bring joy and peace for them, they are sadly mistaken. YHWH’s first word is a warning of their shortcomings, a devouring fire of fury that will wake them up to their sins and cleanse the land of its evil. Just like the munching locusts, so will YHWH attack them for their refusals to see clearly just how weak and failing they have been in YHWH’s eyes. Indeed, they and we are dust, and must acknowledge our condition if we are to receive the hope that YHWH offers in the end.
After this dark and ominous warning, YHWH makes a sharp turn toward hope in Joel 2:12-13.
“But now, says YHWH,
return to me with all your heart
with fasting, weeping, and mourning.
Tear your hearts, not your clothes!
Return to YHWH, your God,
who is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger, filled with unbreakable love,
who changes God’s mind about evil (toward you).”
Here Joel quotes from the Hebrew Bible’s most famous description of the basic character of YHWH, found classically in Exodus 34:6-7 where YHWH reveals the fullness of the divine person to Moses who has just saved the people of Israel from YHWH’s powerful anger over the creation of the molten calf at the foot of Horeb. Joel believes, as the prophets generally believe, that YHWH’s final word is not fury and rage, but love and compassion for God’s people.
Yes, we are dust, and we will all return to dust one day, but God says to each of us that there remains hope with God, because God is always full of love, always suffused with compassion for those who both recognize that they are dust and who turn toward God with genuine love and real commitment to justice and righteousness in this life, employing this life answering the call of that God. Dust we are, and to dust we will return, but in the meantime we will serve that God in truth and hope.