So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. And He relents from sending disaster.
God sends judgment to bring you to repentance and back to Himself. Rend your heart, not your garments alone; let sorrow for sin spring from within, not merely from outward show. Every person must mourn for their own sin, and then all shall be found among God's mourners.
AI summary
Commenting on Joel 2:12-17
Joe 2:12-14 But there is still time to avert the completion of the judgment by sincere repentance and mourning; for God is merciful, and ready to forgive the penitent. Joe 2:12. “Yet even now, is the saying of Jehovah, turn ye to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. Joe 2:13.
Commenting on Joel 2:12-14
And rend your heart, and not your garments,.... Which latter used to be done in times of distress, either private or public, and as a token of grief and sorrow, Gen 37:34; nor was it criminal or unlawful, the apostles themselves used it, Act 14:14; nor is it absolutely forbidden here, only comparatively, that they should rend their hearts rather than their garments; or not...