Joel — Chapter 1
Synopsis Capitis
Chapter 1 describes an unprecedented locust plague as a figure of divine judgment and a summons to national mourning. À Lapide carefully identifies the four species of locusts (locusta, bruchus, rubigo, eruca) from Joel 1:4, following Jerome's Hebrew study. The desolation of the vine and the fig-tree anticipates the destruction of the Temple and ultimately the Last Day.
Verse 4
Residuum erucae comedit locusta
The fourfold locust plague—what the palmerworm left, the locust ate; what the locust left, the cankerworm ate—is read by à Lapide as stages of divine chastisement escalating in severity. Jerome identified these with four invading kingdoms (Assyria, Babylon, Macedon, Rome). À Lapide adds a fifth interpretation: the four passions of the soul (fear, sorrow, desire, pleasure) that devour the interior life.
Verse 8
Plange quasi virgo accincta sacco
'Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.' À Lapide reads this as the lament of the Church over the loss of souls, and more specifically as a type of the Virgin Mary's sorrows. The image of a young widow becomes a figure of the synagogue that rejected its divine Bridegroom. The liturgical context (priests, altars, offerings) grounds the mourning in sacramental theology.
Verse 13
Accingimini et plangite sacerdotes
'Gird yourselves and lament, O priests.' À Lapide expands this into a treatise on the special obligation of the clergy to lead penitential prayer. When the nation sins the priests must intercede; their negligence multiplies the disaster. He cites Innocent III's De Contemptu Mundi and Chrysostom's De Sacerdotio on the weight of priestly responsibility.
Verse 15
A dies illa dies Domini
'Ah for the day! For the day of the Lord is at hand.' À Lapide treats this as the first use of 'dies Domini' in the prophetic corpus, a phrase that will culminate in the Apocalypse. The immediate reference is the locust plague; the anagogical sense is the Last Judgment. He quotes the Septuagint and Vulgate in parallel and notes how Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 takes up the motif.