1. Joel in the Narrative of Acts 2

The prophecy of Joel exercised a powerful effect on the early Christian imagination. In his outline of ‘the Bible of the early church’, C. H. Dodd identifies the New Testament's image of an eschatological trumpet call signalling God's coming judgement as well as the employment of the verb κηρύσσειν with an eschatological inflection as appropriations of Joel's oracles.Footnote ⁹ Dodd's arguments add particular insight with regard to Acts 2.1–15. In those verses, Luke describes a scene that easily evokes the imagery of Joel: The Twelve are gathered in Jerusalem in obedience to the command of the Lord Jesus when they experience the outpouring of God's Spirit (2.1–4). The basic outline – Israel gathering in Jerusalem to wait upon God's restoration – corresponds broadly to the outline of Joel 2.12–3.5. As the narrative of Acts progresses, Luke depicts Peter as drawing closer to Joel by assuming a prophetic stance (standing, raising his voice and uttering: σταθεὶς … ἐπῆρεν τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀπεφθέγξατο αὐτοῖς, 2.14)Footnote ¹⁰ and by putting words on the apostle's lips that, when taken together, echo the words of Joel:Footnote ¹¹

After this introduction, Luke makes explicit in 2.16–21 what had been implicit in vv. 1–15: the sacred assembly and the eschatological outpouring of the Spirit that Joel foresaw are decisively fulfilled in the lives of Jesus’ followers. On a structural level, the return to Joel at the end of Peter's sermon (2.38–9; cf. Joel 3.5) provides a bookend to this scene in Acts 2. On a literary and theological level, the return to Joel at the end of Peter's sermon signals that Joel provides an important frame of reference for the events of Acts 2.Footnote ¹² The sacred assembly (ἐκκλησία, Joel 2.16) that the prophet called for has been recognised by God as the assembly of those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus.

These echoes of Joel in Acts 2 are particularly difficult to ignore in light of the quotation of Joel 3.1–5. When considered alongside the explicit citation of Joel – one of the longest quotations of the Old Testament in the New – these echoes suggest that Luke has quietly and intentionally evoked a correspondence between this Old Testament prophecy and the Day of Pentecost in Acts. Upon closer examination, however, Luke has also introduced a measure of dissonance between his use of Joel and the original sense of the text by making selective alterations to Joel's prophecy. Our task now will be to examine these alterations before turning to a consideration of their significance.

2. The Alterations to Joel 3.1–5 in Acts 2.17–21

Change 1 – Acts 2.17, ‘and it will be in the last days’ (καὶ ἔσται ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραι)

Luke sets up his readers for Joel's prophecy plainly enough. Denying the charge of drunkenness, Luke records Peter declaring that something far more profound is taking place: ‘No, but this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel’ (ἀλλὰ τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ εἰρημένον διὰ τοῦ προφήτου Ἰωήλ, Acts 2.16). Strikingly, however, the opening words of the prophecy that Peter quotes do not match anything in Joel. Instead of ‘and after these things, I will indeed pour out my Spirit’ (καὶ ἔσται μετὰ ταῦτα καὶ ἐκχεῶ ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματός μου, Joel 3.1), Peter says, ‘and it will happen in the last days, says God, [that] I will pour out my Spirit …’ (καὶ ἔσται ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις, λέγει ὁ θεός, ἐκχεῶ ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματός μου, Acts 2.17). Luke has replaced the time referent that Joel employed (‘after these things’) and substituted it with a reference to ‘the last days’.

Most immediately, this substitution serves to expand the eschatological timeframe of Joel's prophecy. The ‘after these things’ of Joel 3.1 implies a progression of events in which Israel (1) turns back to God, (2) receives the restoration God has promised, including the outpouring of God's Spirit, and these events are then followed (3) by God's judgement of the nations.Footnote ¹³ Luke, by contrast, offers a more expansive timeframe described as ‘the last days’. Such a change fits the eschatology of Acts, which presents the Spirit-anointed community as living in anticipation of the universal restoration that Jesus will enact upon his return (Acts 1.7–11; 3.20). ‘The last days’ are a distinct period of time before God's judgement comes upon the nations. During these days, repentance is a live option for all whom God has called (2.39).Footnote ¹⁴

Beyond observing what Luke most immediately gains by altering Joel's prophecy, it must also be noted that the change Luke makes to Joel's oracle does more than simply shift the eschatological timeframe – it also decisively shifts the vision of who participates in God's restoration. The words with which Luke begins his quotation of Joel occur in the LXX at only one point: Isaiah 2.2. Isaiah's vision is a stirring description of what will happen in the last days (ἔσται ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις, Isa 2.2). In that era, all of the nations will gather at Mt Zion, and the word of the Lord will go out from Jerusalem (καὶ λόγος κυρίου ἐξ Ιερουσαλημ, 2.3). In those days, God's judgement will bring peace. The nations will stream to Jerusalem, and they ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks’ (2.3–4). Luke has imported a vivid description of the eschaton by drawing these words from Isaiah into Acts 2.17. He has also juxtaposed two different visions of the end times.

Unlike Isaiah, the prophecy of Joel offers good news only to Israel. It is one of the few places in the MT or LXX in which a reference to ‘all flesh’ is limited in meaning to ‘all Israelite flesh’.Footnote ¹⁵ Joel sees God's restoration coming to his people – ‘the children of Zion’ (Joel 2.23) – and he envisions God returning upon the nations the humiliation to which they subjected Israel.Footnote ¹⁶ The judgement that Joel envisions includes a battle between the nations and the Lord. ‘Proclaim this among the nations’, says God, ‘Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears’ (4.9–10). The end-time visions of Joel and Isaiah could hardly contrast more starkly in terms of Israel and the nations. What is the reader to make of the dissonance that occurs when Luke appends the opening words of Isaiah 2.2 to the oracle of Joel 3.1–5?

A helpful strategy for addressing this question can be drawn from Bruce Fisk's observations about intertextuality in Pseudo-Philo. Fisk, following the works of Fishbane, Boyarin and Hays, reminds his readers of the way in which a brief textual citation or allusion, when juxtaposed to another text, can serve as the generative force for determining the meaning of the passage as a whole. Such generative force emerges when one attends to the ‘unstated (or suppressed) points of resonance between the two texts’.Footnote ¹⁷ The pairing of one text (in our case Joel 3.1) with one or more ‘co-texts’ (here Isa 2.2) may evince a hermeneutical strategy on the part of the author.Footnote ¹⁸ For instance, in Pseudo-Philo's retelling of Israel at the Red Sea, multiple intertextual allusions to Genesis demonstrate the way in which the escape from Egypt was prefigured in creation.Footnote ¹⁹ Through such pairings, the shorter ‘secondary citations’ of Scripture have a controlling influence on the primary texts; thus, ‘biblical allusion functions as exegesis’.Footnote ²⁰

If these methodological insights guide our reading of Acts 2.17, two observations follow. First, Luke has reoriented Joel's prophecy by placing at its head the citation of Isa 2.2. Isaiah's vision of the last days differs markedly from Joel's, particularly in the way that Isaiah's sense of eschatological time consists of a period of ‘last days’ in which the nations come to worship the Lord. Joel's ‘after these things’ does not imply such a period of time. In fact in Joel, since salvation is reserved strictly for Israel while the nations are punished, there is no need for a window of time in which the Gentiles turn to God. In contrast to Joel, the Isaianic opening that Acts 2.17 employs suggests that Luke wants his readers to think about eschatology and the scope of salvation in terms of Isaiah. All of this comports well with Luke's theology: the outpouring of the Spirit represents the continuing ministry of Jesus through his disciples. The Spirit-filled disciples bear witness to the life of Jesus, which has inaugurated a reign of peace and a proclamation of Good News that extend to the nations (Luke 1.79; 2.14; 4.18–27; Acts 1.8). Ever so subtly, this alteration to Joel 3.1 in Acts 2.17 sets up a move that Luke will make a few chapters later, when the believers in Judea will realise – in agreement with Isaiah's vision of the end times – that ‘God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life’ (11.18). All of this is to say that Luke's narrative itself confirms the significance of the shift into Isaiah's language at the beginning of the quotation of Joel.

Second, this reorientation at the beginning of Joel's prophecy alerts the reader to pay attention to other ways in which Acts 2.17–21 may reorient any presumptions about the meaning of Joel 3.1–5. It is as if Luke has begun to play a familiar song with an unexpected chord: he draws his audience in and heightens their sensitivity to subsequent alterations. The discord we hear is rich in hermeneutical significance. After all, it was not necessary for Luke to begin his quotation of Joel with any time referent, and yet he drew on Isaiah. In the narrative, Peter is responding to a charge that those who are speaking in other languages are intoxicated. Simply beginning with ‘This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit …”’ (τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ εἰρημένον διὰ τοῦ προφήτου Ἰωήλ· ἐκχεῶ ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματός μου) would have sufficed as a refutation to those deriding the followers of Jesus. Luke has intentionally included this change to Joel's prophecy because more is happening in the citation of Joel 3.1–5 than the refutation of a crowd. Luke is strategically reorienting Joel's image of restoration in order to bring it in line with the restoration he knows: the one that God has enacted through Jesus Christ that extends to all the nations. Luke's subsequent alterations to Joel 3.1-5, and particularly the ways in which he employs secondary citations within his quotation of Joel 3, open up further ways in which he understands the prophecy before him in terms of its meaning for the early church.

Change 2 – Acts 2.17, 18, ‘and they will prophesy’ (καὶ προφητεύσουσιν)

Luke breaks again from the original wording of Joel with the addition of ‘and they will prophesy’ (καὶ προφητεύσουσιν) in Acts 2.18. In context, this addition reinforces the primacy of prophecy as a sign of God's restoration in the last days. This alteration to Joel's oracle looks both backward and forward.

Looking back, Luke is laying emphasis on an image of fulfilment that is already embedded in Joel's prophecy: the record of the elders of Israel prophesying when the Spirit rested on them in Num 11.24–30. In Numbers, Joshua observes that the spirit of prophecy has moved beyond the tent of meeting and onto those in the Israelite camp. Troubled by this democratisation of the Spirit, Joshua calls on Moses to put an end to the prophesying, but Moses rebukes him, ‘Would that all of the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!’ (11.29). Joel evokes this image in his oracle of God pouring out the Spirit on all (Israelite) flesh. Joel's description of the restored Israel corresponds to the day that Moses hoped would come.

A fuller attention to this background in Numbers 11 may suggest further implications for the appropriation and reinforcement of this image in Acts 2.17–18. Luke begins his second volume by narrating the reconstitution of the Twelve with the inclusion of Matthias (Acts 1.12–26). The reader who is familiar with Luke 22.28–30 will recall that the Twelve are depicted as leaders and judges of Israel.Footnote ²¹ Thus, when the Spirit comes on the disciples of Jesus on the Day of Pentecost, Luke has in mind the outpouring of the Spirit upon Israel. Footnote ²² In Acts 2, Moses’ words – ‘Would that all of the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!’ – are finding fulfilment in the restoration of Israel that Jesus initiated among his followers. Luke has appropriated the image embedded in Joel's prophecy: the day Moses hoped would come has arrived in the Spirit's anointing of the Twelve and those gathered with them.

Looking ahead, the added stress on prophecy that Luke places on his citation of Joel 3.2 reinforces the criterion by which the early church will recognise who is included in God's eschatological restoration. The full effect of this will not become clear until Peter's sermon in Cornelius’ house (Acts 10.44–8). But when that scene arrives, and Peter is summoned to explain his preaching among the Gentiles, it will be prophecy that stands as incontrovertible evidence that the Gentiles have been welcomed into the people of God (11.1–18).Footnote ²³ As with the quotation of Isaiah, so also here: Luke's addition of καὶ προφητεύσουσιν to his citation of Joel 3.2 provides his audience with another hermeneutical tool to recognise the early church as the fulfilment of God's eschatological restoration of Israel.

Change 3 – Acts 2.17, ‘all flesh’ (πᾶσαν σάρκα)

Although it does not reflect a concrete alteration to Joel 3.1, it will be useful at this point to consider the reorientation of meaning that takes place with the phrase ‘all flesh’ (πᾶσαν σάρκα) in Acts 2.17. As noted above, the ‘all flesh’ of Joel's prophecy has traditionally been understood as referring to Jewish flesh. This is not the case in the setting Luke gives to the phrase. In Acts 2.17, πᾶσαν σάρκα looks forward to the outpouring of the Spirit upon the Gentiles (Acts 10–11), while also anticipating the apostles’ recognition that people from πάντα τὰ ἔθνη have a place in the restoration that God is enacting (Acts 15.17). In addition to anticipating these developments in the narrative of Acts, the reference to ‘all flesh’ also looks back and draws a fuller, universal meaning from Luke 3.6. In that passage, John the Baptist announces his mission through the words of Isaiah 40.3–5. Uniquely among the Gospels, Luke records John going beyond Isaiah 40.3 and including in his announcement that ‘all flesh (πᾶσα σάρξ) will see the salvation of God’ (Luke 3.6; cf. Isa 40.5). Thus, when Peter utters the phrase πᾶσαν σάρκα – and when he does so in a narrative setting that is, as with Luke 3, charged with the significance of baptism (Acts 1.5–8; 2.38) – the words of Joel remain the same but are resignified within the context of Lukan (and Isaianic) theology. A universal meaning that lay strangely dormant in Joel's prophecy begins to rise to prominence in its setting in Acts. This meaning will not become explicit until Peter is called to Caesarea and the implications of the Spirit coming on all flesh will be seen to include Gentile flesh, but Luke lays the groundwork here.Footnote ²⁴

Change 4 – ‘and even upon my male slaves and upon my female slaves’ (καί γε ἐπὶ τοὺς δούλους μου καὶ ἐπὶ τὰς δούλας μου)

Luke continues to interpret Joel's prophecy as finding fulfilment among those who believe in Jesus Christ as he further adapts Joel 3.2 in Acts 2.18. Joel's original prophecy spoke of male and female slaves in straightforward terms (καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς δούλους καὶ ἐπὶ τὰς δούλας). In Luke's writings, however, slaves nearly always enter the narrative in contexts of discipleship.Footnote ²⁵ Thus, when Luke contributes the intensifying καί γε as well as the possessive pronoun μου, he draws his reader's attention to a new understanding of slavery in service to the Lord.

If we can assume continuity with the uses of δούλος/η in the Gospel of Luke and later in Acts, then ‘my slaves’ in Acts 2.18 suggests men and women who serve God such as Mary (Luke 1.38), Simeon (2.29), the disciples gathered in Jerusalem (Acts 4.29), and Paul and Barnabas (16.17). It is men and women who recognise the lordship of Jesus that Luke envisions as receiving God's Spirit.Footnote ²⁶

Additionally, Luke creates rich intertextual relationships between the disciples and Israelites in Scripture by casting the slaves in Acts 2.18 as God's possession. In the Old Testament, God rarely claims people as ‘my servants’. Two usages stand out. First, God uses this title when addressing the prophets of Israel.Footnote ²⁷ Frequently in this usage, the prophets are spoken of as the messengers through whom God calls Israel to repentance. Not coincidentally, this is precisely the role of the believers in Acts 2.38; 3.19; 8.22 (where repentance is proclaimed to the Jews) and 17.30; 26.20 (to the Gentiles). Luke is suggesting that the anointed, prophesying followers of Jesus stand in the same line as these Old Testament figures.

The second context in the Old Testament in which God claims people as ‘my servants’ is in reference to all of Israel, and specifically with regard to the year of Jubilee.Footnote ²⁸ In that context, God's assertion that the Israelites are ‘my servants’ is used as the reason why the people of Israel must cancel the debts of others and release their slaves. God has redeemed Israel; therefore, the social order of the nation is to reflect that redemption. On the basis of an intertextual link such as this, we can recognise the social implications of Luke's alteration to Joel's prophecy. God's appropriation of male and female slaves as ‘my male slaves and my female slaves’ reminds the church that those who participate in the restoration of Israel are to reflect their redemption in the ordering of their common life. The intensifying καί γε (‘even’ or ‘indeed’) that Luke also adds would bring emphasis to this meaning.Footnote ²⁹ Men and women with the status of slaves are specifically claimed as God's possession, thereby undermining the claim that, in the church, slaves can be the possession of human owners.Footnote ³⁰

Related to the reordering of society in the restored Israel, perhaps we can suggest at this point another explanation for Luke's changes to Joel 3.1–2. It is widely noted that Luke transposes the order of the people who experience the outpouring of the Spirit, placing young men before old men:

Few interpreters offer a theological rationale for Luke's inversion of these lines, and perhaps this represents an appropriate cautiousness. But if Luke is drawing connections between Joel's prophecy and the social dimensions of its fulfilment in the restoration of Israel under Jesus, then perhaps readers can consider a theological explanation for the way Luke changes Joel's order. A passing reference in John Chrysostom's homilies on Acts offers guidance in this direction.

Chrysostom takes note of Luke's changes in Joel's original ordering and cites Psalm 44.17: ‘In the place of fathers, your sons have been given [to you]’; and Mal 3.23: ‘He shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.’Footnote ³¹ It is likely that Chrysostom's citation of these passages is made on the basis of an eschatological reversal described in both, in which sons are privileged over fathers. Luke has already emphasised John the Baptist's role in turning fathers to their sons in Luke 1.17. If we take the reasoning of this fourth-century archbishop as a guide, then we might tentatively suggest that Chrysostom is tracking with the logic of this transposition: Luke's placement of young men over old is a sign that the reversals of the new age, once spoken of by the angel who announced John's birth, are now realised in the church. Chrysostom only makes passing reference to this possibility, and his hesitancy to make much of it should be a caution for us. Taken together with the change that renders slaves as God's possession, however, Chrysostom's ideas offer a suggestive theological rationale for Luke's placement of young men before elders.

Change 5 – Acts 2.19, ‘wonders and signs’ (καὶ δώσω τέρατα ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ ἄνω καὶ σημεῖα ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς κάτω)

The penultimate vision in Joel's oracle describes wonders in heaven and on earth (καὶ δώσω τέρατα ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, Joel 3.3). The wonders (blood, fire and pillars of smoke) are eschatological, and they foreshadow the coming judgement. Luke's appropriation of this verse leaves much of this meaning in place, but Luke also shifts the meaning of Joel's words into a new theological space with the addition of the word ‘signs’ (σημεῖα). Functioning together, σημεῖα and τέρατα indicate the character of the eschatological vision to which Luke wants his readers to be alert.

Looking ahead in the narrative of Acts, the signs and wonders spoken of here find their fulfilment in the gathered community and its leaders.Footnote ³² As Jesus was attested by God through deeds of power, wonders and signs (δυνάμεσι καὶ τέρασι καὶ σημείοις, Acts 2.22) so also his presence through signs and wonders will continue to be manifest in the community that invokes his name (4.30). Signs and wonders serve as reminders of the eschatological space in which the church lives, and they also function proleptically, pointing ahead to the ‘great and glorious day of the Lord’ (ἡμέραν κυρίου τὴν μεγάλην καὶ ἐπιφανῆ, 2.20) towards which Acts looks (3.20–1).

While looking ahead in Acts, the word pairing that Luke creates by combining τέρατα with σημεῖα also resounds with meaning from the past: God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt. Nearly all of the twenty-three occurrences of this word pair in the LXX refer to the Exodus, specifically the way in which the Lord delivered Israel and established that nation as a people through signs and wonders.Footnote ³³ Here, as he will do elsewhere in Acts, Luke is invoking this tradition and claiming that the signs and wonders God will perform among those who believe in Jesus are continuous with the signs and wonders by which God delivered Israel from slavery.Footnote ³⁴ In Luke's understanding, God's eschatological restoration of Israel through Jesus recalls this initial deliverance, and just like in the Exodus, signs and wonders will be visible to the people of God and to the watching world as indicators of God's special claim on the identity of those who call upon the Lord. Inherent in the appropriation of this image, however, is also the reminder that inasmuch as signs and wonders foreshadow restoration, they also point to judgement on those who oppose God's deliverance. The bold claim that is made by Luke's use of Exodus imagery in this place further aligns the church with the people of God. Luke has appropriated a (arguably the) foundational image of Israel's identity and aligned it with the community gathered by Jesus.

Change 6 – Acts 2.21, ‘and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’ (καὶ ἔσται πᾶς ὃς ἂν ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου σωθήσεται)

Similar to the change Luke created in his use of the phrase ‘all flesh’ (v. 17), Acts 2.21 corresponds exactly with the LXX text of Joel 3.5a, but its meaning in Acts is profoundly different. For someone who knows Joel's oracle in full, Luke's stopping point is conspicuous: it leaves off Joel's closing statement that salvation will be restricted to Jerusalem.Footnote ³⁵ In light of the way that Acts 2 is quietly preparing the reader for the mission to the Gentiles, this stopping point should be seen as charged with meaning.

Even more suggestive than what Luke omits, however, is what he leaves the same. The divine name in Joel by which salvation comes is κύριος, that is, Yahweh. The reader who follows Peter's sermon to Acts 2.36, however, discovers that the name of the Lord by which salvation comes in Acts is κύριος Ἰησοῦς. This is a seismic shift theologically, but also one that bears witness to the faith and experience of the early church. It is also crucial to note the continuity that Luke envisions between the Lord in Joel and the Lord in Acts. Luke has prompted his reader at the outset of his quotation of Joel to be mindful that God is the speaker of this prophecy (λέγει ὁ θεός, Acts 2.17, another Lukan addition).Footnote ³⁶ The one who first spoke the words ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’ through Joel is the one who speaks again through Peter. God is the one who witnesses to Jesus’ lordship, and the identities of both God and Jesus are bound up in the single word ‘Lord’.Footnote ³⁷

3. Assessing the Changes: The Integrity of Joel 3.1–5 and Luke's Hermeneutics

For Luke, the outpouring of the Spirit is the evidence that the Father has resurrected Jesus, exalted him to his right hand, and made him Lord (Acts 2.32–4). It is this same conviction that stands behind the various alterations we have observed throughout Luke's quotation of Joel 3.1–5 in Acts 2.17–21. The outpouring of the Spirit authenticates Jesus’ role as Messiah and Lord, signals the eschatological time and restores the people of Israel – and, through Israel, the nations – to relationship with Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all (οὗτός ἐστιν πάντων κύριος, 10.36). The various secondary citations that Luke employs bear witness to the new order that is established through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and that awaits completion upon his return.

As much as Luke was writing under the conviction that the restoration Joel foresaw was being fulfilled among the followers of Jesus, it remains worthwhile to consider how Luke's reorientation of Joel 3.1–5 leaves the integrity of Joel's oracle intact. Questions arise particularly because of the dissimilarities of the salvation they envision: Joel restricts salvation to empirical Israel; Luke, reading Joel through the lens of Isaiah (cf. 2.2 and 40.5), expands the scope of salvation to the nations. Is this still the prophecy of Joel? Or at the hand of Luke have the words remained basically the same but their meaning been violated by this use in a new context?

There is no denying that Luke subverts the meaning of ‘all flesh’ away from the standard reading of Joel 3.1.Footnote ³⁸ With this shift in reference, Luke offers a strong revision of Joel's prophecy. But from within the theology of Acts, it is possible to consider Luke's citation as an attempt to extend Joel's meaning in light of eschatological realities. This is because the fundamental difference between Joel 3 and Acts 2 is to be found in God's action to begin the restoration of Israel but not to usher it in with it the final judgement. Thus, Luke uses Joel's words (‘all flesh’ = empirical Israel) but in so doing sets them in a context in which they now correspond to his (and Isaiah's) conviction that through the restoration of Israel God's salvation will extend to all people. It is through the restoration of Israel, not instead of it, that ‘all flesh’ receives salvation (and the outpoured Spirit). David Pao's attention to the Isaianic ‘new Exodus’ theme in Acts supports this view: ‘This kind of universalism is developed not through the abolition of the particularistic understanding of election but primarily through the extension of the universal sovereignty of the God of Israel.’Footnote ³⁹

A second major change by Luke's hand occurs when Joel's vision of the nations standing in judgement is placed (metaleptically) in conversation with Isaiah's vision of the nations streaming to Jerusalem. In assessing the dissonance that this creates, it important to bear in mind that Luke does not reject the image of an eschatological judgement – a number of Lukan passages correct that misperception. Luke's view of judgement is shaped by Jesus’ advents, however, and so Luke adds a nuance to Joel's oracle that reflects his Christological understanding of the end times. The Parable of the Ten Pounds (Luke 19.11–27) illustrates this well, and perhaps the opening words of that parable can illuminate why Luke opts to place Isa 2.2 at the head of his quotation of Joel: ‘[Jesus] told them a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and they thought that the kingdom of God was about to appear immediately. So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return …”’ (Luke 19.11).

Luke narrates here Jesus’ ascension to the throne of David. And, importantly in Jesus’ parable, judgement follows the return of the nobleman from the distant country. The time before the return of the king is not characterised by judgement. Luke reflects this conviction in Acts. The disciples await the restoration of the kingdom (1.6), but Jesus tells them that its fulfilment is still in the future (1.7). While the full restoration (and therefore judgement) awaits the return of Jesus, the beginnings of the restoration of Israel are taking place among the followers of Jesus, through whom God is inviting ‘all the nations’ to enter into the house of – that is, under the rule of – David (τὴν σκηνὴν Δαυίδ; 15.16–17).Footnote ⁴⁰ The judgement Joel envisioned of the nations standing before God is not denied by the invocation of Isaiah's vision of the nations streaming to Jerusalem. Importantly, however, that judgement is forestalled and the time for repentance extended. Joel's eschatological vision is thus set within the framework of Luke's theology. The arrival of the last days signals for Luke the beginning of the restoration of Israel, and it also signals the beginning of a mission to the wider world. At least for a time, mission and eschatology coincide.Footnote ⁴¹ Lest an early Christian reader of Joel misconstrue the scope of salvation or timing of God's judgement, Luke calls upon Isaiah's understanding of ‘the last days’ and his vision for ‘all flesh’ in order to account for the character of the time in which the church exists.

Taken together, Luke's alterations to Joel 3.1–5 cohere around a particular hermeneutic by which Luke is shaping Joel's oracle even as he quotes it. His hermeneutic is the belief that the eschatological restoration of Israel has begun in the community constituted by Jesus Christ. Luke resignifies Joel's prophecy so that it corresponds with Isaiah's vision of that eschatological restoration extending to the nations. Brief secondary citations are the method by which Luke creates this correspondence. Multiple allusions to other Old Testament texts that envision God's deliverance and lordship over of Israel come together in Luke's citation of Joel's prophecy. The end result is rich: Joel's voice leads a chorus of witnesses to Israel's restoration. The voices are those of Isaiah (Isa 2.2; 40.5), Moses (Num 11.29), the many prophets and leaders of Israel who looked upon God's ‘signs and wonders’ and, perhaps, also Malachi (Mal 3.23) as well as the psalmist (Ps 44.17; cf. also Pss 15, 109). Through Luke's use of secondary citations, the voices of these witnesses come alongside that of Joel's and guide the application of his words to the church. We should note in particular the range of voices Luke calls on: Moses, prophets, psalmist. Luke's citation of Joel thus exemplifies in one brief citation Jesus’ words to his disciples: ‘Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled’ (Luke 24.44).Footnote ⁴² As Luke arranges them, all of these voices bear witness to Jesus and the realities that he ushers in.

On the interpretation offered here, the method by which Luke reads Scripture in Acts 2.17–21 is consistent with his use of Scripture more broadly. This is on display a few verses below the passage we have been considering when Luke interprets Ps 15.8–11 as a messianic prophecy in light of Ps 109.1 (Acts 2.25–35). Commenting on this passage, Luke Timothy Johnson writes that the intertextual relationship by which Luke reads these Psalms ‘organizes a complex set of textual details [in this case, two Psalms that look beyond David for their fulfilment] into a form of argument shaped by association’.Footnote ⁴³ We can further specify Johnson's conclusions in light of what we have already gleaned from Bruce Fisk's work: that in the latter half of Acts 2, as we saw in the opening verses of Peter's sermon, it is secondary citations that do the hermeneutical heavy-lifting and reorient the longer, primary texts.

Taking these methodological observations further, the inaugural sermon of Jesus that Luke records (Luke 4.16–30) evinces a method for reading Scripture closely analogous to the one we have seen in Acts 2.17–21. In Luke 4, Jesus proclaims the words of Isa 61.1–2, but he embeds in that quotation a reference to Isa 58.6. The effect that is created by this pairing of text and co-text is the creation of a metaleptic link between Isaiah's description of Israel being restored (61.1–2) and another Isaianic oracle in which Israel's rightly ordered worship ushers in a second Exodus (58.1–14).Footnote ⁴⁴ The result for those who pick up on the relationship established by the intertextual connection is a window into the character of Jesus: he is the one who will both restore and deliver Israel.

Much like the quotations of Isaiah in Luke 4, the intertextual allusions and echoes that Luke embeds within his quotation of Joel 3.1–5 move by quickly. Most modern readers of the New Testament are, by and large, comfortable passing over Luke's changes to Joel's prophecy without attending to the ways in which the alterations resonate across Scripture. But for the interpreter with ears to hear, Luke's citation of Joel offers insight into how Luke conceives of the church as participating in the restoration of Israel. On the broader level of the relationship between the Old Testament and the New, Luke's use of Joel in Acts 2.17–21 also exemplifies the way in which the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead had opened the evangelist's mind to a new understanding Israel's Scripture.Footnote ⁴⁵