Later text
Joel 2:13BSB
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.
Intertextuality Pair
Quotation
Later text
Joel 2:13BSB
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.
Earlier text
Exodus 34:6BSB
Then the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out: "The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness,
Joel 2:13 directly quotes the divine attribute formula first revealed at Sinai: חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם (channun werachum, "gracious and compassionate"), אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם (erekh appayim, "slow to anger"), and רַב־חֶסֶד (rav-chesed, "abounding in loving devotion"). By placing this Exodus 34:6 creedal statement in a call to repentance, Joel appeals to Yahweh's self-revealed character as the ground for Israel's hope that judgment may be averted. Joel adds the distinctive clause וְנִחָם עַל־הָרָעָה (wenicham al-hara'ah, "and He relents from sending disaster"), which extends the Sinai formula toward the prophetic theme of divine responsiveness to repentance. This demonstrates how later prophets treated the Exodus 34:6 formula as the foundational confession of Yahweh's character, to be invoked whenever Israel needed assurance of God's mercy.