And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on My menservants and maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days.
But Moses replied, "Are you jealous on my account? I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would place His Spirit on them!"
Significance
When the Spirit rested on the seventy elders and even on Eldad and Medad in the camp, Joshua wanted Moses to stop them; Moses answered, "I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would place His Spirit on them!" (Numbers 11:29). Joel takes Moses's wish and turns it into Yahweh's sworn promise: "I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy... Even on My menservants and maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit." The two share the language of prophecy (a noun in Numbers, a verb in Joel) and of the Spirit, and with it the scandal of breadth — Numbers 11 widens the prophetic office from one mediator to seventy and then breaks even that boundary; Joel widens it to "all flesh," naming every Israelite category (son/daughter, old/young, male/female servant) that the old economy excluded. The development is exact: a Mosaic aspiration becomes a prophetic certainty, awaiting the day when the Spirit is no longer rationed to a chosen few but poured out on the whole covenant people. This is promise-fulfillment in seed form — Numbers 11 is the longing the rest of redemptive history carries until Pentecost answers it, when the ascended Christ pours out the Spirit (Acts 2:33) and Peter declares "this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel." The significance ends in the desirability of the gift itself: what Moses could only wish for, the risen Lord freely gives, so that the lowest servant in the kingdom now possesses what the seventy elders received only by special visitation — the indwelling Spirit, making every believer a Spirit-filled worshiper who beholds and speaks the glory of God.
Found via
G.K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology (2011); Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (1996)