Joel 2:12
10 The earth quakes before them; the sky reverberates. The sun and the moon grow dark; the stars refuse to shine. 11 The voice of the Lord thunders as he leads his army. Indeed, his warriors are innumerable; Surely his command is carried out! Yes, the day of the Lord is great and terrible42—who can survive it? 12 “Yet even now,” the Lord says, “return to me with all your heart—with fasting, weeping, and mourning. 13 Tear your hearts, not just your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and boundless in loyal love—often relenting from calamitous punishment. 14 Who knows? Perhaps he will be compassionate and grant a reprieve, and leave blessing in his wake—a meal offering and a drink offering for you to offer to the Lord your God!
Malachi 2:13
11 Judah has become disloyal, and unspeakable sins have been committed in Israel and Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the holy things that the Lord loves and has turned to a foreign god! 12 May the Lord cut off from the community of Jacob every last person who does this, as well as the person who presents improper offerings to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! 13 You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you. 14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. 15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. What did our ancestor do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth.
Notes and References
"... in the overall flow of the Book of the Twelve, Joel provides a template for repentance, along with Jonah inserting a vision of hope for repentance into the first half of the book of the Twelve where there is little optimism expressed by the prophets over human ability to repent. Joel focuses particularly on the role that priests should play in promoting penitence, but it is clear from Zechariah 7–8 that while the priests seem to be in charge of promoting lament, they are not promoting repentance, so that God will not answer them and they will not move from fasts to feasts. Thus, we see in Joel the agenda for repentance and in Zechariah 7–8 a confrontation of the priests over their lack of fulfillment of this agenda (Compare Joel 2:12–14 as “a kind of intermediate step” between the call to return in Hosea 14 and the calls in Zechariah 1:3; Malachi 3:7) ... This similarity between the books of Joel and Zechariah is also apparent in the other two books of Haggai-Malachi corpus. Haggai also emphasizes the need for repentance, related to a major agricultural crisis and to priests who are sacrificing for a people who are not penitent. As with Joel there is an expansion from an initial transformation on the historical level (Haggai 2:19b) to a more cosmic and eschatological level (2:20–23). Similarly, Malachi emphasizes the theme of repentance related to priests and community, with some connections to Joel in terms of inappropriate sacrifices and weeping / mourning over the altar with a lack of repentance and priestly involvement. As with the other books there is a shift to the eschatological and cosmic level in Malachi 3 ..."
Boda, Mark. J. "Penitential Priests in the Twelve" in Tiemeyer, Lena-Sofia, and Jutta Krispenz (eds.) Priests and Cults in the Book of the Twelve (pp. 51-64) Society of Biblical Literature, 2016