Sitting under your vine and fig tree
is a picture of the rest and peace that God promised his people when they would serve him (cf. 1 Kings 4:25; 2 Kings 18:31; Micah 4:4; Zechariah 3:10). Through the all-destructive plague of locusts (Joel 1:6), God deprives his people of that rest and peace. It is war
between God and his people, which is time for the greatest sorrow (Joel 1:8; Joel uses the image of a wrecked, newly begun marriage. The most beautiful expectation suddenly ends in a black hole). By bringing out the destruction of precisely the vine and fig tree, Joel shows that the misery is not merely a natural disaster, but that God as the covenant God is busy carrying out covenant judgments. He shakes the people so that they wake up.
7 It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white.