1:5 Wake up, you drunkards, 1 and weep!
Wail, all you wine drinkers, 2
because the sweet wine 3 has been taken away 4 from you. 5
1:10 The crops of the fields 6 have been destroyed. 7
The ground is in mourning because the grain has perished.
The fresh wine has dried up;
the olive oil languishes.
1:17 The grains of seed 8 have shriveled beneath their shovels. 9
Storehouses have been decimated
and granaries have been torn down, for the grain has dried up.
1:19 To you, O Lord, I call out for help, 10
for fire 11 has burned up 12 the grassy pastures, 13
flames have razed 14 all the trees in the fields.
1:20 Even the wild animals 15 cry out to you; 16
for the river beds 17 have dried up;
fire has destroyed 18 the grassy pastures. 19
2:5 They sound like 20 chariots rumbling 21 over mountain tops,
like the crackling 22 of blazing fire consuming stubble,
like the noise of 23 a mighty army 24 being drawn up for battle. 25
2:9 They rush into 26 the city;
they scale 27 its walls.
They climb up into the houses;
they go in through the windows like a thief.
3:12 Let the nations be roused and let them go up
to the valley of Jehoshaphat,
for there I will sit in judgment on all the surrounding nations.
1 sn The word drunkards has a double edge here. Those accustomed to drinking too much must now lament the unavailability of wine. It also may hint that the people in general have become religiously inebriated and are unresponsive to the Lord. They are, as it were, drunkards from a spiritual standpoint.
2 sn Joel addresses the first of three groups particularly affected by the locust plague. In v. 5 he describes the effects on the drunkards, who no longer have a ready supply of intoxicating wine; in vv. 11-12 he describes the effects on the farmers, who have watched their labors come to naught because of the insect infestation; and in vv. 13-14 he describes the effects on the priests, who are no longer able to offer grain sacrifices and libations in the temple.
3 tn Heb “over the sweet wine, because it.” Cf. KJV, NIV, TEV, NLT “new wine.”
4 tn Heb “cut off” (so KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV); NAB “will be withheld.”
5 tn Heb “your mouth.” This is a synecdoche of part (the mouth) for whole (the person).
6 tn Heb “the field has been utterly destroyed.” The term “field,” a collective singular for “fields,” is a metonymy for crops produced by the fields.
7 tn Joel uses intentionally alliterative language in the phrases שֻׁדַּד שָׂדֶה (shuddad sadeh, “the field is destroyed”) and אֲבְלָה אֲדָמָה (’avlah ’adamah, “the ground is in mourning”).
8 tn Heb “seed.” The phrase “the grains of” does not appear in the Hebrew, but has been supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.
9 tc This line is textually uncertain. The MT reads “the seed shrivels in their shovels/clods.” One Qumran manuscript (4QXXIIc) reads “the heifers decay in [their] s[talls].” LXX reads “the heifers leap in their stalls.”
tn These two lines of v. 17 comprise only four words in the Hebrew; three of the four are found only here in the OT. The translation and meaning are rather uncertain. A number of English versions render the word translated “shovels” as “clods,” referring to lumps of soil (e.g., KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
10 tn The phrase “for help” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.
11 sn Fire here and in v. 20 is probably not to be understood in a literal sense. The locust plague, accompanied by conditions of extreme drought, has left the countryside looking as though everything has been burned up (so also in Joel 2:3).
12 tn Heb “consumed.” This entire line is restated at the end of v. 20.
13 tn Heb “the pastures of the wilderness.”
14 tn Heb “a flame has set ablaze.” This fire was one of the effects of the drought.
15 tn Heb “beasts of the field.”
16 tn Heb “long for you.” Animals of course do not have religious sensibilities as such; they do not in any literal sense long for Yahweh. Rather, the language here is figurative (metonymy of cause for effect). The animals long for food and water (so BDB 788 s.v. עָרַג), the ultimate source of which is Yahweh.
17 tn Heb “sources of water.”
18 tn Heb “consumed.”
19 tn Heb “the pastures of the wilderness.”
20 tn Heb “like the sound of.”
sn The repetition of the word of comparison (“like”) in vv. 4-7 should not go unnoticed. The author is comparing the locust invasion to familiar aspects of human invasion. If the preposition has its normal force here, it is similarity and not identity that is intended. In other words, locusts are being likened to human armies, but human armies are not actually present. On the other hand, this Hebrew preposition is also on occasion used to indicate exactitude, a function described by grammarians as kaph veritatis.
21 tn Heb “jostling” or “leaping.” There is question whether this pictures chariots rumbling over the mountains (e.g., 2 Sam 6:14,16; 1 Chr 15:29; Nah 3:2) or the locusts flying – or “leaping” – over the mountains (e.g., Job 21:11); see BDB 955 s.v. רָקַד.
22 tn Heb “sound.”
23 tn The phrase “the noise of” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is implied by the parallelism, so it has been supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.
24 tn Heb “people.”
25 tn Heb “being arrayed of battle.”
26 tn Heb “dart about in.”
27 tn Or “they run upon its wall.”