Discovery BoxJoel 1:9-10 
Context1:9 No one brings grain offerings or drink offerings
to the temple 1 of the Lord anymore. 2
So the priests, those who serve the Lord, are in mourning.
1:10 The crops of the fields 3 have been destroyed. 4
The ground is in mourning because the grain has perished.
The fresh wine has dried up;
the olive oil languishes.
Joel 1:17
Context1:17 The grains of seed 5 have shriveled beneath their shovels. 6
Storehouses have been decimated
and granaries have been torn down, for the grain has dried up.
1 tn Heb “house.” So also in vv. 13, 14, 16.
2 tn Heb “grain offering and drink offering are cut off from the house of the
3 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.
4 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”).
5 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.
6 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).
