Discovery BoxJoel 2:3 
Context2:3 Like fire they devour everything in their path; 1
a flame blazes behind them.
The land looks like the Garden of Eden 2 before them,
but behind them there is only a desolate wilderness –
for nothing escapes them! 3
Joel 2:25
Context2:25 I will make up for the years 4
that the ‘arbeh-locust 5 consumed your crops 6 –
the yeleq-locust, the hasil-locust, and the gazam-locust –
my great army 7 that I sent against you.
1 tn Heb “a fire devours before it.”
2 tn Heb “like the garden of Eden, the land is before them.”
3 tn Heb “and surely a survivor there is not for it.” The antecedent of the pronoun “it” is apparently עַם (’am, “people”) of v. 2, which seems to be a figurative way of referring to the locusts. K&D 26:191-92 thought that the antecedent of this pronoun was “land,” but the masculine gender of the pronoun does not support this.
4 tn Heb “I will restore to you the years.”
sn The plural years suggests that the plague to which Joel refers was not limited to a single season. Apparently the locusts were a major problem over several successive years. One season of drought and locust invasion would have been bad enough. Several such years would have been devastating.
5 sn The same four terms for locust are used here as in 1:4, but in a different order. This fact creates some difficulty for the notion that the four words refer to four distinct stages of locust development.
6 tn The term “your crops” does not appear in the Hebrew, but has been supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.
7 sn Here Joel employs military language to describe the locusts. In the prophet’s thinking this invasion was far from being a freak accident. Rather, the Lord is pictured here as a divine warrior who leads his army into the land as a punishment for past sin and as a means of bringing about spiritual renewal on the part of the people.
