15:3 In their streets they wear sackcloth;
on their roofs and in their town squares
all of them wail,
they fall down weeping.
36:22 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace supervisor, accompanied by Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the secretary, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn in grief 1 and reported to him what the chief adviser had said.
27:31 they will tear out their hair because of you and put on sackcloth,
and they will weep bitterly over you with intense mourning. 3
1:8 Wail 4 like a young virgin 5 clothed in sackcloth,
lamenting the death of 6 her husband-to-be. 7
1 tn Heb “with their clothes torn”; the words “in grief” have been supplied in the translation to indicate that this was done as a sign of grief and mourning.
2 tn Heb “baldness will be on their heads.”
3 tn Heb “and they will weep concerning you with bitterness of soul, (with) bitter mourning.”
4 sn The verb is feminine singular, raising a question concerning its intended antecedent. A plural verb would be expected here, the idea being that all the inhabitants of the land should grieve. Perhaps Joel is thinking specifically of the city of Jerusalem, albeit in a representative sense. The choice of the feminine singular verb form has probably been influenced to some extent by the allusion to the young widow in the simile of v. 8.
5 tn Or “a young woman” (TEV, CEV). See the note on the phrase “husband-to-be” in the next line.
6 tn Heb “over the death of.” The term “lamenting” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.
7 sn Heb “the husband of her youth.” The woman described here may already be married, so the reference is to the death of a husband rather than a fiancé (a husband-to-be). Either way, the simile describes a painful and unexpected loss to which the national tragedy Joel is describing may be compared.