Joel 1:14

1:14 Announce a holy fast; ¹ 

proclaim a sacred assembly.

Gather the elders and ²  all the inhabitants of the land

to the temple of the Lord your God,

and cry out to the Lord.

Deuteronomy 29:10-11

29:10 You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God – the heads of your tribes, ³  your elders, your officials, every Israelite man, 29:11 your infants, your wives, and the ⁴  foreigners living in your encampment, those who chop wood and those who carry water –

Deuteronomy 29:2

The Exodus, Wandering, and Conquest Reviewed

29:2 Moses proclaimed to all Israel as follows: “You have seen all that the Lord did ⁵  in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, all his servants, and his land.

Deuteronomy 20:13

20:13 The Lord your God will deliver it over to you ⁶  and you must kill every single male by the sword.

Jonah 3:7-8

3:7 He issued a proclamation and said, ⁷  “In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, cattle or sheep, is to taste anything; they must not eat and they must not drink water. 3:8 Every person and animal must put on sackcloth and must cry earnestly ⁸  to God, and everyone ⁹  must turn from their ¹⁰  evil way of living ¹¹  and from the violence that they do. ¹² 

¹ tn Heb “consecrate a fast” (so NASB).

² tc The conjunction “and” does not appear in MT or LXX, but does appear in some Qumran texts (4QXII^c and 4QXII^g).

³ tc Heb “your heads, your tribes.” The Syriac presupposes either “heads of your tribes” or “your heads, your judges,” etc. (reading שֹׁפְטֵכֶם [shofÿtekhem] for שִׁבְטֵיכֶם [shivtekhem]). Its comparative difficulty favors the originality of the MT reading. Cf. KJV “your captains of your tribes”; NRSV “the leaders of your tribes”; NLT “your tribal leaders.”

⁴ tn Heb “your.”

⁵ tn The Hebrew text includes “to your eyes,” but this is redundant in English style (cf. the preceding “you have seen”) and is omitted in the translation.

⁶ tn Heb “to your hands.”

⁷ tn Contrary to many modern English versions, the present translation understands the king’s proclamation to begin after the phrase “and he said” (rather than after “in Nineveh”), as do quotations in 1:14; 2:2, 4; 4:2, 8, 9. In Jonah where the quotation does not begin immediately after “said” (אָמַר, ’amar), it is only the speaker or addressee or both that come between “said” and the start of the quotation (1:6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 4:4, 9, 10; cf. 1:1; 3:1).

⁸ tn Heb “with strength”; KJV, NRSV “mightily”; NAB, NCV “loudly”; NIV “urgently.”

⁹ tn Heb “let them turn, a man from his evil way.” The alternation between the plural verb וְיָשֻׁבוּ (vÿyashuvu, “and let them turn”) and the singular noun אִישׁ (’ish, “a man, each one”) and the singular suffix on מִדַּרְכּוֹ (middarko, “from his way”) emphasizes that each and every person in the collective unity is called to repent.

¹⁰ tn Heb “his.” See the preceding note on “one.”

¹¹ tn Heb “evil way.” For other examples of “way” as “way of living,” see Judg 2:17; Ps 107:17-22; Prov 4:25-27; 5:21.

¹² tn Heb “that is in their hands.” By speaking of the harm they did as “in their hands,” the king recognized the Ninevites’ personal awareness and immediate responsibility. The term “hands” is either a synecdoche of instrument (e.g., “Is not the hand of Joab in all this?” 2 Sam 14:19) or a synecdoche of part for the whole. The king's descriptive figure of speech reinforces their guilt.