2:3 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
2:4 They look like horses; 4
they charge ahead like war horses.
2:5 They sound like 5 chariots rumbling 6 over mountain tops,
like the crackling 7 of blazing fire consuming stubble,
like the noise of 8 a mighty army 9 being drawn up for battle. 10
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 “Like the appearance of horses [is] its appearance.”
5 tn Heb “like the sound of.”
6 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.
7 tn Heb “sound.”
8 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.
9 tn Heb “people.”
10 tn Heb “being arrayed of battle.”