65:9 You visit the earth and give it rain; 4
you make it rich and fertile 5
with overflowing streams full of water. 6
You provide grain for them, 7
for you prepare the earth to yield its crops. 8
65:10 You saturate 9 its furrows,
and soak 10 its plowed ground. 11
With rain showers you soften its soil, 12
and make its crops grow. 13
65:11 You crown the year with your good blessings, 14
and you leave abundance in your wake. 15
65:12 The pastures in the wilderness glisten with moisture, 16
and the hills are clothed with joy. 17
65:13 The meadows are clothed with sheep,
and the valleys are covered with grain.
They shout joyfully, yes, they sing.
5:6 I will make it a wasteland;
no one will prune its vines or hoe its ground, 18
and thorns and briers will grow there.
I will order the clouds
not to drop any rain on it.
10:13 When his voice thunders, 19 the heavenly ocean roars.
He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons. 20
He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain.
He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it. 21
14:22 Do any of the worthless idols 22 of the nations cause rain to fall?
Do the skies themselves send showers?
Is it not you, O Lord our God, who does this? 23
So we put our hopes in you 24
because you alone do all this.”
2:23 Citizens of Zion, 25 rejoice!
Be glad because of what the Lord your God has done! 26
For he has given to you the early rains 27 as vindication.
He has sent 28 to you the rains –
both the early and the late rains 29 as formerly.
4:7 “I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. 30
I gave rain to one city, but not to another.
One field 31 would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.
1 tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here.
2 tn Heb “the tree of the field will give its fruit.” As a collective singular this has been translated as plural.
3 tn Heb “all the work of your hands.”
4 tn The verb form is a Polel from שׁוּק (shuq, “be abundant”), a verb which appears only here and in Joel 2:24 and 3:13, where it is used in the Hiphil stem and means “overflow.”
5 tn Heb “you greatly enrich it.”
6 tn Heb “[with] a channel of God full of water.” The divine name is probably used here in a superlative sense to depict a very deep stream (“a stream fit for God,” as it were).
7 tn The pronoun apparently refers to the people of the earth, mentioned in v. 8.
8 tn Heb “for thus [referring to the provision of rain described in the first half of the verse] you prepare it.” The third feminine singular pronominal suffix attached to the verb “prepare” refers back to the “earth,” which is a feminine noun with regard to grammatical form.
9 tn Heb “saturating” [the form is an infinitive absolute].
10 tn Heb “flatten, cause to sink.”
11 tn Heb “trenches,” or “furrows.”
12 tn Heb “soften it,” that is, the earth.
13 tn Heb “its vegetation you bless.” Divine “blessing” often involves endowing an object with special power or capacity.
14 tn Heb “your good,” which refers here to agricultural blessings.
15 tn Heb “and your paths drip with abundance.”
16 tn Heb “drip.”
17 tn That is, with rich vegetation that brings joy to those who see it.
18 tn Heb “it will not be pruned or hoed” (so NASB); ASV and NRSV both similar.
19 tn Heb “At the voice of his giving.” The idiom “to give the voice” is often used for thunder (cf. BDB 679 s.v. נָתַן Qal.1.x).
20 tn Heb “from the ends of the earth.”
21 tn Heb “he brings out the winds from his storehouses.”
22 tn The word הֶבֶל (hevel), often translated “vanities”, is a common pejorative epithet for idols or false gods. See already in 8:19 and 10:8.
23 tn Heb “Is it not you, O
24 tn The rhetorical negatives are balanced by a rhetorical positive.
25 tn Heb “sons of Zion.”
26 tn Heb “be glad in the
27 tn Normally the Hebrew word הַמּוֹרֶה (hammoreh) means “the teacher,” but here and in Ps 84:7 it refers to “early rains.” Elsewhere the word for “early rains” is יוֹרֶה (yoreh). The phrase here הַמּוֹרֶה לִצְדָקָה (hammoreh litsdaqah) is similar to the expression “teacher of righteousness” (Heb., מוֹרֶה הַצֶּדֶק , moreh hatsedeq) found in the Dead Sea Scrolls referring to a particular charismatic leader, although the Qumran community seems not to have invoked this text in support of that notion.
28 tn Heb “caused to come down.”
29 sn For half the year Palestine is generally dry. The rainy season begins with the early rains usually in late October to early December, followed by the latter rains in March and April. Without these rains productive farming would not be possible, as Joel’s original readers knew only too well.
30 sn Rain…three months before the harvest refers to the rains of late March-early April.
31 tn Heb “portion”; KJV, ASV “piece”; NASB “part.” The same word occurs a second time later in this verse.