Psalms 90:16

90:16 May your servants see your work! ¹ 

May their sons see your majesty! ² 

Deuteronomy 4:10

4:10 You ³  stood before the Lord your God at Horeb and he ⁴  said to me, “Assemble the people before me so that I can tell them my commands. ⁵  Then they will learn to revere me all the days they live in the land, and they will instruct their children.”

Joshua 22:24-25

22:24 We swear we have done this because we were worried that ⁶  in the future your descendants would say to our descendants, ‘What relationship do you have with the Lord God of Israel? ⁷  22:25 The Lord made the Jordan a boundary between us and you Reubenites and Gadites. You have no right to worship the Lord.’ ⁸  In this way your descendants might cause our descendants to stop obeying ⁹  the Lord.

Joel 1:3

1:3 Tell your children ¹⁰  about it,

have your children tell their children,

and their children the following generation. ¹¹ 

¹ tn Heb “may your work be revealed to your servants.” In this context (note v. 17) the verb form יֵרָאֶה (yera’eh) is best understood as an unshortened jussive (see Gen 1:9; Isa 47:3).

² tn Heb “and your majesty to their sons.” The verb “be revealed” is understood by ellipsis in the second line.

³ tn The text begins with “(the) day (in) which.” In the Hebrew text v. 10 is subordinate to v. 11, but for stylistic reasons the translation treats v. 10 as an independent clause, necessitating the omission of the subordinating temporal phrase at the beginning of the verse.

⁴ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 4:3.

⁵ tn Heb “my words.” See v. 13; in Hebrew the “ten commandments” are the “ten words.”

⁶ tn Heb “Surely, from worry concerning a matter we have done this, saying.”

⁷ tn Heb “What is there to you and to the Lord God of Israel?” The rhetorical question is sarcastic in tone and anticipates a response, “Absolutely none!”

⁸ tn Heb “You have no portion in the Lord.”

⁹ tn Heb “fearing.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “sons.” This word occurs several times in this verse.

¹¹ sn The circumstances that precipitated the book of Joel surrounded a locust invasion in Palestine that was of unprecedented proportions. The locusts had devastated the country’s agrarian economy, with the unwelcome consequences extending to every important aspect of commercial, religious, and national life. To further complicate matters, a severe drought had exhausted water supplies, causing life-threatening shortages for animal and human life (cf. v. 20). Locust invasions occasionally present significant problems in Palestine in modern times. The year 1865 was commonly known among Arabic-speaking peoples of the Near East as sent el jarad, “year of the locust.” The years 1892, 1899, and 1904 witnessed significant locust invasions in Palestine. But in modern times there has been nothing equal in magnitude to the great locust invasion that began in Palestine in February of 1915. This modern parallel provides valuable insight into the locust plague the prophet Joel points to as a foreshadowing of the day of the Lord. For an eyewitness account of the 1915 locust invasion of Palestine see J. D. Whiting, “Jerusalem’s Locust Plague,” National Geographic 28 (December 1915): 511-50.