Job 18:6

18:6 The light in his tent grows dark;

his lamp above him is extinguished. ¹ 

Job 18:18

18:18 He is driven ²  from light into darkness

and is banished from the world.

Job 19:8

19:8 He has blocked ³  my way so I cannot pass,

and has set darkness ⁴  over my paths.

Proverbs 4:19

4:19 The way of the wicked is like gloomy darkness; ⁵ 

they do not know what causes them to stumble. ⁶ 

Isaiah 8:22

8:22 When one looks out over the land, he sees ⁷  distress and darkness, gloom ⁸  and anxiety, darkness and people forced from the land. ⁹ 

Lamentations 3:2

3:2 He drove me into captivity ¹⁰  and made me walk ¹¹ 

in darkness and not light.

Joel 2:2-3

2:2 It will be ¹²  a day of dreadful darkness, ¹³ 

a day of foreboding storm clouds, ¹⁴ 

like blackness ¹⁵  spread over the mountains.

It is a huge and powerful army ¹⁶  –

there has never been anything like it ever before,

and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come! ¹⁷ 

2:3 Like fire they devour everything in their path; ¹⁸ 

a flame blazes behind them.

The land looks like the Garden of Eden ¹⁹  before them,

but behind them there is only a desolate wilderness –

for nothing escapes them! ²⁰ 

Matthew 8:12

8:12 but the sons of the kingdom will be thrown out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ²¹ 

[18:6]  ¹ tn The LXX interprets a little more precisely: “his lamp shall be put out with him.”

[18:18]  ² tn The verbs in this verse are plural; without the expressed subject they should be taken in the passive sense.

[19:8]  ³ tn The verb גָּדַר (gadar) means “to wall up; to fence up; to block.” God has blocked Job’s way so that he cannot get through. See the note on 3:23. Cf. Lam 3:7.

[19:8]  ⁴ tn Some commentators take the word to be חָשַׁךְ (hasak), related to an Arabic word for “thorn hedge.”

[4:19]  ⁵ sn The simile describes ignorance or spiritual blindness, sinfulness, calamity, despair.

[4:19]  ⁶ tn Heb “in what they stumble.”

[8:22]  ⁷ tn Heb “and behold” (so KJV, ASV, NASB).

[8:22]  ⁸ tn The precise meaning of מְעוּף (mÿ’uf) is uncertain; the word occurs only here. See BDB 734 s.v. מָעוּף.

[8:22]  ⁹ tn Heb “ and darkness, pushed.” The word מְנֻדָּח (mÿnudakh) appears to be a Pual participle from נדח (“push”), but the Piel is unattested for this verb and the Pual occurs only here.

[3:2]  ¹⁰ tn The verb נָהַג (nahag) describes the process of directing (usually a group of) something along a route, hence commonly “to drive,” when describing flocks, caravans, or prisoners and spoils of war (1 Sam 23:5; 30:2). But with people it may also have a positive connotation “to shepherd” or “to guide” (Ps 48:14; 80:1). The line plays on this through the reversal of expectations. Rather than being safely shepherded by the Lord their king, he has driven them away into captivity.

[3:2]  ¹¹ tn The Hiphil of הָלַךְ (halakh, “to walk”) may be nuanced either “brought” (BDB 236 s.v. 1) or “caused to walk” (BDB 237 s.v. 5.a).

[2:2]  ¹² tn The phrase “It will be” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of smoothness and style.

[2:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “darkness and gloom.” These two terms probably form a hendiadys here. This picture recalls the imagery of the supernatural darkness in Egypt during the judgments of the exodus (Exod 10:22). These terms are also frequently used as figures (metonymy of association) for calamity and divine judgment (Isa 8:22; 59:9; Jer 23:12; Zeph 1:15). Darkness is often a figure (metonymy of association) for death, dread, distress and judgment (BDB 365 s.v. חשֶׁךְ 3).

[2:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “a day of cloud and darkness.”

[2:2]  ¹⁵ tc The present translation here follows the proposed reading שְׁחֹר (shÿkhor, “blackness”) rather than the MT שַׁחַר (shakhar, “morning”). The change affects only the vocalization; the Hebrew consonants remain unchanged. Here the context calls for a word describing darkness. The idea of morning or dawn speaks instead of approaching light, which does not seem to fit here. The other words in the verse (e.g., “darkness,” “gloominess,” “cloud,” “heavy overcast”) all emphasize the negative aspects of the matter at hand and lead the reader to expect a word like “blackness” rather than “dawn.” However, NIrV paraphrases the MT nicely: “A huge army of locusts is coming. They will spread across the mountains like the sun when it rises.”

[2:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “A huge and powerful people”; KJV, ASV “a great people and a strong.” Many interpreters understand Joel 2 to describe an invasion of human armies, either in past history (e.g., the Babylonian invasion of Palestine in the sixth century b.c.) or in an eschatological setting. More probably, however, the language of this chapter referring to “people” and “armies” is a hypocatastic description of the locusts of chapter one. Cf. TEV “The great army of locusts advances like darkness.”

[2:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “it will not be repeated for years of generation and generation.”

[2:3]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “a fire devours before it.”

[2:3]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “like the garden of Eden, the land is before them.”

[2:3]  ²⁰ 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.

[8:12]  ²¹ sn Weeping and gnashing of teeth is a figure for remorse and trauma, which occurs here because of exclusion from God’s promise.