Joel 1:19-20

1:19 To you, O Lord, I call out for help, ¹ 

for fire ²  has burned up ³  the grassy pastures, ⁴ 

flames have razed ⁵  all the trees in the fields.

1:20 Even the wild animals ⁶  cry out to you; ⁷ 

for the river beds ⁸  have dried up;

fire has destroyed ⁹  the grassy pastures. ¹⁰ 

Psalms 50:3

50:3 Our God approaches and is not silent; ¹¹ 

consuming fire goes ahead of him

and all around him a storm rages. ¹² 

Amos 7:4

7:4 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw ¹³  the sovereign Lord summoning a shower of fire. ¹⁴  It consumed the great deep and devoured the fields.

[1:19]  ¹ tn The phrase “for help” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[1:19]  ² sn Fire here and in v. 20 is probably not to be understood in a literal sense. The locust plague, accompanied by conditions of extreme drought, has left the countryside looking as though everything has been burned up (so also in Joel 2:3).

[1:19]  ³ tn Heb “consumed.” This entire line is restated at the end of v. 20.

[1:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “the pastures of the wilderness.”

[1:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “a flame has set ablaze.” This fire was one of the effects of the drought.

[1:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “beasts of the field.”

[1:20]  ⁷ tn Heb “long for you.” Animals of course do not have religious sensibilities as such; they do not in any literal sense long for Yahweh. Rather, the language here is figurative (metonymy of cause for effect). The animals long for food and water (so BDB 788 s.v. עָרַג), the ultimate source of which is Yahweh.

[1:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “sources of water.”

[1:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “consumed.”

[1:20]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the pastures of the wilderness.”

[50:3]  ¹¹ tn According to GKC 322 §109.e, the jussive (note the negative particle אַל, ’al) is used rhetorically here “to express the conviction that something cannot or should not happen.”

[50:3]  ¹² tn Heb “fire before him devours, and around him it is very stormy.”

[7:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[7:4]  ¹⁴ tc The Hebrew appears to read, “summoning to contend with fire,” or “summoning fire to contend,” but both are problematic syntactically (H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos [Hermeneia], 292; S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 230-31). Many emend the text to לרבב אשׁ, “(calling) for a shower of fire,” though this interpretation is also problematic (see F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos [AB], 746-47).