Joel 2:3-5

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 

[2:3]  ¹ tn Heb “a fire devours before it.”

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

[2:3]  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.

[2:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “Like the appearance of horses [is] its appearance.”

[2:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “like the sound of.”

[2:5]  ⁸ 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.

[2:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “sound.”

[2:5]  ¹⁰ 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.

[2:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “people.”

[2:5]  ¹² tn Heb “being arrayed of battle.”