Discovery BoxJoel 3:13
Context3:13 Rush forth with 1 the sickle, for the harvest is ripe!
Come, stomp the grapes, 2 for the winepress is full!
The vats overflow.
Indeed, their evil is great! 3
Joel 2:2
Context2:2 It will be 4 a day of dreadful darkness, 5
a day of foreboding storm clouds, 6
like blackness 7 spread over the mountains.
It is a huge and powerful army 8 –
there has never been anything like it ever before,
and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come! 9
Joel 2:11
Context2:11 The voice of the Lord thunders 10 as he leads his army. 11
Indeed, his warriors 12 are innumerable; 13
Surely his command is carried out! 14
Yes, the day of the Lord is awesome 15
and very terrifying – who can survive 16 it?
Joel 2:13
Context2:13 Return to the Lord your God,
for he is merciful and compassionate,
slow to anger and boundless in loyal love 17 – often relenting from calamitous punishment. 18
[3:13] 2 tn Heb “go down” or “tread.” The Hebrew term רְדוּ (rÿdu) may be from יָרַד (yarad, “to go down”) or from רָדָה (radah, “have dominion,” here in the sense of “to tread”). If it means “go down,” the reference would be to entering the vat to squash the grapes. If it means “tread,” the verb would refer specifically to the action of those who walk over the grapes to press out their juice. The phrase “the grapes” is supplied in the translation for clarity.
[3:13] 3 sn The immediacy of judgment upon wickedness is likened to the urgency required for a harvest that has reached its pinnacle of development. When the harvest is completely ripe, there can be no delay by the reapers in gathering the harvest. In a similar way, Joel envisions a time when human wickedness will reach such a heightened degree that there can be no further stay of divine judgment (cf. the “fullness of time” language in Gal 4:4).
[2:2] 4 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] 5 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] 6 tn Heb “a day of cloud and darkness.”
[2:2] 7 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] 8 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
[2:2] 9 tn Heb “it will not be repeated for years of generation and generation.”
[2:11] 7 tn Heb “the
[2:11] 8 tn Heb “before his army.”
[2:11] 9 tn Heb “military encampment.”
[2:11] 10 tn Heb “very large.”
[2:11] 11 tn Heb “he makes his word powerful.”
[2:11] 12 tn Or “powerful.” Heb “great.”
[2:11] 13 tn Heb “endure.” The MT and LXX read “endure,” while one of the Qumran manuscripts (4QXXIIc) has “bear.”
