Lamentations 3:43-44

ס (Samek)

3:43 You shrouded yourself ¹  with anger and then pursued us;

you killed without mercy.

3:44 You shrouded yourself with a cloud

so that no prayer can get through.

Ezekiel 30:18

30:18 In Tahpanhes the day will be dark ² 

when I break the yoke of Egypt there.

Her confident pride will cease within her;

a cloud will cover her, and her daughters will go into captivity.

Ezekiel 32:7-8

32:7 When I extinguish you, I will cover the sky;

I will darken its stars.

I will cover the sun with a cloud,

and the moon will not shine. ³ 

32:8 I will darken all the lights in the sky over you,

and I will darken your land,

declares the sovereign Lord.

Joel 2:2

2:2 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 

[3:43]  ¹ tn Heb “covered.” The object must be supplied either from the next line (“covered yourself”) or from the end of this line (“covered us”).

[30:18]  ² sn In Zeph 1:15 darkness is associated with the day of the Lord.

[32:7]  ³ tn Heb “will not shine its light.” For similar features of cosmic eschatology, see Joel 2:10; 4:15; Amos 5:18-20; Zeph 1:5.

[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 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]  ⁹ tn Heb “it will not be repeated for years of generation and generation.”