Psalms 35:13-14

35:13 When they were sick, I wore sackcloth, ¹ 

and refrained from eating food. ² 

(If I am lying, may my prayers go unanswered!) ³ 

35:14 I mourned for them as I would for a friend or my brother. ⁴ 

I bowed down ⁵  in sorrow as if I were mourning for my mother. ⁶ 

Isaiah 20:2

20:2 At that time the Lord announced through ⁷  Isaiah son of Amoz: “Go, remove the sackcloth from your waist and take your sandals off your feet.” He did as instructed and walked around in undergarments ⁸  and barefoot.

Isaiah 22:12

22:12 At that time the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, called for weeping and mourning,

for shaved heads and sackcloth. ⁹ 

Joel 1:8

A Call to Lament

1:8 Wail ¹⁰  like a young virgin ¹¹  clothed in sackcloth,

lamenting the death of ¹²  her husband-to-be. ¹³ 

Joel 1:13

1:13 Get dressed ¹⁴  and lament, you priests!

Wail, you who minister at the altar!

Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you servants of my God,

because no one brings grain offerings or drink offerings

to the temple of your God anymore. ¹⁵ 

[35:13]  ¹ tn Heb “as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth.” Sackcloth was worn by mourners. When the psalmist’s enemies were sick, he was sorry for their misfortune and mourned for them.

[35:13]  ² sn Fasting was also a practice of mourners. By refraining from normal activities, such as eating food, the mourner demonstrated the sincerity of his sorrow.

[35:13]  ³ tn Heb “and my prayer upon my chest will return.” One could translate, “but my prayer was returning upon my chest,” but the use of the imperfect verbal form sets this line apart from the preceding and following lines (vv. 13a, 14), which use the perfect to describe the psalmist’s past actions.

[35:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “like a friend, like a brother to me I walked about.”

[35:14]  ⁵ sn I bowed down. Bowing down was a posture for mourning. See Ps 38:6.

[35:14]  ⁶ tn Heb “like mourning for a mother [in] sorrow I bowed down.”

[20:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “spoke by the hand of.”

[20:2]  ⁸ tn The word used here (עָרוֹם, ’arom) sometimes means “naked,” but here it appears to mean simply “lightly dressed,” i.e., stripped to one’s undergarments. See HALOT 883 s.v. עָרוֹם. The term also occurs in vv. 3, 4.

[22:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “for baldness and the wearing of sackcloth.” See the note at 15:2.

[1:8]  ¹⁰ sn The verb is feminine singular, raising a question concerning its intended antecedent. A plural verb would be expected here, the idea being that all the inhabitants of the land should grieve. Perhaps Joel is thinking specifically of the city of Jerusalem, albeit in a representative sense. The choice of the feminine singular verb form has probably been influenced to some extent by the allusion to the young widow in the simile of v. 8.

[1:8]  ¹¹ tn Or “a young woman” (TEV, CEV). See the note on the phrase “husband-to-be” in the next line.

[1:8]  ¹² tn Heb “over the death of.” The term “lamenting” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.

[1:8]  ¹³ sn Heb “the husband of her youth.” The woman described here may already be married, so the reference is to the death of a husband rather than a fiancé (a husband-to-be). Either way, the simile describes a painful and unexpected loss to which the national tragedy Joel is describing may be compared.

[1:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “put on.” There is no object present in the Hebrew text, but many translations assume “sackcloth” to be the understood object of the verb “put on.” Its absence in the Hebrew text of v. 13 is probably due to metrical considerations. The meter here is 3 + 3, and that has probably influenced the prophet’s choice of words.

[1:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “for grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.”