Joel 2:3-5

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Joel 2:3 tn Heb “a fire devours before it.”
2. Joel 2:3 tn Heb “like the garden of Eden, the land is before them.” Gen 2:8-9 is clear that Eden is more of an orchard (“all kinds of trees”), but the translation retains “Garden of Eden” here because the phrase has now become a metaphor for the bounty, beauty, and fertility of the land, and as such is much more familiar to modern readers.
3. Joel 2:3 tn Heb “and surely a survivor there is not for it.” The antecedent of the pronoun “it” is apparently עַם (ʿam, “people”) of v. 2, which seems to be a figurative way of referring to the locusts and describes ants and rock badgers in Prov 30:25-26. 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.
4. Joel 2:4 tn Heb “Like the appearance of horses [is] its appearance.”sn The fact that a locust’s head resembles a miniature replica of a horse’s head has often been noticed. For example, the German word for locust (Heupferd, “hay horse”) and the Italian word as well (cavaletta, “little horse”) are based on this similarity in appearance.
5. Joel 2:5 tn Heb “like the sound of.”sn The repetition of the word of comparison (“like”) in vv. 4-7 should not go unnoticed. The author is comparing the locust invasion to familiar aspects of human invasion. If the preposition has its normal force here, it is similarity and not identity that is intended. In other words, locusts are being likened to human armies, but human armies are not actually present. On the other hand, this Hebrew preposition is also on occasion used to indicate exactitude, a function described by grammarians as kaph veritatis.
6. Joel 2:5 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.
7. Joel 2:5 tn Heb “sound.”
8. Joel 2:5 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.
9. Joel 2:5 tn Heb “people.”
10. Joel 2:5 tn Heb “being arrayed of battle.”