Yehezkiel 5:9

5:9 I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again because of all your abominable practices. ¹ 

Daniel 12:1

12:1 “At that time Michael,

the great prince who watches over your people, ² 

will arise. ³ 

There will be a time of distress

unlike any other from the nation’s beginning ⁴ 

up to that time.

But at that time your own people,

all those whose names are ⁵  found written in the book,

will escape.

Yoel 2:2

2:2 It will be ⁶  a day of dreadful darkness, ⁷ 

a day of foreboding storm clouds, ⁸ 

like blackness ⁹  spread over the mountains.

It is a huge and powerful army ¹⁰  –

there has never been anything like it ever before,

and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come! ¹¹ 

[5:9]  ¹ tn Or “abominable idols.”

[12:1]  ² tn Heb “stands over the sons of your people.”

[12:1]  ³ tn Heb “will stand up.”

[12:1]  ⁴ tn Or “from the beginning of a nation.”

[12:1]  ⁵ tn The words “whose names are” are added in the translation for stylistic reasons and for clarification.

[2:2]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ tn Heb “a day of cloud and darkness.”

[2:2]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ tn Heb “it will not be repeated for years of generation and generation.”