Imamat 25:21

25:21 I will command my blessing for you in the sixth year so that it may yield ¹  the produce ²  for three years,

Yoel 2:14

2:14 Who knows?

Perhaps he will be compassionate and grant a reprieve, ³ 

and leave blessing in his wake ⁴  –

a meal offering and a drink offering for you to offer to the Lord your God! ⁵ 

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 

1 Korintus 9:8-11

9:8 Am I saying these things only on the basis of common sense, ¹²  or does the law not say this as well? 9:9 For it is written in the law of Moses, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” ¹³  God is not concerned here about oxen, is he? 9:10 Or is he not surely speaking for our benefit? It was written for us, because the one plowing and threshing ought to work in hope of enjoying the harvest. 9:11 If we sowed spiritual blessings among you, is it too much to reap material things from you?

[25:21]  ¹ tn Heb “and it [i.e., the land] shall make the produce.” The Hebrew term וְעָשָׂת (vÿ’asat, “and it shall make”) is probably an older third feminine singular form of the verb (GKC 210 §75.m). Smr has the normal form.

[25:21]  ² tn Smr and LXX have “its produce” (cf. 25:3, 7, etc.) rather than “the produce.”

[2:14]  ³ tn Heb “turn” or “turn back.”

[2:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “leave a blessing behind him.”

[2:14]  ⁵ tn The phrase “for you to offer” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[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.”

[9:8]  ¹² tn Or “only according to human authority”; Grk “saying these things according to men.”

[9:9]  ¹³ sn A quotation from Deut 25:4.