Yoel 2:25

2:25 I will make up for the years ¹ 

that the ‘arbeh-locust ²  consumed your crops ³  –

the yeleq-locust, the hasil-locust, and the gazam-locust –

my great army ⁴  that I sent against you.

Amos 4:9

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ⁵  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ⁶  devouring your orchards, ⁷  vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

[2:25]  ¹ tn Heb “I will restore to you the years.”

[2:25]  sn The plural years suggests that the plague to which Joel refers was not limited to a single season. Apparently the locusts were a major problem over several successive years. One season of drought and locust invasion would have been bad enough. Several such years would have been devastating.

[2:25]  ² sn The same four terms for locust are used here as in 1:4, but in a different order. This fact creates some difficulty for the notion that the four words refer to four distinct stages of locust development.

[2:25]  ³ tn The term “your crops” does not appear in the Hebrew, but has been supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.

[2:25]  ⁴ sn Here Joel employs military language to describe the locusts. In the prophet’s thinking this invasion was far from being a freak accident. Rather, the Lord is pictured here as a divine warrior who leads his army into the land as a punishment for past sin and as a means of bringing about spiritual renewal on the part of the people.

[4:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.

[4:9]  ⁶ tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).

[4:9]  ⁷ tn Or “gardens.”