2aA day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. bA people come, great and strong, cThe like of whom has never been; Nor will there ever be any such after them, Even for many successive generations.
3 A fire devours before them, And behind them a flame burns; The land is like athe Garden of Eden before them, bAnd behind them a desolate wilderness; Surely nothing shall escape them.
4aTheir appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like1 swift steeds, so they run.
5aWith a noise like chariots Over mountaintops they leap, Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble, Like a strong people set in battle array.
6 Before them the people writhe in pain; aAll faces1 are drained of color.
7 They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like men of war; Every one marches in formation, And they do not break aranks.
8 They do not push one another; Every one marches in his own1 column. Though they lunge between the weapons, They are not1 cut down.
9 They run to and fro in the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They aenter at the windows blike a thief.
10aThe earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble; bThe sun and moon grow dark, And the stars diminish their brightness.
11aThe Lord gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; bFor strong istheOne who executes His word. For the cday of the Lordis great and very terrible; dWho can endure it?
A Call to Repentance
12 “Now, therefore,” says the Lord, a“Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”
13 So arend your heart, and not byour garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He iscgracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.
appearance . . . of horses— (Revelation 9:7). Not literal, but figurative locusts. The fifth trumpet, or first woe, in the parallel passage (Revelation 9:1-11), cannot be literal: for in Revelation 9:11 it is said, "they had a king over them, the angel of the bottomless pit"—in the Hebrew, Abaddon ("destroyer"), but in the Greek, Apollyon—and (Revelation 9:7) "on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men." Compare Joel 2:11, "the day of the Lord . . . great and very terrible"; implying their ultimate reference to be connected with Messiah's second coming in judgment. The locust's head is so like that of a horse that the Italians call it cavalette. Compare Job 39:20, "the horse . . . as the grasshopper," or locust.
run—The locust bounds, not unlike the horse's gallop, raising and letting down together the two front feet.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Joel 2:4:
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