CHAPTER XXVIII
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Smith, George Adam and Nicoll, W. Robertson (William Robertson), Sir
men.
In this passage the same feeling is attributed to men and to the fruits of the land: In grief are the priests, the ground is in grief. And it is repeatedly said that all alike are abashed. By this heavy word we have sought to render the effect of the similarly sounding “hôbhîsha,” that our English version renders ashamed. It signifies to be frustrated, and so disheartened, put out: soured would be an equivalent, applicable to the vine and to joy and to men’s hearts.
Put on mourning, O priests, beat the breast;
Wail, ye ministers of the altar;
Come, lie down in sackcloth, O ministers of my God:
For meal-offering and drink-offering are cut off
from the house of your God.
Hallow a fast, summon an assembly,
Gather[1201] all the inhabitants of the land to the
house of your God;
And cry to Jehovah:
“Alas for the Day! At hand is the Day of
Jehovah!
And as vehemence from the Vehement[1202] doth it come.”
Is not food cut off from before us,
Gladness and joy from the house of our God?
The grains shrivel under their hoes,[1203]
The garners are desolate, the barns broken down,
For the corn is withered—what shall we put in
them?[1204]
Yea, the flocks of sheep are forlorn.[1206]
To Thee, Jehovah, do I cry:
For fire has devoured the pastures of the steppes,[1207]
And the flame hath scorched all the trees of the field.
The wild beasts pant up to Thee:
For the watercourses are dry,
And fire has devoured the pastures of the steppes.
Here, with the close of
chap. i., Joel’s discourse takes pause, and in
chap. ii. he begins a second with another call to repentance in face of the same plague. But the plague has progressed. The locusts are described now in their invasion not of the country but of the towns, to which they pass after the country is stripped. For illustration of the latter see above, p. 401. The horn which is to be blown, ver. 1, is an alarm horn,[1208] to warn the people of the approach of the Day of the Lord, and not the Shophar which called the people to a general assembly, as in ver. 15.
Blow a horn in Zion,
Sound the alarm in My holy mountain!
Let all inhabitants of the land tremble,
For the Day of Jehovah comes—it is near!
Day of darkness and murk, day of cloud and
heavy mist.[1209]
Like dawn scattered[1210] on the mountains,
A people many and powerful;
Its like has not been from of old,
And shall not again be for years of generation upon