Joel 2:2 - Exposition

A day of darkness and of glooming, a day of clouds and of thick darkness. It was, indeed, a day of Divine judgment, a day of sore distress. Besides the common terms for "darkness" and "cloud," there are two other terms, אֲפֵלָה , thick and dense darkness, such as ensues after sunset; the root אָפַל , though not used in the Hebrew, is cognate with the Arabic afala , properly, to "set as the sun:" compare naphal , nabhal , abhal ; while עְרָפֶל is blended from the triliterals עָרִיף , a cloud, and אָפַל , to be dark (compare ὀρφνός and ὀρφνή ), darkness of donas, thick clouds.

As the morning spread upon the mountains .

" Postera vix summos spargebat lumine montes Orta dies ."

"The following daybreak had scarce begun to sow the mountain-tops with light."

There hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. This is a hyperbolic mode of speech, to denote the extraordinary and unusual severity of the disaster. The Hebrew commentators are at pains to reconcile what appears to them a discrepancy. They say, "It was never known before or since that four kinds of locusts came to-together;" as for the plague of Egypt;there was but one sort of them, they say. The correct explanation is that the like had not been in the same country, that is, the land of Judaea, though elsewhere there might have been the like, as in Egypt before, or in other countries since.