2. the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The name means “The LORD judges,” and the prophet immediately plays on shafat, “judges,” as he says “come to judgment,” nishpateti.

3. bartered a boy for the price of a whore / and sold a girl for wine. The captive Judahite children are treated as cheap merchandise, sold for the price of a quick bout of sex or a flask of wine.

4. Tyre and Sidon / . . . Philistia. In this concluding prophecy, Joel casts his net of condemnation over most of the surrounding nations—the Phoenicians to the north, the Philistines (in fact, no longer a political entity) on the southern strip of the Mediterranean coast, and, farther on, Egypt to the south and Edom to the east. No mention is made of Persia or any great eastern empire.

5. My silver and My gold. The reference is to the treasures of the Temple. The despoliation of the Temple was perpetrated by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., which would have been considerably before Joel’s probable time. It seems that he has bundled together exile, exploitation, and the remembered plunder of the Temple as an amalgam of the victimization of Judah by the sundry nations.

6. sold to the Greeks. Some interpreters take this as an indication that Joel wrote after the conquest of the Near East by Alexander the Great in the late fourth century B.C.E. This is not a necessary inference because there were trading connections with the Greeks earlier, and Greece, yawan (“Ion”), is mentioned as a known entity in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.

7. I am about to raise them from the place / where you sold them. Joel is presumably prophesying in Judah to a Judahite audience at some point after the return to Zion in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E. There was, however, a substantial diaspora population in this Second Temple period, and it is this that he appears to have in mind.

9. assemble for battle. This has the look of an apocalyptic war, when a final reckoning will be made with all the nations.

10. Grind your plowshares into swords / and your pruning hooks into spears. This is an obvious—and grim—reversal of the famous verse in Isaiah 2:4 that envisions a wondrous era of peace.

The weak shall say: I am a warrior. This has a double meaning of “I am mighty.”

11. There bring down, O LORD, your warriors. The meaning of this line—especially the verb—is somewhat uncertain.

12. the Valley of Jehoshaphat, / . . . sit to judge. The same play on the “judge” component of the name as in verse 2 is evident here.

13. for their evil is great. Only at the end of these three lines of poetry does it become clear that the ripe harvest, the full winepress, and the overflowing vats are allegorical figures for the harvest of death that is about to be reaped in retribution for the evil the nations have done.

14. the Valley of Doom. The verbal stem ḥ-r-ts, appearing here in the name ḥaruts, means to pronounce judgment or issue a verdict. It seems to be a poetic synonym for the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

17. no more shall strangers pass through it. In Joel’s historical moment, this may indicate the status of the province of Yehud as a vassal entity within the Persian empire, lacking the autonomy to exclude foreigners. Joel might also be harking back to memories of the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

18. the mountains shall drip fermented juice / and the hills run with milk. Joel is recalling Amos 9:13, although he changes the second verset. In Amos it is: “and all the hills shall melt.” The entire verse here runs the gamut of sustaining liquids, from wine to milk to water.

And a spring shall issue from the house of the LORD. This appears to be a direct reference to the miraculous spring gushing forth from the Temple in Ezekiel 47.

20. Judah shall be settled forever. This marks a strong antithesis to the desolation of Egypt and Edom in the preceding verse.

21. Shall I acquit for their blood? I will not acquit. The formulation is cryptic and has engendered different understandings. The assumption reflected in this translation is that “their blood” refers back to “the blood of the innocent” in verse 19. The first clause here is then construed as a rhetorical question. God will certainly not acquit those who have shed the blood of His innocent people—Judah will dwell peacefully for all time, but those who once victimized it will remain an eternal desolation.