מראה־מקום אויף יואל 3:3

IF we hear a person speaking whose language we do not understand, we undoubtedly know that he speaks, but do not know what his words mean; it may even happen that we hear some words which mean one thing in the tongue of the speaker, and exactly the reverse in our language, and taking the words in the sense which they have in our language, we imagine that the speaker employed them in that sense. Suppose, e.g., an Arab hears of a Hebrew the word abah, he thinks that the Hebrew relates how a man despised and refused a certain thing, whilst the Hebrew in reality says that the man was pleased and satisfied with it. The very same thing happens to the ordinary reader of the Prophets: some of their words he does not understand at all, like those to whom the prophet says (Isa. 29:11), “the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed”; in other passages he finds the opposite or the reverse of what the prophet meant; to this case reference is made in the words, “Ye have perverted the words of the living God” (Jer. 23:36). Besides, it must be borne in mind that every prophet has his own peculiar diction, which is, as it were, his language, and it is in that language that the prophecy addressed to him is communicated to those who understand it.

After this preliminary remark you will understand the metaphor frequently employed by Isaiah, and less frequently by other prophets, when they describe the ruin of a kingdom or the destruction of a great nation in phrases like the following:—“The stars have fallen,” “The heavens are overthrown,” “The sun is darkened,” “The earth is waste, and trembles,” and similar metaphors. The Arabs likewise say of a person who has met with a serious accident, “His heavens, together with his earth, have been covered”; and when they speak of the approach of a nation’s prosperity, they say, “The light of the sun and moon has increased,” “A new heaven and a new earth has been created,” or they use similar phrases.

So also the prophets, in referring to the ruin of a person, of a nation, or of a country, describe it as the result of God’s great anger and wrath, whilst the prosperity of a nation is the result of God’s pleasure and satisfaction. In the former case the prophets employ such phrases as “He came forth,” “came down,” “roared,” “thundered,” or” caused his voice to be heard”: also “He commanded,” “said,” “did,” “made,” and the like, as will be shown. Sometimes the prophets use the term “mankind” instead of “the people of a certain place,” whose destruction they predict: e.g., Isaiah speaking of the destruction of Israel says, “And the Lord will remove man far away” (Isa. 6:12). So also Zephaniah (i. 3, 4), “And I will cut off man from off the earth. I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah.” Note this likewise.