Joel 1 — Hebrew and Greek compared
Disparate in this chapter: 1:11, 1:12, 1:15, 1:17
Each card keeps the independently rendered source readings above their shared comparison and reception notes. The badge records the source’s governing classification; disparate readings are marked in red. Each reading retains its original reference.
Chapter 1
Devastated fields and the summons to lament
Verse 1:1 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:1 The word of YHWH that came to Joel son of Pethuel.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:1 The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Bathuel.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: The prophetic recipient agrees; Hebrew Pethuel and Greek Bathouēl retain the source-specific form of his father's name.
Verse 1:2 Same
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:2 Hear this, elders; listen, all inhabitants of the land! Has this happened in your days or in the days of your fathers?
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:2 Hear these things, elders, and give ear, all who inhabit the land! Have such things happened in your days or in your fathers' days?
Classification & Notes
Same. Text: Both summon elders and all inhabitants to consider an unprecedented event across the two generations.
Verse 1:3 Same
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:3 Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:3 Tell your children about these things, and let your children tell their children, and their children a further generation.
Classification & Notes
Same. Text: Both require the report to pass through successive generations; Greek's plural things does not change the transmission.
Verse 1:4 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust ate; what the swarming locust left, the creeping locust ate; what the creeping locust left, the consuming locust ate.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:4 What the caterpillar left, the locust devoured; what the locust left, the bruchus locust devoured; what the bruchus locust left, the blight devoured.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew gāzām, ʾarbeh, yeleq and ḥāsîl are distinguished with descriptive locust names, without claiming four biological stages. Greek ends with erysibē, blight, rather than replacing it with a fourth insect; brouchos is left as a distinct locust label.
Verse 1:5 Divergent
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:5 Wake, drunkards, and weep! Wail, all wine drinkers, over the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouths.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:5 Sober up, you drunkards, from their wine, and weep! Lament, all who drink wine to intoxication, because gladness and joy have been removed from your mouths.
Classification & Notes
Divergent. Text: Greek adds sobering from their wine and drinking to intoxication, and makes gladness and joy the things removed; Hebrew names sweet wine. Greek's difficult third-person their is retained rather than silently changed to your.
Verse 1:6 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:6 For a nation has come up against My land, mighty and beyond counting. Its teeth are a lion's teeth; it has the fangs of a lioness.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:6 For a nation has come up against My land, strong and uncountable. Its teeth are a lion's teeth, and its grinding teeth a young lion's.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: The innumerable invading nation agrees; Hebrew's lioness/lion designation and fangs become Greek young lion and molars.
Verse 1:7 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:7 It has made My vine a desolation and My fig tree a splintered thing; it stripped it completely and cast it away. Its branches have turned white.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:7 It made My vine disappear and My fig trees shatter; searching, it searched it out and cast it away; it whitened its branches.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew explicitly describes stripping bark; Greek uses the searching verb exereunaō. The singular/plural fig tree distinction and Greek's active whitening are retained. The Greek searching clause remains a lexical review point.
Verse 1:8 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:8 Lament like a virgin wrapped in sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:8 Lament to Me more than a bride wrapped in sackcloth for her first husband.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Greek adds to Me and uses a comparison of degree, beyond a bride; Hebrew compares the lamenter to a virgin. Greek parthenikos describes the first or youthful husband, not a modern marital status inserted elsewhere.
Verse 1:9 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:9 Grain offering and drink offering have been cut off from YHWH's house. The priests, YHWH's ministers, mourn.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:9 Sacrifice and drink offering have been removed from the Lord's house. Mourn, priests who minister at the altar,
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew reports mourning by ministers of YHWH; Greek commands altar ministers to mourn and continues its explanation in 1:10. The cereal offering's specific Hebrew term is not imposed upon Greek thysia.
Verse 1:10 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:10 The field is devastated; the ground mourns. For grain is devastated, new wine has dried up, and fresh oil has withered.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:10 because the plains have suffered. Let the earth mourn, because grain has suffered, wine has dried up, and oil has diminished.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Greek commands the earth's mourning where Hebrew reports it, and has plains and diminished oil. The three agricultural losses remain in both.
Verse 1:11 Disparate
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:11 Be ashamed, farmers; wail, vine growers, over wheat and barley, for the field's harvest has perished.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:11 The farmers have dried up. Lament, estates, over wheat and barley, because the harvest from the field has perished.
Classification & Notes
Disparate. Text: Hebrew imperatives address farmers and vine growers; Greek reports withered farmers and addresses ktēmata, estates. The changed participants and condition are preserved rather than harmonized to ordinary harvest workers.
Verse 1:12 Disparate
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:12 The vine has dried up and the fig tree has withered; pomegranate, palm and apple tree—all the field's trees have dried up. Surely joy has dried up from humanity.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:12 The vine has dried up and the fig trees have diminished; pomegranate, palm, apple tree and all the field's trees have dried up, because human beings have put joy to shame.
Classification & Notes
Disparate. Text: The tree list broadly corresponds, but Hebrew joy withers away from people while Greek makes people agents who shame joy. The reason and agency of the concluding statement change.
Verse 1:13 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:13 Wrap yourselves and lament, priests; wail, ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, ministers of my God, because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from your God's house.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:13 Wrap yourselves and beat your breasts, priests; lament, ministers of the altar! Enter and sleep in sackcloth, ministers of God, because sacrifice and drink offering have been kept away from your God's house.
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: The priestly lament and withheld offerings agree. Greek says sleep and omits the first-person my before God; Hebrew says lodge overnight.
Verse 1:14 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:14 Consecrate a fast; call an assembly. Gather elders, all the land's inhabitants, to the house of YHWH your God, and cry to YHWH.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:14 Consecrate a fast; proclaim a service. Gather elders, all who inhabit the land, into your God's house, and cry earnestly to the Lord,
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew names an assembly and YHWH your God; Greek therapeia is a service/observance and adds earnestly. The Greek summons introduces the repeated lament in 1:15.
Verse 1:15 Disparate
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:15 Alas for the day! For the day of YHWH is near, and like devastation from Shaddai it comes.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:15 “Alas, alas, alas for the day! For the Lord's day is near, and it will come like suffering from suffering.”
Classification & Notes
Disparate. Text: Hebrew links devastation to the divine designation Shaddai; Greek replaces that designation with repeated suffering and triples the lament. The explicit source of the calamity is changed.
Verse 1:16 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:16 Has not food been cut off before our eyes, and gladness and joy from our God's house?
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:16 Before your eyes food was destroyed, and gladness and joy from your God's house.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew asks a rhetorical question and identifies our eyes/God; Greek makes a direct statement with your eyes/God. Both describe visible loss of food and cultic joy.
Verse 1:17 Disparate
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:17 The seeds have shriveled beneath their clods; storehouses are desolate, granaries demolished, for the grain has dried up.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:17 Heifers leaped at their feeding troughs; storehouses disappeared, winepresses were demolished, because grain dried up.
Classification & Notes
Disparate. Text: Hebrew's rare seed/clod/shriveling vocabulary is provisionally agricultural; Greek has heifers leaping at troughs and winepresses rather than granaries. The first scene is entirely different; no conjectural Hebrew emendation is adopted.
Verse 1:18 Divergent
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:18 How the livestock groan! Herds of cattle wander in confusion because they have no pasture; even flocks of sheep suffer devastation.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:18 What shall we store up for ourselves? Herds of cattle wept because they had no pasture, and flocks of sheep disappeared.
Classification & Notes
Divergent. Text: Greek opens with a human question absent from Hebrew and makes herds weep rather than wander. Hebrew neʾšāmû can associate devastation with guilt; a claim of animal moral guilt is not inserted.
Verse 1:19 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:19 To You, YHWH, I call, for fire has consumed the wilderness pastures, and flame has scorched all the field's trees.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:19 To You, Lord, I will cry, because fire consumed the beautiful places of the wilderness, and flame kindled all the field's trees.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew names wilderness pastures/dwellings; Greek calls them beautiful or flourishing places. The appeal and devastation by fire agree.
Verse 1:20 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
1:20 Even the field's animals pant toward You, for watercourses have dried up, and fire has consumed the wilderness pastures.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
1:20 Even the animals of the plain looked up toward You, because outlets of water dried up, and fire devoured the beautiful places of the wilderness.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew panting/crying becomes Greek looking upward. Water deprivation and fire are shared; the pastures/beautiful places distinction continues.