This verse serves in part as an explanation of the previous verse, giving the reason why there are no supplies for the daily Temple offerings. The description here applies to the devastation brought on by the locusts, although in verse 12 it seems that a drought occurred at the same time. The Hebrew of verse 10 can be understood as referring to either locusts or drought.
The fields are laid waste: The Hebrew word for fields is a collective singular; most languages will need to express this as plural. The Hebrew verb rendered laid waste (New Revised Standard Version “devastated”) can apply to destruction by locusts, drought, or other calamities. Good News Translation says “bare,” which simply shows the result, leaving the action to be understood from the context. The Revised English Bible (Revised English Bible) and New Jerusalem Bible are similar with “ruined.”
The ground mourns is a personification of the ground; that is, the ground is described as if it were a person mourning over its loss of crops. Some languages may not be able to retain this figure of speech and will need to say “the ground produces no food” or “… has dried up.” Bible en français courant keeps it by saying “the ground is plunged into sadness.” If the personification is not suitable, translators may want to consider a simile; for example, “the ground is like someone who mourns.”
Because the grain is destroyed, the wine fails, the oil languishes: These are three reasons for the mourning. Grain, wine, and oil are traditionally mentioned in that order as symbols of God’s blessings on the land and its inhabitants. Now these three blessings have been taken away. As a result of the locusts, and perhaps the drought as well, the grain, wine, and oil are scarce or no longer available.
The Hebrew word rendered grain is a generic term covering all such cereal crops as wheat and barley (see the comments on verse 11 about “wheat” and “barley”). The Hebrew verb translated destroyed is the same verb rendered laid waste in the first line. New Revised Standard Version and Revised English Bible use “ruined” both times.
Wine is literally “must,” that is, grape juice that has started to ferment but is not yet fully wine. The Hebrew verb rendered fails is somewhat ambiguous. The Hebrew verb can be a form of the verb for “be ashamed” or the verb for “dry up” (see verse 12, where the same verb is rendered “withers” and “fails”). If the fourth line means “the wine is ashamed,” it uses the figure of wine as a person, as if it stood there ashamed and helpless. The verb fails in Revised Standard Version seems to be based on this interpretation. New Revised Standard Version follows the other verb with “the wine dries up,” which means either that the grapes have dried up (from the drought), or that the container for the fermenting wine has dried up because no grapes are available. The poet may have used this ambiguous verb intentionally in order to relate this line to both the drought and the locusts. In either case the meaning is simply that the wine-making process has come to a halt, and this is the general idea that should be understood, whatever form the translation may take.
The oil is fresh olive oil, newly squeezed from olives. If the olive oil is unknown in a particular language, it is important to bring out that this oil is the product of a fruit tree. The Hebrew verb rendered languishes means the supply of oil will soon be used up and there will be none left. New Revised Standard Version says “the oil fails,” and New Jerusalem Bible has “of olive oil only a trickle.” As with the wine, the Hebrew text refers to the agricultural product, oil, while Good News Translation, for purposes of a good English translation, has used terms closer to the agricultural source—the “grain” in the field, the “grapes” on the vine, and the “olive trees” themselves—and has assumed that this verse describes a drought in addition to the plague of locusts.
The definite article the is not used in the Hebrew with the nouns fields, ground, grain, wine, and oil. English usage requires the article when speaking of specific objects that are known by the speaker and hearer. In this case the nouns refer to the agricultural land and its products in the neighborhood of Jerusalem and in Judah. Translators will have to determine how their own languages express references to known objects.
Verses 9 and 10 have been combined in Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch in a way that mentions the problem first and the results last as follows:
• The fields are devastated and dried up. The harvest is destroyed; no one brings any more grain, oil, and wine as food and drink offerings to the Temple of the LORD. Therefore the priests, who do the work of sacrificing for the LORD, mourn.
Some languages, when dealing with cause-effect relationships, require this kind of restructuring.
Quoted with permission from de Blois, Kees & Dorn, Louis. A Handbook on Joel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2020. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .