In this verse Yahweh begins to speak again in the first person. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch begins a new paragraph here, introducing it explicitly with “The LORD says.” Contemporary English Version has a section heading for verses 25-27 “The LORD Will Rescue His People.”

I will restore to you the years: Contemporary English Version clarifies that the pronoun I refers to God by saying “I, the LORD your God.” The Hebrew for restore is a legal term for restitution for damages. New Revised Standard Version has “repay,” Contemporary English Version and New Jerusalem Bible say “make up,” and Revised English Bible uses “recompense you.” The years is a metonym that usually needs to be adjusted for clarity in translation; it was not the years that the locusts had eaten, but “the crops” that would have been harvested during those years. Good News Translation makes this clear by saying “what you lost in the years when” and adding “crops” later in the verse.

Which the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you: Revised Standard Version translates the meanings of the four Hebrew words for “locust”: the swarming locust, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter. These names are used in 1.4, but in a different order (see the comments there). As in 1.4, Good News Translation understands these four names to refer to stages in the growth of locusts, and therefore combines them all in “swarms of locusts.”

My great army is in apposition to the names of the locusts. To call the locusts God’s great army is further evidence that verses 1-11 refer to an invasion by locusts rather than by a human army. Good News Translation‘s use of “this army” implies the idea of great, which other languages may need to retain, as in Revised Standard Version. The final relative clause, which I sent among you, carries with it some emphasis as well as the effect of surprise, for Judah would not normally think of God raising for himself an army against his very own people. Good News Translation shows the emphasis here by rendering the last line as “It was I who sent this army against you.”

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 .