The Hebrew and Greek that is transliterated as “Jehoshaphat” in English is translated in Spanish Sign Language with the signs for “king” and “mixup” referring to the fateful alliance with king Ahab of Israel in 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18. (Source: Steve Parkhurst)
The nations gather to attack Judah, but God’s purpose in gathering them is to bring them to judgment. It seems best to regard Yahweh as the speaker in verses 12-13. Good News Translation indicates this by placing these two verses in quotation marks.
Let the nations bestir themselves: This is a command in the third person, not a permission to do something. Good News Translation makes this clear by saying “The nations must get ready.” Bestir themselves renders the same Hebrew verb as the one translated “stir up” in Joel 3.9 (see the comments there). Both New Revised Standard Version and New Jerusalem Bible say “arouse themselves.”
And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: This seems to be a strange command, since someone would normally go down into a valley, not up. Come up is used in a figurative sense here and may be rendered “come to fight” (see the comments on Joel 3.9). Figurative language does not always coordinate with physical experience in apocalyptic writings, and the book of Joel is an early example of this form of writing. For the valley of Jehoshaphat, see the comments on Joel 3.2. Good News Translation again renders it “the Valley of Judgment.”
For there I will sit to judge all the nations round about: In verse 2 Yahweh did not serve as the judge, but as the plaintiff. In this verse he serves as the judge. I will sit to judge expresses the normal posture of a judge in those days as he would officiate in a court. While most languages will have a similar expression, some may normally use another expression for a judge exercising his responsibilities. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch says “I will sit on the judge-chair.” In this context the term judge emphasizes not the action of determining guilt or innocence but the punishment of the guilty. All the nations round about renders the same Hebrew expression as in the previous verse. An alternative model for this line is “For there I will sit to determine the guilt of the surrounding nations and punish them.”
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 .
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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between. One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the choice of a first person singular and plural pronoun (“I” and “we” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used watashi/watakushi (私) is typically used when the speaker is humble and asking for help. In these verses, where God / Jesus is referring to himself, watashi is also used but instead of the kanji writing system (私) the syllabary hiragana (わたし) is used to distinguish God from others. (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
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