Yesaya 31:6

31:6 You Israelites! Return to the one against whom you have so blatantly rebelled! ¹ 

Amos 4:9

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ²  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ³  devouring your orchards, ⁴  vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

Hagai 2:18

2:18 ‘Think carefully about the past: ⁵  from today, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, ⁶  to the day work on the temple of the Lord was resumed, ⁷  think about it. ⁸ 

[31:6]  ¹ tn Heb “Return to the one [against] whom the sons of Israel made deep rebellion.” The syntax is awkward here. A preposition is omitted by ellipsis after the verb (see GKC 446 §138.f, n. 2), and there is a shift from direct address (note the second plural imperative “return”) to the third person (note “they made deep”). For other examples of abrupt shifts in person in poetic style, see GKC 462 §144.p.

[4:9]  ² tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.

[4:9]  ³ tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).

[4:9]  ⁴ tn Or “gardens.”

[2:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “set your heart.” A similar expression occurs in v. 15.

[2:18]  ⁶ sn The twenty-fourth day of the ninth month was Kislev 24 or December 18, 520. See v. 10. Here the reference is to “today,” the day the oracle is being delivered.

[2:18]  ⁷ sn The day work…was resumed. This does not refer to the initial founding of the Jerusalem temple in 536 b.c. but to the renewal of construction three months earlier (see 1:15). This is clear from the situation described in v. 19 which accords with the food scarcities of that time already detailed in Hag 1:10-11.

[2:18]  ⁸ tn Heb “set your heart.” A similar expression occurs in v. 15 and at the beginning of this verse.