I don't often quote the Bible on the blog, but long ago - before the Exile, when
Exile #2 and I lived in Cambridge, England, we would allude to this verse from Joel:
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten— the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm. (New International Version)
...mostly because this particular translation amused us especially "the other locusts" and "the locust swarm". We would refer to the starlings that roamed around our neighborhood in a big pack descending en masse into one small back garden after another or landing on a roof to survey their options as "the starling swarm" and sometimes - if we saw another group "the other starlings".
Today we had a similar visit - not from the starling swarm, but from a swarm (or perhaps a herd) of turkeys. There were at least 18 young ones and 3 adults. I wasn't able to capture them all, but here is what I got:
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| As they passed the deck |
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| In our neighbors' yard - size comparison |
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| The scale of the invasion - albeit a little dispersed by then |
The New American Bible translation makes a bit more sense, seeing as that verse from Chapter 2 is relief from the devastation early in Chapter 1:
ReplyDelete"What the cutter left, the locust swarm has eaten;
What the locust swarm left, the grasshopper has eaten;
And what the grasshopper left, the devourer has eaten."
The relief is thus:
"And I will repay you for the years which the locust has eaten,
The grasshopper, the devourer, and the cutter,
my great army which I sent among you."
Interesting, no? Cheers!
Yes - it seems that the translators used a lot of their own interpretation for these particular words. NIV does at least have the footnote: "The precise meaning of the four Hebrew words used here for locusts is uncertain." which I guess was at least fairly evident from the way they chose to translate them!
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