What Does Joel 2:31 Mean?
The sun will be overturned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great day of the LORD will come, the day full of awe.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.THE KEY
The lights that order ordinary time become the signs that its order is being overturned.
THE MEANING
The familiar lights of day and night become signs of upheaval: the sun turns to darkness, and the moon to blood. The day of the LORD stands before you as great and fearsome, with the world’s usual measures no longer secure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the world’s familiar rhythms guarantee that the order of life cannot be overturned.
THE ROOT
יֵהָפֵךְ
yēhāphēkh
GROWS FROM
הפך
to turn, overturn, or reverse
“overturned into” in this verse is yēhāphēkh. The word names more than a change in brightness: the sun’s familiar order is overturned. The same root describes an overthrow, so the sky itself becomes the site of upheaval.
ALSO GROWS
mahpekhah: overthrow
מַהְפֵּכָה
This branch makes the force of the sun’s turning vivid: it is an upheaval, not a slight dimming.
wayyahaphokh: and he overthrew
וַיַּהֲפֹךְ
This form describes Sodom’s overthrow in Genesis 19:25, giving the sun’s transformation the same root-language of overturning.
חֹשֶׁךְ
ḥoshekh
GROWS FROM
חשך
to grow dark; the same consonants also carry the sense of withholding or keeping back
Darkness here is the sun’s light withheld from the world. The shared consonants let darkness and withholding echo each other, giving the image a sense of light held back.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāshakh: to grow dark or darken
חָשַׁךְ
This verb supplies the root behind the darkness into which the sun is turned.
ḥāsakh: to withhold or keep back
חָשַׂךְ
In Genesis 22:12 it describes not withholding Isaac; here the same consonants evoke light held back.
הַנּוֹרָא
hannora
GROWS FROM
ירא
to fear, dread, or stand in awe
“full of awe” in this verse is hannora. The word translated “terrible” comes from the root of fear and awe. The day is named as overwhelming, not simply as a date on a calendar.
ALSO GROWS
yare: to fear or stand in awe
יָרֵא
This root gives the day its fearsome force in relation to the LORD.
mora: fear or awe
מוֹרָא
This related noun shows how the root can hold dread and awe together.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s day is marked by familiar lights becoming signs that the world’s order is being overturned.
For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will go dark as it comes out, and the moon will not make its light shine.And it shall come to pass in that day, declares the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the day of light.And there will be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth a squeezing of nations, with no way through, the sea roaring and the waves heaving.THE THREAD
Behold, the LORD empties the earth and strips it bare, and crooks its face, and scatters those who settle in it.Joel’s “turned” is הָפַךְ (haphakh, to turn or overturn), the same root Isaiah uses for the LORD turning the earth upside down. Joel shows the sky’s lights overturned; Isaiah widens that same image to the whole earth.
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