This verse makes it clear that a drought has occurred in addition to the plague of locusts.

The vine withers, the fig tree languishes: The Hebrew verb rendered withers here and withered in the fourth line is the same one translated “fails” in verse 10 (see the comments there). In this verse it has the sense of “dry up.” The verb languishes means that the fig trees have become weak, and are not producing their fruit. New Revised Standard Version has “droops,” and New Jerusalem Bible says “wilts away.” Since these two parallel lines are saying the drought has affected the grapevines and the fig trees in the same way, Good News Translation has combined them, saying “The grapevines and fig trees have withered.” This may be a helpful model for other languages.

Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are withered: Other fruit trees suffer the same problem as the grapevines and fig trees. The pomegranate resembles an apple but has the remains of a flower on the side opposite the stem. The hard rind is red or yellow. Numerous seeds fill the interior, which is divided into nine or ten sections. Each seed is surrounded by a capsule of very juicy pulp. The palm tree grows to a height of 18-24 meters (60-75 feet), although date palms are much smaller. It has a rough bark and its leaves are only at the top. The leaves resemble huge feathers, which initially grow straight up, but then lean sideways because of their weight; this gives the palm the beautiful appearance of a fan or a brush. Biblical palm trees are normally those that produce dates. The “apricot” is a member of the prune family, with a typical ridge on one side of the yellow-orange fruit. The trees of the field renders a Hebrew idiom that covers all types of trees; the prophet has stopped enumerating them and is saying “in fact, all the trees.” In places where the three specific fruits mentioned here are unknown, the generic expression of Good News Translation for these two lines will be useful in translation: “all the fruit trees have wilted and died.” In some languages it may be possible to be specific with one of the fruits here; for example, “the palm trees and all the other fruit trees have wilted and died.”

And gladness fails from the sons of men: The Hebrew connector rendered and is better translated “surely” (New Revised Standard Version) since it is an emphatic marker here. Normally the harvest season is a time of joy, but the locusts and the drought have destroyed the harvest, and there is no joy. Gladness fails is literally “joy has dried up”; just as the trees have dried up, so has human joy. The joy drying up also resembles the wine in verse 5. Sons of men does not mean that only males were affected by the lack of joy, since this renders a Hebrew idiom meaning “people” (New Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation), “human beings” (New Jerusalem Bible). It does not have the special meaning given to it in the New Testament, where Jesus is “the Son of Man.” Some languages may be able to retain the idea of joy drying up, so that its link with verse 5 and the first half of this verse is clear; for example, for these two lines New Jerusalem Bible says “and for human beings joy has run dry too.” New Revised Standard Version is similar with “surely, joy withers away among the people.” Other languages may not be able to keep this link, as in Good News Translation, which has “The joy of the people is gone.”

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 .