The Day of Jehovah. 

        The Day of Jehovah, or of the LORD, is a fundamental concept in the Old Testament, never really introduced or formally explained. The Hebrew saw that the world does not show the perfection of God’s rule, and that the righteous man does not fully reap the reward of his righteousness. The Old Testament does not look for a redress of this world’s wrongs and sufferings in heaven, but expects God’s inter­vention by which His sovereignty will be perfectly and for ever established on earth. This intervention with its ac­companying upheavals and judgments is called the Day of the Lord (see also Amos 5:18ff; Isa. 2:12; 13:6, 9f; Zeph. 1:14f; Jer. 46:10; Ezek. 30:2f; Obad. 15; Zech. 14:1; Mal. 4:5).

        Since any and every major divine intervention, especially when it involved judgment, not merely foreshadowed the final intervention and judgment, but also, for all that man could tell, might be its inauguration, the Day of the Lord is not used exclusively for the final intervention. This am­biguity has three main reasons, linguistic peculiarities in Hebrew, the real link between the foreshadowing and the fulfilment, and the revelation to the prophet of the nature of the Day of the Lord but not of its date in time.