Joel 1

¹The word of the Lord that came to Joel , the son of Pethuel :

²Hear this, you elders ; give ear , all inhabitants of the land ! Has such a thing happened in your days , or in the days of your fathers ?

³Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children , and their children to another generation .

⁴What the cutting locust left , the swarming locust has eaten . What the swarming locust left , the hopping locust has eaten , and what the hopping locust left , the destroying locust has eaten .

⁵Awake , you drunkards , and weep , and wail , all you drinkers of wine , because of the sweet wine , for it is cut off from your mouth .

⁶For a nation has come up against my land , powerful and beyond number ; its teeth are lions ’ teeth , and it has the fangs of a lioness .

⁷It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree ; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white .

⁸Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth .

⁹The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn , the ministers of the Lord.

¹⁰The fields are destroyed , the ground mourns , because the grain is destroyed , the wine dries up , the oil languishes .

¹¹Be ashamed , O tillers of the soil ; wail , O vinedressers , for the wheat and the barley , because the harvest of the field has perished .

¹²The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes . Pomegranate , palm , and apple , all the trees of the field are dried up , and gladness dries up from the children of man .

¹³Put on sackcloth and lament , O priests ; wail , O ministers of the altar . Go in , pass the night in sackcloth , O ministers of my God ! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God .

¹⁴Consecrate a fast ; call a solemn assembly . Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God , and cry out to the Lord.

¹⁵Alas for the day ! For the day of the Lord is near , and as destruction from the Almighty it comes .

¹⁶Is not the food cut off before our eyes , joy and gladness from the house of our God ?

¹⁷The seed shrivels under the clods ; the storehouses are desolate ; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up.

¹⁸How the beasts groan ! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer .

¹⁹To you , O Lord, I call . For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness , and flame has burned all the trees of the field .

²⁰Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up , and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness .