Joel 1

1The word of Yahweh that came to Joel son of Pethuel.

A Lament Over the Land

²Hear this, O elders,

and give ear, all the inhabitants of the land.

Has this happened in your days?

Or the days of your ancestors?

³Tell it to your children,

and your children to their children,

and their children to the following 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.

⁵Wake up, drunkards, and weep!

Wail, all drinkers of wine, over the new wine,

for it is cut off from your mouth.

⁶Because a nation has invaded^a my land,

strong and beyond counting.^b

Its teeth are the teeth of a lion,

and its fangs are those of a lioness.

⁷It has made my vine a desolation,

and my fig tree a completely splintered stump.

It has stripped them bare and thrown them down;

their branches have turned white.

⁸Lament like a virgin girded in sackcloth

for the husband of her youth.

⁹The offering and libation are withheld

from the house^c of Yahweh.

The priests mourn,

the ministers of Yahweh.

¹⁰The field is destroyed;

the earth mourns

because the grain is destroyed,

the new wine dries up,

the olive oil languishes.

¹¹Be ashamed, farmers;

Wail, vinedressers,

over the wheat and over the barley,

because the harvest of the field is ruined.

¹²The vine withers

and the fig tree droops.

The pomegranate tree, and also the palm tree, the apple tree

—all the trees of the field—are dried up.

Indeed, joy is dried up

among the sons of men.

¹³Gird yourselves and lament, O priests!

Wail, O ministers of the altar!

Come spend the night in sackcloth,

O ministers of my God,

because offering and libation

are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Solemnize a fast!

Call an assembly!

Gather the elders,

all of the inhabitants of the land

in the house of Yahweh your God,

and cry out to Yahweh.

¹⁵Ah! For the day!

For the day of Yahweh is near.

It will come like destruction from Shaddai.^d

¹⁶Is not food cut off

before our eyes,

from the house of our God,

joy and gladness?

¹⁷The seeds shrivel under their clods;

the storehouses are desolate.

The grain storage places are destroyed

because grain has dried out.

¹⁸How the beasts^e groan;

the herds of cattle wander around

because there is no pasture for them;

the flocks of sheep are in distress.

¹⁹To you, O Yahweh, I cry out,

because fire has devoured

the pastures of the desert,

and flames^f burned

all the trees of the field.

²⁰Also, the beasts of the field

long for you,

because the courses of water

are dried up,

and fire has devoured

the pastures of the desert.