¹ The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

The Land Laid Waste

² Hear this, you elders,
And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land!
Has anything like this happened in your days,
Or even in the days of your fathers?
³ Tell your children about it,
Let your children tell their children,
And their children another generation.
⁴ What the chewing locust^[a] left, the swarming locust has eaten;
What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten;
And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.
⁵ Awake, you drunkards, and weep;
And wail, all you drinkers of wine,
Because of the new wine,
For it has been cut off from your mouth.
⁶ For a nation has come up against My land,
Strong, and without number;
His teeth are the teeth of a lion,
And he has the fangs of a fierce lion.
⁷ He has laid waste My vine,
And ruined My fig tree;
He has stripped it bare and thrown it away;
Its branches are made white.
⁸ Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth
For the husband of her youth.
⁹ The grain offering and the drink offering
Have been cut off from the house of the LORD;
The priests mourn, who minister to the LORD.
¹⁰ The field is wasted,
The land mourns;
For the grain is ruined,
The new wine is dried up,
The oil fails.
¹¹ Be ashamed, you farmers,
Wail, you vinedressers,
For the wheat and the barley;
Because the harvest of the field has perished.
¹² The vine has dried up,
And the fig tree has withered;
The pomegranate tree,
The palm tree also,
And the apple tree—
All the trees of the field are withered;
Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.

Mourning for the Land

¹³ Gird yourselves and lament, you priests;
Wail, you who minister before the altar;
Come, lie all night in sackcloth,
You who minister to my God;
For the grain offering and the drink offering
Are withheld from the house of your God.
¹⁴ Consecrate a fast,
Call a sacred assembly;
Gather the elders
And all the inhabitants of the land
Into the house of the LORD your God,
And cry out to the LORD.
¹⁵ Alas for the day!
For the day of the LORD is at hand;
It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.
¹⁶ Is not the food cut off before our eyes,
Joy and gladness from the house of our God?
¹⁷ The seed shrivels under the clods,
Storehouses are in shambles;
Barns are broken down,
For the grain has withered.
¹⁸ How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle are restless,
Because they have no pasture;
Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment.^[b]
19 O LORD, to You I cry out;
For fire has devoured the open pastures,
And a flame has burned all the trees of the field.
²⁰ The beasts of the field also cry out to You,
For the water brooks are dried up,
And fire has devoured the open pastures.