Joel 1

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

An Invasion of Locusts

²Hear this, you elders;

listen, all who live in the land.

Has anything like this ever happened in your days

or in the days of your ancestors?

³Tell it to your children,

and let your children tell it to their children,

and their children to the next generation.

⁴What the locust swarm has left

the great locusts have eaten;

what the great locusts have left

the young locusts have eaten;

what the young locusts have left

other locusts have eaten.

⁵Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!

Wail, all you drinkers of wine;

wail because of the new wine,

for it has been snatched from your lips.

⁶A nation has invaded my land,

a mighty army without number;

it has the teeth of a lion,

the fangs of a lioness.

⁷It has laid waste my vines

and ruined my fig trees.

It has stripped off their bark

and thrown it away,

leaving their branches white.

⁸Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth

grieving for the betrothed of her youth.

⁹Grain offerings and drink offerings

are cut off from the house of the Lord.

The priests are in mourning,

those who minister before the Lord.

¹⁰The fields are ruined,

the ground is dried up;

the grain is destroyed,

the new wine is dried up,

the olive oil fails.

¹¹Despair, you farmers,

wail, you vine growers;

grieve for the wheat and the barley,

because the harvest of the field is destroyed.

¹²The vine is dried up

and the fig tree is withered;

the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—

all the trees of the field—are dried up.

Surely the people’s joy

is withered away.

A Call to Lamentation

¹³Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn;

wail, you who minister before the altar.

Come, spend the night in sackcloth,

you who minister before my God;

for the grain offerings and drink offerings

are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Declare a holy fast;

call a sacred assembly.

Summon the elders

and all who live in the land

to the house of the Lord your God,

and cry out to the Lord.

¹⁵Alas for that day!

For the day of the Lord is near;

it will come like destruction from the Almighty.

¹⁶Has not the food been cut off

before our very eyes—

joy and gladness

from the house of our God?

¹⁷The seeds are shriveled

beneath the clods.

The storehouses are in ruins,

the granaries have been broken down,

for the grain has dried up.

¹⁸How the cattle moan!

The herds mill about

because they have no pasture;

even the flocks of sheep are suffering.

¹⁹To you, Lord, I call,

for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness

and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.

²⁰Even the wild animals pant for you;

the streams of water have dried up

and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness.