Joel 1

The Locust Plague

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

2 Listen up, elders. Pay attention, everyone living in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in your parents’ days,

3 Tell your kids about it, let your kids tell their kids, and let their kids tell the next generation.

4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust ate. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust ate. What the hopping locust left, the destroying locust ate.

A Land Laid Waste

5 Wake up, drunkards, and cry. Wail, all you wine drinkers, because the sweet wine is cut off from your mouth.

6 A nation has come against My land, powerful and without number. Their teeth are like a lion’s, their fangs like a lioness.

7 They destroyed My vines and stripped My fig trees bare. They peeled them and threw them down, leaving the branches white.

8 Mourn like a young woman dressed in sackcloth, grieving for the husband she lost in her youth.

9 Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests, who serve the LORD, are in mourning.

10 The fields are ruined, the ground dries up, the grain is destroyed, the new wine dries up, the oil fails.

11 Be ashamed, farmers. Wail, vine growers, over the wheat and barley, because the harvest of the field is gone.

12 The vine is dried up, the fig tree withers. The pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up. Joy has dried up among the people.

A Call to Repentance

13 Put on sackcloth and mourn, priests. Wail, servants of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, servants of my God, because grain and drink offerings are kept from the house of your God.

14 Call a sacred fast. Gather the elders and all the people living in the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.

The Day of the LORD Is Near

15 That day is coming, woe to us. The day of the LORD is near, and it comes like destruction from the Almighty.

16 Is not the food cut off right in front of us, Is not joy and gladness gone from the house of our God,

17 The seeds rot under the clods. The storehouses are empty. The barns are torn down, because the grain has dried up.

18 The animals groan. The herds of cattle wander around confused because there is no pasture. Even the flocks of sheep are suffering.

19 LORD, I cry out to You, because fire burned up the pastures in the wilderness and flames consumed all the trees in the field.

20 Even the wild animals cry out to You, because the streams are dried up and fire burned up the pastures.