Joel 1

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

2. Hear this, you old men, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land. Has this been in your days or even in the days of your fathers?

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

4. That which the creeping locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten. And that which the swarming locust has left, the locust larvae has eaten. And that which the locust larvae has left, the destroying locust has eaten.

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

6.For a nation has come up on My land, strong and without number,whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the jaw teeth of a great lion.

7. He has laid My vine waste and splintered My fig tree. He has stripped it and cast it away; its branches are bared white.

8. Weep like a virgin clothed with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

9. The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD’S ministers, mourn.

10. The field is wasted; the land mourns, for the grain is wasted. The new wine is dried up; the fresh oil is wasted away.

11. Be ashamed, O you husbandmen; howl, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field has perished.

12. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree is wasted away, the pomegranate and the palm tree, and the apple tree; all the trees of the field are dried up, for joy has withered away from the sons of men.

13. Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; howl, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the drink offering are held back from the house of your God.

14. Sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the elders and all the people of the land unto 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, and it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.

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

17. The seed is rotten under their clods; the storage bins are desolate; the barns are broken down, for the grain has dried up.

18. How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are troubled because they have no pasture. Yes, the flocks of sheep are devastated.

19. O LORD, to You will I cry; for the fire has burned up the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field.

20. The beasts of the field also cry to You; for the rivers of water are dried up, and the fire has burned up the pastures of the wilderness.