Joel 1

₂Hear this, you elders;

give ear, all inhabitants of the land!

Has such a thing happened in your days,

or in the days of your fathers?

₃Tell your children of it,

and let your children tell their children,

and their children to another 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.

₅Awake, you drunkards, and weep,

and wail, all you drinkers of wine,

because of the sweet wine,

for it is cut off from your mouth.

₆For a nation has come up against my land,

powerful and beyond number;

its teeth are lions’ teeth,

and it has the fangs of a lioness.

₇It has laid waste my vine

and splintered my fig tree;

it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;

their branches are made white.

₈Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth

for the bridegroom of her youth.

₉The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off

from the house of the Lord.

The priests mourn,

the ministers of the Lord.

₁₀The fields are destroyed,

the ground mourns,

because the grain is destroyed,

the wine dries up,

the oil languishes.

₁₁Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil;

wail, O vinedressers,

for the wheat and the barley,

because the harvest of the field has perished.

₁₂The vine dries up;

the fig tree languishes.

Pomegranate, palm, and apple,

all the trees of the field are dried up,

and gladness dries up

from the children of man.

₁₃Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;

wail, O ministers of the altar.

Go in, pass the night in sackcloth,

O ministers of my God!

Because grain offering and drink offering

are withheld from the house of your God.

₁₄Consecrate a fast;

call a solemn assembly.

Gather the elders

and all the inhabitants of the land

to the house of the Lord your God,

and cry out to the Lord.

₁₅Alas for the day!

For the day of the Lord is near,

and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

₁₆Is not the food cut off

before our eyes,

joy and gladness

from the house of our God?

₁₇The seed shrivels under the clods;

the storehouses are desolate;

the granaries are torn down

because the grain has dried up.

₁₈How the beasts groan!

The herds of cattle are perplexed

because there is no pasture for them;

even the flocks of sheep suffer.

₁₉To you, O Lord, I call.

For fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness,

and flame has burned

all the trees of the field.

₂₀Even the beasts of the field pant for you

because the water brooks are dried up,

and fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness.