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

² Hear this, O elders; and give ear, all who dwell in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your fathers?

³ Tell it to your children; let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.

⁴ What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten; and what the young locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.¹

1. The precise identification of the four kinds of locusts mentioned here is uncertain.

⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep; wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth.

⁶ For a nation has invaded My land, powerful and without number; its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and its fangs are the fangs of a lioness.

A Call to Mourning

⁷ It has laid waste My grapevine and splintered My fig tree. It has stripped off the bark and thrown it away; the branches have turned white.

⁸ Wail like a virgin dressed in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth.

⁹ Grain and drink offerings have been cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests are in mourning, those who minister before the LORD.

¹⁰ The field is ruined; the land mourns. For the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, and the oil fails.

¹¹ Be dismayed, O farmers, wail, O vinedressers, over the wheat and barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.

A Call to Repentance

(Amos 5:4–15; Zephaniah 2:1–3; Luke 13:1–5)

¹² The grapevine is dried up, and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, palm, and apple— all the trees of the orchard—are withered. Surely the joy of mankind has dried up.

¹³ Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴ Consecrate a fast; proclaim a solemn assembly! Gather the elders and all the residents of the land to 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 near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.¹

1. Hebrew Shaddai

¹⁶ Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes— joy and gladness from the house of our God?

¹⁷ The seeds lie shriveled beneath the clods; the storehouses are in ruins; the granaries are broken down, for the grain has withered away.

¹⁸ How the cattle groan! The herds wander in confusion because they have no pasture. Even the flocks of sheep are suffering.

¹⁹ To You, O LORD, I call, for fire has consumed the open pastures and flames have scorched all the trees of the field.

²⁰ Even the beasts of the field pant for You, for the streams of water have dried up, and fire has consumed the open pastures.