Joel 1:1-11

Introduction

1:1 This is the Lord’s message that was given

to Joel the son of Pethuel:

A Locust Plague Foreshadows the Day of the Lord

1:2 Listen to this, you elders;

pay attention, all inhabitants of the land.

Has anything like this ever happened in your whole life

or in the lifetime of your ancestors?

1:3 Tell your children about it,

have your children tell their children,

and their children the following generation.

1:4 What the gazam-locust left the ‘arbeh-locust consumed,

what the ‘arbeh-locust left the yeleq-locust consumed,

and what the yeleq-locust left the hasil-locust consumed!

1:5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!

Wail, all you wine drinkers,

because the sweet wine has been taken away from you.

1:6 For a nation has invaded our land.

There are so many of them they are too numerous to count.

Their teeth are like those of a lion;

they tear apart their prey like a lioness.

1:7 They have destroyed our vines;

they have turned our fig trees into mere splinters.

They have completely stripped off the bark and thrown them aside;

the twigs are stripped bare.

A Call to Lament

1:8 Wail like a young virgin clothed in sackcloth,

lamenting the death of her husband-to-be.

1:9 No one brings grain offerings or drink offerings

to the temple of the Lord anymore.

So the priests, those who serve the Lord, are in mourning.

1:10 The crops of the fields have been destroyed.

The ground is in mourning because the grain has perished.

The fresh wine has dried up;

the olive oil languishes.

1:11 Be distressed, farmers;

wail, vinedressers, over the wheat and the barley.

For the harvest of the field has perished.