Joel 1

¹ The word of Yahweh that was addressed to Joel son of Pethuel.

² Listen to this, you elders; all inhabitants of the country, attend. Has anything like this ever happened in your day, or in your fathers’ days?

³ Tell it to your sons, let your sons tell it to their sons, and their sons to a generation after them.

⁴ What the gnawer has left, the grown locust has devoured, what the grown locust has left, the hopper has devoured, what the hopper has left, the shearer has devoured.[*a]

⁵ Awake, drunkards, and weep! All you who drink wine, lament for that new wine: it has been dashed from your lips.

⁶ For a nation has invaded my country, mighty and innumerable; its teeth are the teeth of lions, it has the fangs of a lioness.

⁷ It has laid waste my vines and torn my fig trees to pieces; it has stripped them clean and cut them down, their branches have turned white.

⁸ Mourn like a virgin wearing sackcloth for her young man betrothed to her.

⁹ Oblation and libation[*b] have vanished from the house of Yahweh. The priests, the ministers of Yahweh, are in mourning.

¹⁰ Wasted lie the fields, the fallow is in mourning. For the corn has been laid waste, the wine fails, the fresh oil dries up.

¹¹ Stand dismayed, you farmers, wail, you vinedressers, for the wheat, for the barley; the harvest of the field has been ruined.

¹² The vine has withered, the fig tree wilts away; pomegranate, and palm, and apple, every tree in the field is drooping. Yes, gladness has faded among the sons of men.

¹³ Priests, put on sackcloth and lament. Ministers of the altar, wail. Come, pass the night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God. For the house of our God has been deprived of oblation and libation.

¹⁴ Order a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly; elders, call together all the inhabitants of the country to the house of Yahweh your God. Cry out to Yahweh,

¹⁵ ‘Oh, what a day! For the day of Yahweh is near, it comes as a devastation from Shaddai.'[*c]

¹⁶ Has not the food disappeared before our eyes? Have not joy and gladness vanished from the house of our God?

¹⁷ Seeds shrivel under their clods; the barns are broken down, the granaries lie in ruins, for lack of harvest.

¹⁸ What mourning from the beasts! The herds of cattle wander bewildered because they have no pasture. Even the flocks of sheep must bear their punishment.

¹⁹ To you, Yahweh, I cry: fire has devoured the pastures on the heath, flame has burnt up every tree in the orchard.

²⁰ Even the wild beasts wait anxiously for you, for the watercourses have run dry, and fire has devoured the pastures on the heath.