13Gird yourselves with sackcloth
         And lament, O priests;
         Wail, O ministers of the altar!
         Come, spend the night in sackcloth
         O ministers of my God,
         For the grain offering and the drink offering
         Are withheld from the house of your God.

Starvation and Drought

14Consecrate a fast,
         Proclaim 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 it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

16Has not food been cut off before our eyes,
         Gladness and joy from the house of our God?

17The seeds shrivel under their clods;
         The storehouses are desolate,
         The barns are torn down,
         For the grain is dried up.

18How the beasts groan!
         The herds of cattle wander aimlessly
         Because there is no pasture for them;
         Even the flocks of sheep suffer.

19To You, O LORD, I cry;
         For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness
         And the flame has burned up all the trees of the field.

20Even the beasts of the field pant for You;
         For the water brooks are dried up
         And fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

NASB ©1995

American Standard Version
Gird yourselves with sackcloth , and lament, ye priests; wail, ye ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meal-offering and the drink-offering are withholden from the house of your God.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Gird yourselves, and lament, O ye priests, howl, ye ministers of the altars: go in, lie in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: because sacrifice and libation is cut off from the house of your God.

Darby Bible Translation
Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests; howl, ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the oblation and the drink-offering are withholden from the house of your God.

English Revised Version
Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament, ye priests; howl, ye ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meal offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.

Webster's Bible Translation
Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat-offering and the drink-offering is withheld from the house of your God.

World English Bible
Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God's house.

Young's Literal Translation
Gird, and lament, ye priests, Howl, ye ministrants of the altar, Come in, lodge in sackcloth, ministrants of my God, For withheld from the house of your God hath been present and libation.Grace Before Meat.
O most gracious God, and loving Father, who feedest all creatures living, which depend upon thy divine providence, we beseech thee, sanctify these creatures, which thou hast ordained for us; give them virtue to nourish our bodies in life and health; and give us grace to receive them soberly and thankfully, as from thy hands; that so, in the strength of these and thy other blessings, we may walk in the uprightness of our hearts, before thy face, this day, and all the days of our lives, through Jesus …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

The Redeemer's Return is Necessitated by the Lamentation of all Creation.
The effects of the Fall have been far-reaching--"By one man sin entered the world"(Rom. 5:12). Not only was the entire human family involved but the whole "Kosmos" was affected. When Adam and Eve sinned, God not only pronounced sentence upon them and the Serpent but He cursed the ground as well--"And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, Cursed is the ground for thy sake; …
Arthur W. Pink—The Redeemer's Return

The Prophet Joel.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS. The position which has been assigned to Joel in the collection of the Minor Prophets, furnishes an external argument for the determination of the time at which Joel wrote. There cannot be any doubt that the Collectors were guided by a consideration of the chronology. The circumstance, that they placed the prophecies of Joel just between the two prophets who, according to the inscriptions and contents of their prophecies, belonged to the time of Jeroboam and Uzziah, is …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Visions of Future Glory
In the darkest days of her long conflict with evil, the church of God has been given revelations of the eternal purpose of Jehovah. His people have been permitted to look beyond the trials of the present to the triumphs of the future, when, the warfare having been accomplished, the redeemed will enter into possession of the promised land. These visions of future glory, scenes pictured by the hand of God, should be dear to His church today, when the controversy of the ages is rapidly closing and the …
Ellen Gould White—The Story of Prophets and Kings

Of a Private Fast.
That we may rightly perform a private fast, four things are to be observed:--First, The author; Secondly, The time and occasion; Thirdly, The manner; Fourthly, The ends of private fasting. 1. Of the Author. The first that ordained fasting was God himself in paradise; and it was the first law that God made, in commanding Adam to abstain from eating the forbidden fruit. God would not pronounce nor write his law without fasting (Lev. xxiii), and in his law commands all his people to fast. So does our …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

Of the Public Fast.
A public fast is when, by the authority of the magistrate (Jonah iii. 7; 2 Chron. xx. 3; Ezra viii. 21), either the whole church within his dominion, or some special congregation, whom it concerneth, assemble themselves together, to perform the fore-mentioned duties of humiliation; either for the removing of some public calamity threatened or already inflicted upon them, as the sword, invasion, famine, pestilence, or other fearful sickness (1 Sam. vii. 5, 6; Joel ii. 15; 2 Chron. xx.; Jonah iii. …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

The Unseen Watcher
[This chapter is based on Daniel 5.] Toward the close of Daniel's life great changes were taking place in the land to which, over threescore years before, he and his Hebrew companions had been carried captive. Nebuchadnezzar, "the terrible of the nations" (Ezekiel 28:7), had died, and Babylon, "the praise of the whole earth" (Jeremiah 51:41), had passed under the unwise rule of his successors, and gradual but sure dissolution was resulting. Through the folly and weakness of Belshazzar, the grandson …
Ellen Gould White—The Story of Prophets and Kings

Joel
The book of Joel admirably illustrates the intimate connection which subsisted for the prophetic mind between the sorrows and disasters of the present and the coming day of Jehovah: the one is the immediate harbinger of the other. In an unusually devastating plague of locusts, which, like an army of the Lord,[1] has stripped the land bare and brought misery alike upon city and country, man and beast--"for the beasts of the field look up sighing unto Thee," i. 20--the prophet sees the forerunner of …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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