Joel 1:1-12 ▼

1 THE word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Bethuel:

2 Hear this, O you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has such a calamity ever happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

3 Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

4 What the palmerworm has left, the locust has eaten; and what the swarming locust has left, the crawling locust has eaten; and what the crawling locust has left, the cankerworm has eaten.

5 Awake, O you drunkards, and weep; and howl, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.

6 A nation has come up against my land, strong, and without number; whose teeth are like the teeth of a lion, and his fangs as the fangs of a lion's whelp.

7 He has laid my vine waste, and has cut off my fig tree and thrown it away; the branches thereof are made white.

8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

9 The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD; the kings mourn, and the priests who minister to the LORD mourn.

10 The field is plundered, the land mourns; for the wheat is plundered, the new wine is dried up, the olive orchards are destroyed.

11 Be ashamed, O you husbandmen; howl, O you vinedressers, howl for the wheat and for the barley because the harvest of the fields is perished.

12 The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languishes; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree, and the apple tree, all the trees of the field are withered; joy is fled from the sons of men.