Joel 1:1-13 ▼

1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

2 Hear this, you old men, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land. Has this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?

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

4 That which the palmerworm has left has the locust eaten; and that which the locust has left has the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm has left has the caterpillar eaten.

5 Awake, 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 For a nation is come up on my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the cheek teeth of a great lion.

7 He has laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he has made it clean bore, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

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

9 The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD's ministers, mourn.

10 The field is wasted, the land mourns; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languishes.

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

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

13 Gird yourselves, and lament, you priests: howl, you ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withheld from the house of your God.