Joel 1:1-20
1 Jehovah’s word that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
2 Listen to this, old men, and give ear, all that live in the earth: has there been this in your days or in your fathers’ days?
3 Tell your children the story of it, and let them tell their children, and their children another generation.
4 What was left from the early grasshoppers the spring grasshoppers ate, and what was left from the spring grasshoppers the full-grown grasshoppers ate, and what was left from the full-grown grasshoppers the fall grasshoppers ate.
5 Wake up and weep, drunkards, and howl, all you wine-drinkers, over pomegranate-wine, because it is swept away from before you.
6 For against my country has come up a nation multitudinous, uncountable; its teeth are lions’ teeth, it has a lioness’s fangs.
7 It has made my grapevine a skeleton and my fig-tree a whittling; it has stripped it and thrown away the strippings, its shoots show white.
8 Lament like a maiden with a sackcloth tied round her for the spouse of her girlhood.
9 Grain-offering and libation are swept away from Jehovah’s house; the priests, the servitors of Jehovah, mourn.
10 The countryside is smitten, the soil is mourning: for grain is smitten, grape-juice is a failure, oil lies forlorn;
11 plowmen are disappointed, vineyardists howl, for wheat and for barley, because field harvests are lost,
12 the vines are a disappointment and the fig-tree stands forlorn; pomegranate, date-palm too and apple, all the trees in the fields, are dried out; for rejoicing has passed away in disappointment from the children of men.
13 * Belt yourselves up and wail, priests; howl, altar servitors; go in and spend the night in sackcloths, servitors of my God; for grain-offering and libation are kept back from Jehovah’s house.
14 Ordain a fast, proclaim a holiday; elders, bring together all the inhabitants of the country at the house of your God Jehovah, and cry to Jehovah.
15 O, O, the day! for Jehovah’s day is near and like a shattering from Shaddai it comes.
16 Is not food swept away before your eyes, gladness and glee from the house of our God?
17 ** Kernels are befouled with dirt under their brooms; storehouses are desolate; bins are demolished, because grain is a disappointment; what should we put in them?
18 * Herds of cows wander about at random because there is no pasturage for them; the flocks of sheep too stand aghast.
19 * To you, Jehovah, they call; for fire has eaten up wilderness pastures and flame has set ablaze all the trees on the range.
20 Even range beasts stretch up to you because water-bearing gorges are dried out and fire has eaten up wilderness pastures.
Footnotes
^ 1:13 Var. of God
^ 1:17 (first part) Unc.; susp.
^ 1:17 Or barns are demolished
^ 1:18 Var. disappointment. How cattle moan! herds
^ 1:19 Var. I call
