Joel 1
1A WORD of the Lord which came to Joel son of Bathuel:
2Hear these things ye elders! And give ear all ye inhabitants of the land! Have such things happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
3Of these things give an account to your children; and let your children tell their children; and their children, another generation.
4The leavings of the palmer worm have been devoured by the grasshopper, and the leavings of the grasshopper have been devoured by the locust. And the mildew hath consumed what the locust left.
5Awake ye drunkards, from your wine and weep. Sing a mournful song, all ye who drink wine to drunkenness; for joy and gladness are gone from your mouth.
6For against my land a nation is come up, strong and innumerable. Their teeth are the teeth of lions; and their grinders, those of a young lion.
7They have made my vineyard a desolation and my fig orchards a waste. They have searched it thoroughly and it is gone to wreck; they have made the branches thereof white.
8Let thy song of woe before me be more plaintive than that of a bride clothed with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
9Sacrifice and libation are taken away from the house of the Lord. Mourn, ye priests, who minister at the Lord’s altar, because the fields are wasted.
10Let the land mourn, because the corn hath suffered grievously. Wine is dried away; oil is diminished; husbandmen are parched up.
11Mourn, ye farms, for the wheat and barley, because the harvester is perished from the field.
12The vines are withered and the fig trees are diminished; peach and palm and citron trees and all the trees of the field are withered. Because the children of men are ashamed of joy,
13gird yourselves, ye priests, and lament bitterly. Sing the song of woe, ye who minister at the altar; go in and sleep in sackcloth, ye ministers of God,
14because sacrifice and libation are withheld from the house of your God. Set apart a fast; proclaim a solemn service; assemble the elders—all the inhabitants of the land, to the house of your God, and cry to the Lord incessantly, Ah me! Ah me! Ah me! for the day.
15For the day of the Lord is at hand; and it will come like destruction on destruction.
16Food is utterly destroyed before your eyes—joy and gladness, from the house of your God.
17The heifers startled at their stalls. Stores are exhausted; wine lakes are gone to ruin. As the corn is blasted, what shall we substitute for ourselves?
18The herds of cattle uttered mournful lowings, because there was no pasture for them; and the flocks of sheep are utterly destroyed.
19To Thee, O Lord, let me cry for myself, because a fire hath consumed the pleasant places of the wilderness, and a flame hath blasted all the trees of the field.
20To Thee indeed the cattle in the plain have looked up, because the springs of water are quite dry, and a fire hath devoured the pleasant places of the wilderness.