Joel 1
1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel son of Pethuel.
2 Hear this, elders; give ear, all you who live in the land. Has anything like this happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
3 Tell your children about it, and let your children tell theirs, and their children the next generation.
4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust ate; what the swarming locust left, the hopping locust ate; and what the hopping locust left, the devouring locust ate.
5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you who drink wine, because of the sweet wine, for it has been taken from your mouths.
6 For a nation has invaded my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has the fangs of a lioness.
7 It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it stripped them bare and threw them down, leaving their branches white.
8 Mourn like a young woman dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
9 The grain offering and the drink offering have been cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, servants of the LORD, are in mourning.
10 The field is devastated, the land mourns, for the grain is devastated, the new wine has dried up, and the fresh oil has withered.
11 Be ashamed, farmers; wail, vine growers, over the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is lost.
12 The vine has dried up, and the fig tree has withered; the pomegranate, the palm, and the apple tree—all the trees of the field—have dried up. Joy has dried up, far from humankind.
13 Put on mourning clothes and lament, priests; wail, servants of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, servants of my God, because the grain offering and the drink offering have been withheld from the house of your God.
14 Set apart a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all who live in the land at the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.
15 Alas for that day! For the Day of the LORD is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.
16 Hasn’t food been taken from before our eyes, and joy and gladness from the house of our God?
17 The seeds have rotted beneath the clods; the storehouses lie desolate, the granaries have been torn down, because the grain has dried up.
18 How the cattle groan! The herds of oxen wander about because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep suffer.
19 To you, LORD, I cry, for fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.
20 Even the wild animals cry out to you, for the streams of water have dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.
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