¹The word of the Lord , which came to Joel, son of Pethuel.[#Ac 2:16]

A Land Laid Waste

²Hear this, elders,

and give ear, all inhabitants of the land!

Has anything like this happened in your days,

or in the days of your fathers?

³Tell it to your children,

and let your children tell their children,

and let their children tell another generation.

⁴What the fledging locust left,

the adult locust has eaten;

what the adult locust left,

the larval locust has eaten;

what the larval locust left,

the hopper locust has eaten.

⁵Awaken, drunkards, and weep!

Wail, all wine-drinkers,

because the sweet wine

has been cut off from your lips.

⁶For a nation powerful and innumerable

has invaded my land;

its teeth are like the teeth of a lion,

like the fangs of a lioness.

⁷It has despoiled my vine,[#Isa 5:6]

and splintered my fig tree;

it has stripped off its bark

and cast it away,

leaving its branches white.

⁸Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth[#Isa 22:12]

for the husband of her youth.

⁹The grain offering and the drink offering[#Joel 2:14]

are cut off from the house of the Lord ;

the priests mourn, who are

ministers to the Lord .

¹⁰The field is ravaged,

the ground mourns;

for the grain is ruined,

the new wine is dried up,

and the oil dwindles.

¹¹Despair, fieldworkers;

wail, vinedressers,

for the wheat and the barley,

because the harvest of the field has perished.

¹²The vine is dried up,

and the fig tree is withered;

pomegranate, palm, and apple —

all the trees of the field are dry;

surely joy has withered away

from the sons of men.

A Call to Repentance

¹³Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;

wail, ministers of the altar.

Come, spend the night in sackcloth,

ministers of my God,

because the grain offering and the drink offering

are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Consecrate a fast,

call a sacred assembly,

assemble the elders

and all the inhabitants of the land

to the house of the Lord your God,

and cry out to the Lord .

¹⁵Alas, for the day!

For the day of the Lord is near,

and like devastation from the Almighty it comes.

¹⁶Has not the food been cut off

before our eyes,

joy and gladness

from the house of our God?

¹⁷The seeds have shriveled

under their shovels,

the storehouses have been deserted;

the granaries have been torn down,

because the grain has dried up.

¹⁸How the beasts groan!

The herds of cattle are confused,

because they have no pasture;

even the flocks of sheep suffer.

¹⁹To You, O Lord , I call,[#Ps 50:15]

because fire has devoured the wild pastures,

and flame has burned all the trees of the field.

²⁰Even the beasts of the field long for You,[#Ps 104:21]

because the streams of water have dried up,

and fire has devoured the wild pastures.