Joel, Chapter 1

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 your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.    4. That which the creeping worm has left has the locust eaten; and that which the locust has left has the young locust eaten; and that which the young locust has left has the caterpiller 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 has come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a great lion.    7. He has laid my vine waste, and stripped the bark off my fig tree: he has made it clean bare, and thrown it away; the branches thereof are made white.    8. Lament like a virgin clothed with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.    9. The food 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 grain is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languishes.    11. Be ashamed, O you husbandmen; 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 droops; 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. Clothe yourselves, and lament, you priests: howl, you ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God: for the food offering and the drink offering is withheld from the house of your God.    14. Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD,    15. Dreadful is the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.    16. Is not the food cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?    17. The seed is rotten under the clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the grain is withered.    18. How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.    19. O LORD, to you will I cry: for the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field.    20. The beasts of the field cry also unto you: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.