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Venerdi, 29 marzo 2024 - Santi Simplicio e Costantino ( Letture di oggi)

Joel 1


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1The word of Yahweh that was addressed to Joel son of Pethuel.2Listen to this, you elders; everybody in the country, attend! Has anything like this ever happened in yourday, or in your ancestors' days?3Tell your children about it and let your children tel their children, and their children the next generation!4What the nibbler has left, the grown locust has eaten, what the grown locust has left, the hopper haseaten, and what the hopper has left, the shearer has eaten.5Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! All you wine-bibbers, lament for the new wine: it has beensnatched from your lips.6For a nation has invaded my country, mighty and innumerable, with teeth like a lion's teeth, with thefangs of a lioness.7It has reduced my vines to a desolation and my fig trees to splinters, stripped them and broken themdown, leaving their branches white.8Mourn, as a virgin-bride in sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth!9Cereal offering and libation are lost to Yahweh's Temple. The priests, the ministers of Yahweh, are inmourning.10The fields are ruined, the land is in mourning, for the grain has been ruined, the new wine has failed, ofolive oil only a trickle.11Stand dismayed, you farmers, wail, you vinedressers, for the wheat, for the barley! The harvest of thefields has been lost!12The vine has withered, the fig tree wilts away; pomegranate, palm tree, apple tree, every tree in thecountryside is dry, and for human beings joy has run dry too.13Priests, put on sackcloth and lament! You ministers of the altar, wail! Come here, lie in sackcloth alnight long, you ministers of my God! For the Temple of your God has been deprived of cereal offering andlibation.14Order a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly; you elders, summon everybody in the country to theTemple of Yahweh your God. Cry out to Yahweh:15'Alas for the day! For the Day of Yahweh is near, coming as destruction from Shaddai.'16Has not the food disappeared before our very eyes? Have not joy and gladness vanished from theTemple of our God?17The seeds shrivel under their clods; the granaries are deserted, the barns are in ruins, because theharvest has dried out.18Loudly the cattle groan! The herds of oxen are bewildered because they have no pasture. The flocks ofsheep bear the punishment too.19Yahweh, to you I cry: for fire has devoured the desert pastures, flame has burnt up all the trees in thecountryside.20Even the wild animals pant loudly for you, for the watercourses have run dry, and fire has devoured thedesert pastures.