Joel 1

¹ The word of Yahweh that was addressed to Joel son of Pethuel.

² Listen to this, you elders; everybody in the country, attend! Has anything like this ever happened in yourday, or in your ancestors' days?

³ Tell your children about it and let your children tel their children, and their children the next generation!

⁴ What 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.

⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! All you wine-bibbers, lament for the new wine: it has beensnatched from your lips.

⁶ For a nation has invaded my country, mighty and innumerable, with teeth like a lion's teeth, with thefangs of a lioness.

⁷ It has reduced my vines to a desolation and my fig trees to splinters, stripped them and broken themdown, leaving their branches white.

⁸ Mourn, as a virgin-bride in sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth!

⁹ Cereal offering and libation are lost to Yahweh's Temple. The priests, the ministers of Yahweh, are inmourning.

¹⁰ The fields are ruined, the land is in mourning, for the grain has been ruined, the new wine has failed, ofolive oil only a trickle.

¹¹ Stand dismayed, you farmers, wail, you vinedressers, for the wheat, for the barley! The harvest of thefields has been lost!

¹² The 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.

¹³ Priests, 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.

¹⁴ Order 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.'

¹⁶ Has not the food disappeared before our very eyes? Have not joy and gladness vanished from theTemple of our God?

¹⁷ The seeds shrivel under their clods; the granaries are deserted, the barns are in ruins, because theharvest has dried out.

¹⁸ Loudly the cattle groan! The herds of oxen are bewildered because they have no pasture. The flocks ofsheep bear the punishment too.

¹⁹ Yahweh, to you I cry: for fire has devoured the desert pastures, flame has burnt up all the trees in thecountryside.

²⁰ Even the wild animals pant loudly for you, for the watercourses have run dry, and fire has devoured thedesert pastures.