Joel 1:2-12

Common English Bible

²Hear this, elders;
    pay attention, everyone in the land!
Has anything like this ever happened in your days,
    or in the days of your ancestors?^[a]
³Tell it to your children,
    and have your children tell their children,
    and their children tell their children.
⁴What the cutting locust left,
    the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
    the hopping locust has eaten.
And what the hopping locust left,
    the devouring locust has eaten.^[b]
⁵Wake up, you who drink too much, and weep.
Scream over the sweet wine,
    all you wine drinkers,
    because it is snatched from your mouth;
⁶    because a nation, powerful and beyond number,
        has invaded my land.

Its teeth are like lions’ teeth;
    its fangs are like those of a lioness.
⁷It has destroyed my vines,
    splintered my fig trees,
    stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
    their branches have turned white.
⁸Lament like a woman dressed in funeral clothing,
    one who has lost the husband of her youth.
⁹The grain offering and the drink offering are gone from the Lord’s temple.
The priests and the Lord’s ministers mourn.
¹⁰The fields are devastated,
        the ground mourns;
    for the grain is destroyed,
        the new wine dries up,
        the olive oil fails.
¹¹Be shocked, you farmers;
    howl, you vinedressers,
        over the wheat and the barley,
    for the crops of the field are destroyed.
¹²The grapevine is dried up;
    the fig tree withers.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple—
    all the trees of the field are dried up.
Joy fades away from the people.^[c]

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Footnotes

Joel 1:2 Or your fathers
Joel 1:4 The Heb uses several different words for locust; none of the meanings are identical.
Joel 1:12 Or from the sons of men; cf 2:1 Heb the people of the land