Joel 1:2-12

International Children’s Bible

² Elders, listen to this message.
    Listen to me, all you people who live in the land.
Nothing like this has ever happened during your lifetime.
    Nothing like this has ever happened during your fathers’ lifetimes.
³ Tell your children about these things.
    And let your children tell their children.
    And let your grandchildren tell their children.
⁴ What the cutting locusts have not eaten,
    the swarming locusts have eaten.
And what the swarming locusts have left,
    the hopping locusts have eaten.
And what the hopping locusts have left,
    the destroying locusts^[a] have eaten.

⁵ Drunks, wake up and cry!
    All of you people who drink wine, cry!
Cry because your sweet wine
    has been taken away from you.
⁶ A powerful nation has come into my land.
    It has too many soldiers to count.
It has teeth like a lion.
    And it has fangs like a female lion.
⁷ That army has eaten my grapevines.
    It has destroyed my fig trees.
It has eaten the bark off my trees
    and left the branches white.

⁸ Cry as a young woman cries
    when the man she was going to marry is killed.
⁹ There will be no more grain or drink offerings
    to offer in the Temple of the Lord.
Because of this, the priests,
    the servants of the Lord, cry.
¹⁰ The fields are ruined.
    Even the ground is dried up.
The grain is destroyed.
    The new wine is dried up.
    And the olive oil runs out.
¹¹ Be sad, farmers.
    Cry loudly, you who grow grapes.
Cry for the wheat and the barley.
    Cry because the harvest in the field is lost.
¹² The vines have become dry.
    And the fig trees are dying.
The pomegranate trees, the date palm trees and the apple trees have dried up.
    All the trees in the field have died.
And the happiness of the people has died, too.