² Hear this, you elders,
    And listen, all you inhabitants of the land.
Has this ever happened in your days,
    or in the days of your fathers?
³ Tell your children about it,
    and have your children tell their children,
    and their children, another generation.
⁴ What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten.
    What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten.
    What the grasshopper has left, the caterpillar has eaten.
⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
    Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine;
    for it is cut off from your mouth.
⁶ For a nation has come up on my land, strong, and without number.
    His teeth are the teeth of a lion,
    and he has the fangs of a lioness.
⁷ He has laid my vine waste,
    and stripped my fig tree.
    He has stripped its bark, and thrown it away.
    Its branches are made white.
⁸ Mourn like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth! ⁹ The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from Yahweh’s house.
    The priests, Yahweh’s ministers, mourn.
¹⁰ The field is laid waste.
    The land mourns, for the grain is destroyed,
    The new wine has dried up,
    and the oil languishes.
¹¹ Be confounded, you farmers!
    Wail, you vineyard keepers;
    for the wheat and for the barley;
    for the harvest of the field has perished.
¹² The vine has dried up, and the fig tree withered;
    the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree,
    even all of the trees of the field are withered;
    for joy has withered away from the sons of men.