Locusts Destroy the Land

1The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

2Hear this, you aged men, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land. Has this happened in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?

3Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

4That which the cutting locust has left has the swarming locust eaten; and that which the swarming locust has left has the crawling locust eaten; and that which the crawling locust has left has the consuming locust eaten.

5Awake, you drunkards, and weep; and howl, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.

6For a nation has come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a lioness.

7He has laid my vine waste, and splintered my fig tree: he has stripped it bare, and cast it away; its branches are made white.

8Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

9The grain offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD'S ministers, mourn.

10The field is wasted, the land mourns; for the grain is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languishes.

11Be ashamed, O you farmers; wail, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field has perished.

12The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languishes; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy has withered away from the sons of men.

Repent Before the Day of the LORD

13Gird yourselves, and lament, you priests: wail, you ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God: for the grain offering and the drink offering is withheld from the house of your God.

14Sanctify you a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD.

15Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

16Is not the food cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

17The seed shrivels under the clods, the storehouses are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the grain has withered.

18How the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

19O LORD, to you will I cry: for the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field.

20The beasts of the field cry also unto you: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.