¹The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:

An Invasion of Locusts

²Hear this, you elders;

give ear, all inhabitants of the land!

Has such a thing happened in your days,

or in the days of your fathers?

³Tell your children of it,

and let your children tell their children,

and their children to another generation.

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 destroying locust has eaten.

⁵Awake, you drunkards, and weep,

and wail, all you drinkers of wine,

because of the sweet wine,

for it is cut off from your mouth.

⁶For a nation has come up against my land,

powerful and beyond number;

its teeth are lions' teeth,

and it has the fangs of a lioness.

⁷It has laid waste my vine

and splintered my fig tree;

it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;

their branches are made white.

⁸Lament like a virgin1 wearing sackcloth

for the bridegroom of her youth.

⁹The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off

from the house of the Lord.

The priests mourn,

the ministers of the Lord.

¹⁰The fields are destroyed,

the ground mourns,

because the grain is destroyed,

the wine dries up,

the oil languishes.

¹¹Be ashamed,2 O tillers of the soil;

wail, O vinedressers,

for the wheat and the barley,

because the harvest of the field has perished.

¹²The vine dries up;

the fig tree languishes.

Pomegranate, palm, and apple,

all the trees of the field are dried up,

and gladness dries up

from the children of man.

A Call to Repentance

¹³Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;

wail, O ministers of the altar.

Go in, pass the night in sackcloth,

O ministers of my God!

Because grain offering and drink offering

are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Consecrate a fast;

call a solemn assembly.

Gather the elders

and all the inhabitants of the land

to the house of the Lord your God,

and cry out to the Lord.

¹⁵Alas for the day!

For the day of the Lord is near,

and as destruction from the Almighty3 it comes.

¹⁶Is not the food cut off

before our eyes,

joy and gladness

from the house of our God?

¹⁷The seed shrivels under the clods;4

the storehouses are desolate;

the granaries are torn down

because the grain has dried up.

¹⁸How the beasts groan!

The herds of cattle are perplexed

because there is no pasture for them;

even the flocks of sheep suffer.5

¹⁹To you, O Lord, I call.

For fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness,

and flame has burned

all the trees of the field.

²⁰Even the beasts of the field pant for you

because the water brooks are dried up,

and fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness.