Joel 1

¹⁶No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

²The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah,

¹This is the word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and of Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel.

³the word of the Lord came directly to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the River Kebar. And there the Lord’s hand was upon him.

²¹For no such prophecy was ever brought forth by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

²a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like the dawn overspreading the mountains a great and strong army appears, such as never was of old, nor will ever be in ages to come.

¹“Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O royal house! For this judgment is against you because you have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on Tabor.

⁷How awful that day will be! None will be like it! It is the time of Jacob’s distress, but he will be saved out of it.

⁸Please inquire of past generations and consider the discoveries of their fathers.

¹Then I said: “Hear now, O leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice?

¹⁴Consecrate a fast; proclaim a solemn assembly! Gather the elders and all the residents of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

⁷And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

¹⁸Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, until I proclaim Your power to the next generation, Your might to all who are to come.

⁴One generation will commend Your works to the next, and will proclaim Your mighty acts—

³that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.

⁴We will not hide them from their children but will declare to the next generation the praises of the Lord and His might and the wonders He has performed.

¹⁴In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you are to tell him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

¹Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials, that I may perform these miraculous signs of Mine among them,

²and that you may tell your children and grandchildren how severely I dealt with the Egyptians when I performed miraculous signs among them, so that all of you may know that I am the Lord.”

²⁵I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts—the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust—My great army that I sent against you.

⁹“I struck you with blight and mildew in your growing gardens and vineyards; the locust devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the Lord.

¹This is what the Lord God showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts just after the king’s harvest, as the late spring crop was coming up.

⁴⁶He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust.

⁴But if you refuse to let My people go, I will bring locusts into your territory tomorrow.

⁴Your spoil, O nations, is gathered as by locusts; like a swarm of locusts men sweep over it.

³⁴But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare.

³⁵For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of all the earth.

¹Come now, you who are rich, weep and wail over the misery to come upon you.

¹⁰In a little more than a year you will tremble, O secure ones. For the grape harvest will fail and the fruit harvest will not arrive.

¹¹Shudder, you ladies of leisure; tremble, you daughters of complacency. Strip yourselves bare and put sackcloth around your waists.

⁷The new wine dries up, the vine withers. All the merrymakers now groan.

⁸The joyful tambourines have ceased; the noise of revelers has stopped; the joyful harp is silent.

⁸So put on sackcloth, mourn and wail, for the fierce anger of the Lord has not turned away from us.”

³You dismiss the day of calamity and bring near a reign of violence.

⁴You lie on beds inlaid with ivory, and lounge upon your couches. You dine on lambs from the flock and calves from the stall.

²⁵I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts—the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust—My great army that I sent against you.

²a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like the dawn overspreading the mountains a great and strong army appears, such as never was of old, nor will ever be in ages to come.

³Before them a fire devours, and behind them a flame scorches. The land before them is like the Garden of Eden, but behind them, it is like a desert wasteland—surely nothing will escape them.

⁸It will pour into Judah, swirling and sweeping over it, reaching up to the neck; its spreading streams will cover your entire land, O Immanuel!

⁷And the locusts looked like horses prepared for battle, with something like crowns of gold on their heads; and their faces were like the faces of men.

⁸They had hair like that of women, and teeth like those of lions.

¹⁴there is a generation whose teeth are swords and whose jaws are knives, devouring the oppressed from the earth and the needy from among men.

³⁴and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.

⁹“I struck you with blight and mildew in your growing gardens and vineyards; the locust devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the Lord.

⁶I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and thorns and briers will grow up. I will command the clouds that rain shall not fall on it.”

¹²The grapevine is dried up, and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, palm, and apple—all the trees of the orchard—are withered. Surely the joy of mankind has dried up.

¹³I will take away their harvest, declares the Lord. There will be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the tree, and even the leaf will wither. Whatever I have given them will be lost to them.”

¹²I will destroy her vines and fig trees, which she thinks are the wages paid by her lovers. So I will make them into a thicket, and the beasts of the field will devour them.

¹⁵They covered the face of all the land until it was black, and they consumed all the plants on the ground and all the fruit on the trees that the hail had left behind. Nothing green was left on any tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.

¹²On that day the Lord God of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.

¹⁵Has not the Lord made them one, having a portion of the Spirit? And why one? Because He seeks godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.

¹Come now, you who are rich, weep and wail over the misery to come upon you.

¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.

⁷The new wine dries up, the vine withers. All the merrymakers now groan.

⁸The joyful tambourines have ceased; the noise of revelers has stopped; the joyful harp is silent.

¹³Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Consecrate a fast; proclaim a solemn assembly! Gather the elders and all the residents of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

¹⁴Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him—grain and drink offerings for the Lord your God.

¹⁷Let the priests who minister before the Lord weep between the portico and the altar, saying, “Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your heritage a reproach, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

⁴They will not pour out wine offerings to the Lord, and their sacrifices will not please Him, but will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat will be defiled. For their bread will be for themselves; it will not enter the house of the Lord.

¹³Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.

⁶But you will be called the priests of the Lord; they will speak of you as ministers of our God; you will feed on the wealth of nations, and you will boast in their riches.

¹⁶For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears. For there is no one nearby to comfort me, no one to revive my soul. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.

³Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea disappear.

¹¹They have made it a desolation; desolate before Me, it mourns. All the land is laid waste, but no man takes it to heart.

²The threshing floor and winepress will not feed them, and the new wine will fail them.

⁵Wake up, you drunkards, and weep; wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth.

¹¹I have summoned a drought on the fields and on the mountains, on the grain, new wine, and oil, and on whatever the ground yields, on man and beast, and on all the labor of your hands.”

²“Judah mourns and her gates languish. Her people wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem.

³The nobles send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns, but find no water; their jars return empty. They are ashamed and humiliated; they cover their heads.

³The nobles send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns, but find no water; their jars return empty. They are ashamed and humiliated; they cover their heads.

⁴The ground is cracked because no rain has fallen on the land. The farmers are ashamed; they cover their heads.

¹¹though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout—yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.

¹²Who is the man wise enough to understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, that he may explain it? Why is the land destroyed and scorched like a desert, so no one can pass through it?

⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.

¹⁶Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Hosts, the Lord, says: “There will be wailing in all the public squares and cries of ‘Alas! Alas!’ in all the streets. The farmer will be summoned to mourn, and the mourners to wail.

¹¹In the streets they cry out for wine. All joy turns to gloom; rejoicing is exiled from the land.

¹⁰Joy and gladness are removed from the orchard; no one sings or shouts in the vineyards. No one tramples the grapes in the winepresses; I have put an end to the cheering.

¹⁶Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes—joy and gladness from the house of our God?

¹⁷Though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls,

¹⁸yet I will exult in the Lord; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!

³Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

¹⁰The field is ruined; the land mourns. For the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, and the oil fails.

⁸So put on sackcloth, mourn and wail, for the fierce anger of the Lord has not turned away from us.”

⁸Wail like a virgin dressed in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth.

⁹Grain and drink offerings have been cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord.

¹⁰I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.

¹⁷Let the priests who minister before the Lord weep between the portico and the altar, saying, “Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your heritage a reproach, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

²⁷When Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and fasted. He lay down in sackcloth and walked around meekly.

¹⁸They will put on sackcloth, and terror will overwhelm them. Shame will cover all their faces, and all their heads will be shaved.

¹⁵Blow the ram’s horn in Zion, consecrate a fast, proclaim a sacred assembly.

¹⁶Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, gather the children, even those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber.

³Jehoshaphat was alarmed and set his face to seek the Lord. And he proclaimed a fast throughout Judah.

⁴So the people of Judah gathered to seek the Lord, and indeed, they came from all the cities of Judah to seek Him.

⁸Furthermore, let both man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and have everyone call out earnestly to God. Let each one turn from his evil ways and from the violence in his hands.

¹³Meanwhile all the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, were standing before the Lord.

¹⁰All of you are standing today before the Lord your God—you leaders of tribes, elders, officials, and all the men of Israel,

¹¹your children and wives, and the foreigners in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water—

³⁶For seven days you are to present a food offering to the Lord. On the eighth day you are to hold a sacred assembly and present a food offering to the Lord. It is a solemn assembly; you must not do any regular work.

⁶Wail, for the Day of the Lord is near; it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

⁷Therefore all hands will fall limp, and every man’s heart will melt.

¹⁴The great Day of the Lord is near—near and coming quickly. Listen, the Day of the Lord! Then the cry of the mighty will be bitter.

¹⁵That day will be a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness,

⁷How awful that day will be! None will be like it! It is the time of Jacob’s distress, but he will be saved out of it.

²“O son of man, this is what the Lord God says to the land of Israel: ‘The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land.

³The end is now upon you, and I will unleash My anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and repay you for all your abominations.

¹¹The Lord raises His voice in the presence of His army. Indeed, His camp is very large, for mighty are those who obey His command. For the Day of the Lord is great and very dreadful. Who can endure it?

³¹The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and awesome Day of the Lord.

⁴Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy. I will praise You with the harp, O God, my God.

³Glory in His holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.

⁶To that place you are to bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and heave offerings, your vow offerings and freewill offerings, as well as the firstborn of your herds and flocks.

⁷There, in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your households shall eat and rejoice in all you do, because the Lord your God has blessed you.

⁷On that day he will cry aloud: “I am not a healer. I have no food or clothing in my house. Do not make me leader of the people!”

¹³Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.

⁸The Lord has sworn by His right hand and by His mighty arm: “Never again will I give your grain to your enemies for food, nor will foreigners drink the new wine for which you have toiled.

⁹For those who harvest grain will eat it and praise the Lord, and those who gather grapes will drink the wine in My holy courts.”

¹⁰For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and failed to remember the Rock of your refuge. Therefore, though you cultivate delightful plots and set out cuttings from exotic vines—

¹¹though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout—yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.

¹⁶Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the standard of the merchants.

³Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea disappear.

⁴How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field be withered? Because of the evil of its residents, the animals and birds have been swept away, for the people have said, “He cannot see what our end will be.”

⁵Even the doe in the field deserts her newborn fawn because there is no grass.

⁶Wild donkeys stand on barren heights; they pant for air like jackals; their eyes fail for lack of pasture.”

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time.

²⁰Even the beasts of the field pant for You, for the streams of water have dried up, and fire has consumed the open pastures.

⁵Then Ahab said to Obadiah, “Go throughout the land to every spring and every valley. Perhaps we will find grass to keep the horses and mules alive so that we will not have to destroy any livestock.”

¹⁰I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.

¹⁵Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor Me.”

⁴This is what the Lord God showed me: The Lord God was calling for judgment by fire. It consumed the great deep and devoured the land.

⁷But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.

¹⁵When he calls out to Me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.

³Before them a fire devours, and behind them a flame scorches. The land before them is like the Garden of Eden, but behind them, it is like a desert wasteland—surely nothing will escape them.

²¹The young lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God.

⁷Some time later, however, the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land.

⁴¹Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God as they wander about for lack of food?

⁹He provides food for the animals, and for the young ravens when they call.

¹⁵The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in season.

⁵Then Ahab said to Obadiah, “Go throughout the land to every spring and every valley. Perhaps we will find grass to keep the horses and mules alive so that we will not have to destroy any livestock.”