¹The word of the Lord which came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

²Listen to this, you elders,

And give ear, all you dwellers of the land.

Was there ever anything like this in your days,

Or in the days of your fathers?

³Tell your sons about it,

And have your sons tell their sons,

And have their sons tell another generation.

⁴What was left by the gnawing locust,

The swarming locust has eaten.

What was left by the swarming locust,

The devouring locust has eaten.

And what was left by the devouring locust,

The consuming locust has eaten.

⁵Wake up, drunkards, and weep;

And all drinkers of wine,

Wail over the new wine,

For it is cut off from your mouth.

⁶For a nation has gone up onto my land

– A powerful and innumerable one.

Its teeth are the teeth of a lion,

And it has the incisors of a great lion.

⁷It has made my vine a desolation

And my fig tree splinters.

It has stripped it bare

And cast it away;

Its branches have turned white.

⁸Lament like a virgin girded in sackcloth

For the husband of her youth.

⁹The meal-offering and the libation

Have been cut off from the house of the Lord.

The priests – the Lord's servants – are in mourning.

¹⁰The countryside is wasted,

The ground mourns,

For the corn is wasted.

The new wine has dried up;

The new oil is languishing.

¹¹The farmers have been put to shame.

The vinedressers are howling,

Also for the wheat and for the barley,

Because the harvest of the field has failed.

¹²The vine has dried up,

The fig tree is languishing

– The pomegranate and the date and the apple too.

All the trees of the field have dried up,

For joy has dried up from the sons of Adam.

¹³Gird yourselves and mourn, you priests;

Howl, you servants of the altar.

Come and pass the night in sackcloth,

You servants of my God,

For the meal-offering and the libation have been withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Hold a holy fast;

Proclaim 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 it will come as devastation from the Almighty.

¹⁶Is not food cut off in front of our eyes?

Are not happiness and rejoicing cut off from the house of our God?

¹⁷The seeds decay under their covering soil,

The storehouses have been laid waste,

The garners have been demolished,

For the corn supply has dried up.

¹⁸How the cattle sigh,

How the herds of oxen are perplexed,

For there is no pasture for them,

And the flocks of sheep are perishing.

¹⁹On you, O Lord, I will call,

For fire has devoured the pastures of the desert,

And a flame has set all the trees of the field ablaze.

²⁰The beasts of the field also bleat to you,

For the brooks of water have dried up,

And fire has devoured the pastures of the desert.

Reference(s) in Chapter 1: v.15 ↔ Revelation 1:10.