Fluent Translation · Read & Reflect
Joel 1
Tell the coming generations
The word of the LORD came to Joel son of Pethuel.
Hear this, elders!
Listen, everyone living in the land!
Has anything like this happened in your days
or in the days of your ancestors?
Tell your children about it;
let your children tell their children,
and their children the generation after them.
What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust ate.
What the swarming locust left, the creeping locust ate.
What the creeping locust left, the stripping locust ate.
The land mourns
Wake up, drunkards, and weep!
Wail, all you wine drinkers,
for the sweet wine
has been cut off from your mouths.
A nation has come up against my land,
powerful and beyond counting.
Its teeth are a lion’s teeth;
it has the fangs of a lioness.
It has devastated my vine
and stripped my fig tree bare.
It has peeled it completely and thrown it aside;
its branches have turned white.
Lament like a young woman clothed in sackcloth
for the husband of her youth.
Grain offering and drink offering
have been cut off from the house of the LORD.
The priests mourn,
those who serve the LORD.
The fields are devastated;
the ground mourns.
Grain is devastated,
new wine has dried up, and oil has failed.
Be ashamed, farmers!
Wail, vine growers,
for the wheat and barley,
because the harvest of the fields is lost.
The vine has dried up;
the fig tree has withered.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple—
all the trees of the field have dried up.
Joy itself has dried up among human beings.
Call an assembly
Put on sackcloth and lament, priests!
Wail, you who serve at the altar!
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
you who serve my God,
for grain offering and drink offering
are withheld from the house of your God.
Set apart a fast;
call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders and everyone living in the land
to the house of the LORD your God,
and cry out to the LORD.
Alas for the day!
The day of the LORD is near;
it comes like devastation from the Almighty.
Has not food been cut off before our eyes,
and joy and celebration
from the house of our God?
Seeds shrivel beneath the clods.
Storehouses stand deserted;
granaries are torn down,
for the grain has dried up.
How the animals groan!
Herds of cattle wander in distress
because they have no pasture.
Even the flocks of sheep suffer.
To you, LORD, I cry,
for fire has consumed the wilderness pastures
and flame has burned all the trees of the field.
Even the wild animals pant toward you,
for the streambeds have dried up
and fire has consumed the wilderness pastures.