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Joel 1 - Good News Bible bible

Joel 1

¹This is the LORD's message to Joel son of Pethuel.

²Pay attention, you older people; everyone in Judah, listen. Has anything like this ever happened in your time or the time of your ancestors?

³Tell your children about it; they will tell their children, who in turn will tell the next generation.

⁴Swarm after swarm of locusts settled on the crops; what one swarm left, the next swarm devoured.

⁵Wake up and weep, you drunkards; cry, you wine-drinkers; the grapes for making new wine have been destroyed.

⁶An army of locusts has attacked our land; they are powerful and too many to count; their teeth are as sharp as those of a lion.

⁷They have destroyed our grapevines and chewed up our fig trees. They have stripped off the bark, till the branches are white.

⁸Cry, you people, like a young woman who mourns the death of the man she was going to marry.

⁹There is no grain or wine to offer in the Temple; the priests mourn because they have no offerings for the LORD.

¹⁰The fields are bare; the ground mourns because the grain is destroyed, the grapes are dried up, and the olive trees are withered.

¹¹Grieve, you farmers; cry, you that take care of the vineyards, because the wheat, the barley, yes all the crops are destroyed.

¹²The grapevines and fig trees have withered; all the fruit trees have wilted and died. The joy of the people is gone.

¹³Put on sackcloth and weep, you priests who serve at the altar! Go into the Temple and mourn all night! There is no grain or wine to offer your God.

¹⁴Give orders for a fast; call an assembly! Gather the leaders and all the people of Judah into the Temple of the LORD your God and cry out to him!

¹⁵The day of the LORD is near, the day when the Almighty brings destruction. What terror that day will bring!

¹⁶We look on helpless as our crops are destroyed. There is no joy in the Temple of our God.

¹⁷The seeds die in the dry earth. There is no grain to be stored, and so the empty granaries are in ruins.

¹⁸The cattle are bellowing in distress because there is no pasture for them; the flocks of sheep also suffer.

¹⁹I cry out to you, LORD, because the pastures and trees are dried up, as though a fire had burned them.

²⁰Even the wild animals cry out to you because the streams have become dry.