Joel 1 — FBV

1Verse 1The Lord sent a message through Joel, son of Pethuel.^{Verse 2}Listen to this, elders; pay attention, everyone who lives in the land. Has anything ever happened like this before in your experience, or that of your forefathers?^{Verse 3}Tell your children about it, and have your children tell it to their children, and their children tell the next generation.^{Verse 4}What the cutting locusts left, the swarming locusts have eaten; what the swarming locusts left, the hopping locusts have eaten; what the hopping locusts left, the destroying locusts have eaten.^{+Verse 5}Wake up, you drunks, and weep! Howl you wine drinkers, because the new wine has been suddenly taken away from your mouth!^{Verse 6}A nation has invaded my land: powerful and too many to count. Their teeth are like lion's teeth, their fangs like those of a lioness.^{Verse 7}It has ruined my grapevines and destroyed my fig trees, stripping them completely and reducing them to stumps, white and bare.^{Verse 8}Mourn like a bride dressed in sackcloth, mourning the death of her husband-to-be.^{+Verse 9}Grain and wine offerings have stopped in the Temple.⁺The priests who minister before the Lord are in mourning.^{Verse 10}The fields are devastated, the earth mourns; for the grain is ruined, the new wine dries up, the olive oil fails.^{Verse 11}Be ashamed, farmers, and wail in sorrow, keepers of vineyards, over the wheat and the barley, for the crops from the fields are ruined.^{Verse 12}The vines are shriveled, the fig trees are withered; the pomegranate, the palm, and the apricot⁺trees—all the fruit trees have dried up, and at the same time the people's happiness has also dried up.^{Verse 13}Dress in sackcloth,⁺you priests, and mourn; weep, you who minister before the altar! Go and spend the night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the grain and wine offerings have stopped in the Temple.^{Verse 14}Proclaim a fast; call a sacred assembly. Have the elders and all people of the land gather in the Temple, and cry out to your God, to the Lord.^{Verse 15}What a terrible day! For the day of the Lord is near, it will come as destruction from the Almighty.^{Verse 16}Haven't we seen our food taken away from us, right before our eyes? There is no joy and happiness in God's Temple.^{Verse 17}Seeds planted in the ground shrivel up; the storehouses are empty, the barns are torn down because the grain has dried up.^{+Verse 18}The farm animals moan with hunger. The herds of cattle wander everywhere because they can't find grass to eat; the flocks of sheep are suffering.^{Verse 19}To you, Lord, I cry out!⁺For fire has destroyed the pastures in the wilderness; flames have burned up all the orchards.^{Verse 20}Even the wild animals long for you because the streams have dried up, and fire has destroyed the pastures in the wilderness.