1The word of Yehovah that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. 2Hear this, you old men, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land. Has this been in your days, or in the days of your fathers? 3Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. 4That which the cutting locust has left the swarming locust has eaten; and that which the swarming locust has left the hopping locust has eaten; and that which the hopping locust has left the destroying locust has eaten. 5Awake, you drunkards, and weep; and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. 6For a nation has come up upon my land, strong, and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the jaw-teeth of a lioness. 7He has laid my vine waste, and stripped the bark of my fig-tree: he has made it clean bare, and cast it away; its branches are made white. 8Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. 9The meal-offering and the drink-offering are cut off from the house of Yehovah; the priests, Yehovah’s ministers, mourn. 10The field is laid waste, the land mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the oil languishes. 11Be confounded, O you farmers, wail, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; for the harvest of the field has perished. 12The vine is withered, and the fig-tree languishes; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field are withered: for joy is withered away from the sons of men. 13Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament, you priests; wail, you ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God: for the meal-offering and the drink-offering are withheld from the house of your God. 14Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the old men and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of Yehovah your God, and cry to Yehovah. 15Alas for the day! for the day of Yehovah is at hand, and as destruction from the Almighty it shall come. 16Is not the food cut off before our eyes, yes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? 17The seeds rot under their clods; the storehouses are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the grain is withered. 18How the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yes, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. 19O Yehovah, to you I cry; for the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field. 20Yes, the beasts of the field pant to you; for the water brooks are dried up, and the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.