1 ¶ The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

2 Hear this, you old men, and pay attention, all you who live in this land. Has this ever happened in your time, or even in the time of your fathers?

3 Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children, and their children the next generation.

4 That which the cutworms left the locusts have eaten; and what the locusts left the cankerworm has eaten; and what the cankerworm has left the caterpillars have eaten.

5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep; wail all you who drink wine, for there is no more new wine for you to drink.

6 For a nation has invaded my country, strong, and impossible to count, their teeth are like the teeth of a lion, and the jaw teeth of a grown lion.

7 They have ruined my vines, and barked my fig trees: they have stripped them bare, and thrown them away; their branches have become white.

8 ¶ Wail like a bride dressed in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth.

9 The grain offerings and the drink offerings have been cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD’S servants, mourn.

10 The fields are ruined, the country mourns; for the grain is destroyed: the new wine has dried up, and the oil is gone.

11 Feel the disappointment, O you farmers; wail, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the fields is lost.

12 The vines are dried up, and the fig trees wither; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree, and the apple tree, all the trees in the fields, are dried up: yes joy has faded away from the sons of men.

13 Dress in sackcloth, and mourn, you priests: wail, you ministers of the altar: come, and lie all night in sackcloth, you servants of my God: for the grain offerings and the drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.

14 ¶ Set aside a holy fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD,

15 Woe for that day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

16 Is not the food cut off right before our eyes, and, joy and gladness cut off from the house of our God?

17 The seed rots in the ground, the storehouses are in ruins, the barns have been broken down; and the grain has withered.

18 How the animals groan! the herds of cattle do not know where to turn, for they have no pasture; and the flocks of sheep suffer.

19 O LORD, I will cry out to you: because a fire has devoured the pastures of the plain, and its flame has scorched all the trees of the countryside.

20 Even the wild beasts of the field pant for you: for the brooks of water have dried up, and fire has consumed the pastures of the wilderness.