1This is the word of the LORD, that came to Joel the son of Phatuel:
2Hear O ye elders: ponder this well, all ye that dwell in the land: if ever there happened such a thing in your days, or in the days of your fathers.
3Tell your childern of it, and let them shew it to their children, and so they to certify their posterity thereof.
4Look what the caterpillar hath left, that hath the grasshopper eaten up: what the grasshopper left, that hath the locust eaten up: and what the locust hath left, that hath the blasting consumed.
5Wake up ye drunkards, and weep: mourn all ye wine sippers because of your sweet wine, for it shall be taken away from your mouth.
6Yea a mighty and an innumerable people shall come up into my land: these have teeth like the teeth of Lyons, and chaftbones like the lioness.
7They shall make my vineyard waste, they shall pull off the bark of my fig trees, strip them bare, cast them away, and make the branches white.
8Make thy moan as a virgin doth that girdeth herself with sack, because of her bride groom.
9For the meat and drink offering shall be taken away from the house of the LORD: and the priests the LORD's ministers shall mourn.
10The field shall be wasted, the land shall be in a miserable cause: for the corn shall be destroyed, the sweet wine shall come to confusion, and he oil utterly desolate.
11The husband men and the wine gardeners shall look piteously and make lamentation, for the wheat, wine and barley, and because the harvest upon the field is so clean destroyed.
12The grape gathers shall make great moan, when the vineyard and fig trees be so utterly wasted. Yea all the pomegranates, palm trees, apple trees, and the other trees of the field shall wither away. Thus the merry cheer of the childern of men shall come to confusion.
13Gird you, and make your moan, O ye priests: mourn ye ministers of the alter: go your way in, and sleep in sack cloth, O ye officers of my God: for the meat and drink offering shall be taken away from the house of your God.
14Proclaim a fasting, call the congregation, gather the elders and all the inhabiters of the land together in to the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD:
15alas, alas for this day. And why? the day of the LORD is at hand, and cometh as a destroyer from the Almighty.
16Shall not the meats be taken away before our eyes, the mirth also and joy from the house of our God?
17The seed shall perish in the ground, the garners shall lie waste, the floors shall be broken down, for the corn shall be destroyed.
18O what a fighting make the cattle? the bullocks are very evil liking, because they have no pasture: and the sheep are famished away.
19O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath consumed the goodly pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath brent up all the trees of the field.
20Yea the wild beasts cry also unto thee, for the water rivers are dried up, and the fire hath consumed the pastures of the wilderness.