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¹ THE word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Bethuel:² Hear this, O you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has such a calamity ever happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?³ Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.⁴ What the palmerworm has left, the locust has eaten; and what the swarming locust has left, the crawling locust has eaten; and what the crawling locust has left, the cankerworm has eaten.⁵ Awake, O you drunkards, and weep; and howl, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.⁶ A nation has come up against my land, strong, and without number; whose teeth are like the teeth of a lion, and his fangs as the fangs of a lions whelp.⁷ He has laid my vine waste, and has cut off my fig tree and thrown it away; the branches thereof are made white.

⁸ Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.⁹ The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD; the kings mourn, and the priests who minister to the LORD mourn.¹⁰ The field is plundered, the land mourns; for the wheat is plundered, the new wine is dried up, the olive orchards are destroyed.¹¹ Be ashamed, O you husbandmen; howl, O you vinedressers, howl for the wheat and for the barley because the harvest of the fields is perished.¹² The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languishes; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree, and the apple tree, all the trees of the field are withered; joy is fled from the sons of men.¹³ Gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament, O you priests; howl, O you ministers of the altar; go in, spend the night in sackcloth, O you ministers of my God, because the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴ Sanctify a 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 to the LORD your God, and say,¹⁵ Alas, alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as plunder from God shall it come.¹⁶ And, behold, before our eyes the food is cut off from the house of our God, and gladness and joy have ceased.¹⁷ The cows languish at their mangers, the granaries are laid waste, the winepresses are thrown down, and the grain is dried up.¹⁸ How the beasts groan! the herds of cattle cry because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep also are perished.¹⁹ O LORD, to thee will I cry; for the fire has devoured the camps of shepherds in the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field.²⁰ Also the beasts of the field cry out to thee because the ponds of water are dried up, and the fire has devoured the camps of shepherds in the wilderness.