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¹ The word of Yahweh that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.² Hear 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?³ Tell your sons of it, and [let] your sons [tell] their sons, and their sons another generation.⁴ That which the palmer-worm has left has the locust eaten; and that which the locust has left has the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm has left has the caterpillar eaten.⁵ Awake, you drunkards, and weep; and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.⁶ For a nation has come up on my land, strong, and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the jaw-teeth of a lioness.⁷ He has laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree: he has made it clean bare, and cast 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 Yahweh; the priests, Yahweh's ministers, mourn.¹⁰ The field is laid waste, the land mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the oil languishes.¹¹ Be confounded, O you husbandmen, wail, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; for the harvest of the field has perished.¹² The 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 has withered away from the sons of man.¹³ Gird 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.

¹⁴ Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the old men [and] all the inhabitants of the land to the house of Yahweh your God, and cry to Yahweh.¹⁵ Alas for the day! for the day of Yahweh is at hand, and as destruction from the Almighty it shall come.¹⁶ Is not the food cut off before our eyes, [yes], joy and gladness from the house of our God?¹⁷ The seeds rot under their clods; the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the grain is withered.¹⁸ How the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yes, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.¹⁹ O Yahweh, to you I will cry; for the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field.²⁰ Yes, 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.