Joel 1King James Version
A locust plague of catastrophic scale. What the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten, and what the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten. The meat offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep. Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests.
A catastrophic locust swarm has stripped Judah bare, destroying every crop and cutting off the grain and drink offerings at the temple. Joel calls priests, farmers, and elders to grieve together, fast, and cry out to God. The disaster is not random; it is a preview of the Day of the Lord, which looms even darker on the horizon.
National catastrophe is an invitation to collective repentance, not just agricultural recovery.
"Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come." (1:15) Joel pivots the locust crisis from a regional farming tragedy into a cosmic warning, framing the visible devastation as a foretaste of something far greater.
Sometime around the 8th or 9th century BC, Judah wakes to fields that look like scorched earth. What the first wave of locusts missed, the second consumed; what the second left, the third finished. Wine jars stand empty, olive presses idle, storehouses bare. Priests walk into a temple they cannot supply. The whole economy of worship and sustenance has collapsed in a single season.
Joel son of Pethuel is the sole named human voice. The priests and ministers of the altar are addressed as the spiritual leaders responsible for mourning and gathering the people. No antagonist is named; the locusts function as the agent of judgment.
Joel 1 establishes that God speaks through natural events. The complete failure of the harvest, from grain to vine to fruit tree, signals that the covenant relationship is broken. By directing Israel to mourn at the temple rather than simply replant, Joel insists that the crisis is spiritual before it is agricultural, a pattern the prophets return to repeatedly.
The chapter moves from stunned disbelief to raw communal grief. Farmers, priests, and animals alike are caught in the same desperate silence where even the temple rituals have gone quiet.
1The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
2Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?
3Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
4That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.
5Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
6For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.
7He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.
8Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
9The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD'S ministers, mourn.
10The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.
11Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished.
12The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.
13Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.
14Sanctify ye 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 unto the LORD,
15Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.
16Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?
17The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered.
18How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.
19O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.
20The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.