Joel

1

¹ The word of Jehovah which came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
² Hear this, you elders, / And give heed, all you inhabitants of the land. / Has this ever happened in your days, / Or even in the days of your fathers?
³ Tell your children about it, / And let your children tell their children, / And let their children tell the next generation.
⁴ What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; / And what the swarming locust has left, the licking locust has eaten; / And what the licking locust has left, the consuming locust has eaten.
⁵ Awake, drunkards, and weep; / Howl, all you who drink wine, / Because of the fresh wine; / For it has been cut off from your mouth.
⁶ For a nation has come up against My land, / Mighty and without number; / Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, / And it has the cutting teeth of a lioness.
⁷ It has made My vine a desolation, / And My fig tree a heap of splinters. / It has stripped it bare and cast it away; / Its branches are white.
⁸ Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth / Over the husband of her youth.
⁹ The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off / From the house of Jehovah; / The priests, the ministers of Jehovah, mourn.
¹⁰ The field is a waste; / The land mourns, / For the grain is a waste; / The new wine is dried up; / The fresh oil languishes.
¹¹ Be ashamed, O farmers; / Howl, O vinedressers, / For the wheat and for the barley, / Because the harvest of the field has perished.
¹² The vine is dried up, / And the fig tree languishes, / The pomegranate and the palm and the apple tree — / All the trees of the field are dried up; / Indeed gladness has withered away / From the children of men.
¹³ Gird yourselves and lament, O priests; / Howl, O ministers of the altar. / Come, pass the night in sackcloth, / O ministers of my God. / For the meal offering and the drink offering / Are held back from the house of your God.
¹⁴ Sanctify a fast; / Call a solemn assembly; / Gather the elders / And all the inhabitants of the land / To the house of Jehovah your God; / And cry unto Jehovah.
¹⁵ Alas for the day! / For the day of Jehovah has drawn near, / And as the destruction from the Almighty it will come.
¹⁶ Is not our food / Cut off before our eyes, / Joy and exultation / From the house of our God?
¹⁷ The seeds have shriveled / Under their clods; / The storehouses have been desolated; / The barns have been torn down; / For the grain is dried up.
¹⁸ How the beasts groan! / The herds of cattle are confused, / For they have no pasture; / The flocks of sheep also suffer punishment.
¹⁹ To You, O Jehovah, I cry out; / For fire has devoured / The pastures of the wilderness, / And the flame has set ablaze / All the trees of the field.
²⁰ The beasts of the field also / Cry to You, / For the waterways / Are dried up, / And fire has devoured / The pastures of the wilderness.

2

¹ Blow a trumpet in Zion; / Sound an alarm in My holy mountain; / Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, / For the day of Jehovah comes; / For it draws near:
² A day of darkness and gloominess, / A day of clouds and deep darkness, / Like the dawn spread over the mountains — / A people great and mighty. / There has not been any like them / Since eternity, / And there will not be any more after them, / Even until the years of the generation of the generations.
³ A fire devours before them, / And after them a flame blazes. / Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, / After them, like a desolate wilderness; / And indeed no one escapes them.
⁴ Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; / And as horsemen, so they run.
⁵ Like the sound of chariots / Upon the mountaintops they leap, / Like the sound of a flame of fire / That devours the stubble, / Like a mighty people / Set in battle array.
⁶ At their presence the peoples writhed in anguish; / All faces became pale.
⁷ They run like mighty men; / Like men of battle they climb the wall. / And they march, each in his ways, / And do not break their ranks.
⁸ Nor do they crowd each other; / They march, each on his highway. / Though they fall among weapons, / They do not break off their progress.
⁹ They rush at the city; / They run against the wall; / They go up into the houses; / In through the windows / They go, like a thief.
¹⁰ The earth quakes before them; / The heavens shake; / The sun and the moon grow dark, / And the stars withdraw their shining.
¹¹ And Jehovah utters His voice / Before His army, / For His camp is very great, / For He who executes His word is mighty. / For the day of Jehovah is great / And very terrible, / And who can endure it?
¹² Yet even now, / Declares Jehovah, / Turn to Me with all your heart / And with fasting and weeping and mourning;
¹³ And rend your hearts, / And not your garments, / And turn to Jehovah your God, / For He is gracious and compassionate, / Long-suffering and abundant in lovingkindness / And repentant of evil.
¹⁴ Who knows whether He will turn and repent / And leave a blessing behind Him, / A meal offering and a drink offering / To Jehovah your God?
¹⁵ Blow a trumpet in Zion; / Sanctify a fast; / Call a solemn assembly;
¹⁶ Gather the people; / Sanctify the congregation; / Assemble the elders; / Gather the children / And those who suck the breasts; / Let the bridegroom go forth from his chamber, / And the bride from her canopy.
¹⁷ Let the priests, the ministers of Jehovah, / Weep between the porch and the altar, / And let them say, / Look with pity, O Jehovah, upon Your people; / And do not give Your inheritance over to reproach, / That the nations should rule over them. / Why should they say among the peoples, / Where is their God?
¹⁸ Then Jehovah became jealous for His land, / And He spared His people.
¹⁹ And Jehovah answered and said to His people, / I am about to send you / The grain and the new wine and the fresh oil, / And you will be satisfied with it; / And I will no longer make you / A reproach among the nations,
²⁰ But the northern army / I will remove far from you; / And I will drive it into a land / Barren and desolate, / With its face toward the eastern sea / And its end toward the western sea. / And its stench will go up, / And its foul smell will go up, / For it has done great things.
²¹ Do not fear, O land; / Be glad and rejoice, / For Jehovah has done great things.
²² Do not fear, O beasts of the field, / For the pastures of the wilderness turn green. / For the tree bears its fruit; / The fig tree and the vine yield their strength.
²³ O children of Zion, / Be glad and rejoice / In Jehovah your God. / For He gives you / The early rain in righteousness, / And He makes the rain come down for you: / The early rain and the late rain / At the beginning of the season.
²⁴ And the threshing floors will be full of grain, / And the wine vats will overflow with new wine and fresh oil.
²⁵ And I will restore to you the years / That the swarming locust has eaten, / The licking locust and the consuming locust and the cutting locust, / My great army / That I sent among you.
²⁶ And you will eat to the full and be satisfied, / And you will praise the name of Jehovah your God, / Who has dealt wondrously with you; / And My people will never be ashamed.
²⁷ And you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, / And that I am Jehovah your God and there is none else. / And My people will never be ashamed.
²⁸ And afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh, / And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; / Your old men shall dream dreams; / Your young men shall see visions.
²⁹ Indeed even upon the male and female slaves / In those days I will pour out My Spirit.
³⁰ And I will show wonders in the heavens and on earth: / Blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
³¹ The sun shall be turned into darkness, / And the moon into blood, / Before the great and terrible / Day of Jehovah comes.
³² And everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah shall be saved; / For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem will be an escape, / As Jehovah has said, / Even for the remnant / Whom Jehovah calls.

3

¹ For indeed, in those days and at that time / When I turn the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,
² I will gather all the nations / And will bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat; / And I will enter into judgment with them there / Because of My people and My inheritance Israel, / Whom they have scattered among the nations. / And they have divided My land
³ And have cast lots for My people; / And they have given a boy for a prostitute / And sold a girl for wine to drink.
⁴ Indeed then, what are you to Me, Tyre and Sidon / And all the regions of Philistia? / Will you repay Me with a recompense? / But if you recompense Me, / Swiftly, speedily, / I will return your recompense upon your own head.
⁵ In that you have taken My silver and My gold, / And have brought My fine precious things into your temples,
⁶ And have sold to the children of the Javanim / The children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem, / In order to remove them / Far from their borders;
⁷ I will rouse them out of the place / To which you have sold them, / And will return your recompense upon your own head.
⁸ And I will sell your sons and your daughters / Into the hand of the children of Judah, / And they will sell them to the Sabeans, / To a nation that is far off, / For Jehovah has spoken.
⁹ Proclaim this among the nations: / Prepare the battle; / Rouse the mighty men; / Let all the men of battle / Draw near; let them go up.
¹⁰ Beat your plowshares into swords, / And your pruning knives into spears; / Let the weak say, / I am mighty.
¹¹ Hurry and come, / All you surrounding nations, / And be gathered. / There cause Your mighty ones to descend, O Jehovah!
¹² Let the nations rouse themselves and come up / To the valley of Jehoshaphat. / For there I will sit to judge / All the surrounding nations.
¹³ Send forth the sickle, / For the harvest is ripe; / Come, tread, / For the winepress is full; / The wine vats overflow, / For their evil is great.
¹⁴ Multitudes, multitudes, / In the valley of decision; / For the day of Jehovah has drawn near / In the valley of decision.
¹⁵ The sun and the moon grow dark, / And the stars withdraw their shining.
¹⁶ And Jehovah will roar from Zion, / And from Jerusalem He will utter His voice, / And the heavens and the earth will shake. / But Jehovah will be a shelter to His people / And a stronghold to the children of Israel.
¹⁷ Thus you will know that I am Jehovah your God, / Dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain. / And Jerusalem will be holy, / And strangers will pass through her no longer.
¹⁸ And in that day / The mountains will drop down fresh wine, / And the hills will flow with milk; / And all the waterways of Judah / Will flow with water, / And a fountain will go forth from the house of Jehovah, / And it will water the valley of Shittim.
¹⁹ Egypt will be a desolation, / And Edom will be a desolate wilderness, / Because of the violence against the children of Judah, / In that they have shed innocent blood in their land.
²⁰ But Judah will abide forever, / And Jerusalem, from generation to generation;
²¹ And I will acquit them of their bloodshed that I had not acquitted them of, / For Jehovah dwells in Zion.