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1. An Invasion of Locusts

¹ The word of the LORD that came to Joel son of Pethuel.

An Invasion of Locusts

    ² Hear this, you elders;
   listen, all who live in the land.
Has anything like this ever happened in your days
   or in the days of your ancestors?
³ Tell it to your children,
   and let your children tell it to their children,
   and their children to the next generation.
⁴ What the locust swarm has left
   the great locusts have eaten;
what the great locusts have left
   the young locusts have eaten;
what the young locusts have left
   other locusts The precise meaning of the four Hebrew words used here for locusts is uncertain. have eaten.

    ⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
   Wail, all you drinkers of wine;
wail because of the new wine,
   for it has been snatched from your lips.
⁶ A nation has invaded my land,
   a mighty army without number;
it has the teeth of a lion,
   the fangs of a lioness.
⁷ It has laid waste my vines
   and ruined my fig trees.
It has stripped off their bark
   and thrown it away,
   leaving their branches white.

    ⁸ Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth
   grieving for the betrothed of her youth.
⁹ Grain offerings and drink offerings
   are cut off from the house of the LORD.
The priests are in mourning,
   those who minister before the LORD.
¹⁰ The fields are ruined,
   the ground is dried up;
the grain is destroyed,
   the new wine is dried up,
   the olive oil fails.

    ¹¹ Despair, you farmers,
   wail, you vine growers;
grieve for the wheat and the barley,
   because the harvest of the field is destroyed.
¹² The vine is dried up
   and the fig tree is withered;
the pomegranate, the palm and the apple Or possibly apricot tree—
   all the trees of the field—are dried up.
Surely the people’s joy
   is withered away.

A Call to Lamentation

    ¹³ Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn;
   wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
   you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings
   are withheld from the house of your God.
¹⁴ Declare a holy fast;
   call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders
   and all who live in the land
to the house of the LORD your God,
   and cry out to the LORD.

    ¹⁵ Alas for that day!
   For the day of the LORD is near;
   it will come like destruction from the Almighty. Hebrew Shaddai

    ¹⁶ Has not the food been cut off
   before our very eyes—
joy and gladness
   from the house of our God?
¹⁷ The seeds are shriveled
   beneath the clods. The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain.
The storehouses are in ruins,
   the granaries have been broken down,
   for the grain has dried up.
¹⁸ How the cattle moan!
   The herds mill about
because they have no pasture;
   even the flocks of sheep are suffering.

    ¹⁹ To you, LORD, I call,
   for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness
   and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.
²⁰ Even the wild animals pant for you;
   the streams of water have dried up
   and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness.

He afterwards adds, sanctify a fast, call an assembly, gather the old, all the inhabitants of the land. קדש kodash means to sanctify and to prepare; but I have retained its proper meaning, sanctify a fast; for the command had regard to the end, that is, sanctification. Then a fast proclaim — for what purpose? That the people might purge themselves from all their pollutions, and present themselves pure and clean before God. Call an assembly. It appears that there was a solemn convocation whenever a fast was proclaimed among the people: for it was not enough for each one privately at home to abstain from food, except all confessed openly, with one mouth and one consent, that they were guilty before God. Hence with a fast was connected a solemn profession of repentance. The uses and ends of a fast, we know, are various: but when the Prophet here speaks of a solemn fast, he doubtless bids the people to come to it suppliantly, as the guilty are wont to do, who would deprecate punishment before a judge, that they may obtain mercy from him. In the second chapter there will be much to say on fasting: I only wish now briefly to touch on the subject.

He afterwards bids the old to be gathered, and then adds, All the inhabitants of the land. But he begins with the old, and justly so, for the guilt of the old is always the heaviest. But this word relates not to age as in a former instance. When he said yesterday, ‘Hear ye, the aged,’ he addressed those who by long experience had learnt in the world many things unknown to the young or to men of middle age. But now the Prophet means by the old those to whom was intrusted the public government; and as through their slothfulness they had suffered the worship of God and all integrity to fall into decay, rightly does the Prophet wish them to be leaders and precursors to the people in their confession of repentance; and further, it behaved them, on account of their office, as we have said of the priests, to lead the way. Joel at the same time shows that the whole people were implicated in guilt, so that none could be excepted, for he bids them all to come with the elders.

Call them, he says, to the house of Jehovah your God, and cry ye to Jehovah. We hence learn why he had spoken of fasting and of sackcloth, even that they might humbly deprecate God’s wrath; for fasting of itself would have been useless, and to put on sackcloth, we know, is in itself but an empty sign: but prayer is what the Prophet sets here in the highest rank, and fasting is only an appendage, and so is sackcloth. Whosoever then puts on sackcloth and withholds prayer, is guilty of mockery; and no one can derive any good from mere fasting; but when fasting and sackcloth are added to prayer, and are as it were handmaids, then they are not uselessly practiced. We may then observe, that the end of fasting and sackcloth was no other, than that the priests together with the whole people, might present themselves suppliantly before God, and confess themselves worthy of destruction, and that they had no hope except from his gratuitous mercy. This is the meaning.