The word of Jehovah which came to  ¹Joel the son of Pethuel.

 ¹Hear 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?

Tell your children about it,
And let your children tell their children,
And let their children tell the next generation.

What the  ¹cutting 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.

Awake, drunkards, and weep;
Howl, all you who drink wine,
Because of the fresh wine;
For it has been cut off from your mouth.

For a  ¹nation 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.

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.

Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth
Over the husband of her youth.

The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off
From the house of Jehovah;
The priests, the ministers of Jehovah, mourn.

The field is a waste;
The land mourns,
For the grain is a waste;
The new wine is dried up;
The fresh oil languishes.

Be ashamed, O farmers;
Howl, O vinedressers,
For the wheat and for the barley,
Because the harvest of the field has perished.

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.

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.

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.

Alas for the day!
For the  ¹day of Jehovah has drawn near,
And as the destruction from the Almighty it will come.

Is not our food
Cut off before our eyes,
Joy and exultation
From the house of our God?

The seeds have shriveled
Under their  ¹clods;
The storehouses have been desolated;
The barns have been torn down;
For the grain is dried up.

How the beasts groan!
The herds of cattle are confused,
For they have no pasture;
The flocks of sheep also suffer punishment.

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.

The beasts of the field also
Cry to You,
For the waterways
Are dried up,
And fire has devoured
The pastures of the wilderness.

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:

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.

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.

Their appearance is like the appearance of horses;
And as horsemen, so they run.

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.

At their presence the peoples writhed in anguish;
All faces became pale.

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.

Nor do they crowd each other;
They march, each on his highway.
Though they fall among weapons,
They do not break off their progress.

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.

The earth quakes before them;
The heavens shake;
The sun and the moon grow dark,
And the stars withdraw their shining.

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?

Yet even now,
Declares Jehovah,
Turn to Me with all your heart
And with fasting and weeping and mourning;

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.

Who knows whether He will turn and repent
And leave a blessing behind Him,
A  ¹meal offering and a  ¹drink offering
To Jehovah your God?

 ¹Blow a trumpet in Zion;
 ²Sanctify a fast;
Call a  ³solemn assembly;

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.

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?

Then Jehovah became jealous for  ¹His land,
And He spared His people.

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,

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.

Do not fear, O land;
Be glad and rejoice,
For Jehovah has done great things.

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.

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  ¹early rain and the  ¹late rain
At the beginning of the season.

And the threshing floors will be full of grain,
And the wine vats will overflow with new wine and fresh oil.

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.

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.

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.

And afterward I will  ¹pour 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.

Indeed even upon the male and female slaves
In those days I will pour out My Spirit.

And I will  ¹show wonders in the heavens and on earth:
Blood and fire and pillars of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the great and terrible
 ¹Day of Jehovah comes.

And everyone who  ¹calls 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.

For indeed, in those days and at that time
When I turn the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,

I will  ¹gather all the nations
And will bring them down to the valley of  ²Jehoshaphat;
And I will enter into  ³judgment with them there
Because of My people and My inheritance Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the nations.
And they have divided My land

And have cast lots for My people;
And they have given a boy for a prostitute
And sold a girl for wine to drink.

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.

In that you have taken My silver and My gold,
And have brought My fine precious things into your temples,

And have sold to the children of the  ¹Javanim
The children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem,
In order to remove them
Far from their borders;

I will rouse them out of the place
To which you have sold them,
And will return your recompense upon your own head.

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.

Proclaim this among the nations:
Prepare the battle;
Rouse the mighty men;
Let all the men of battle
Draw near; let them go up.

Beat your plowshares into swords,
And your pruning knives into spears;
Let the weak say,
I am mighty.

Hurry and come,
All you surrounding nations,
And be gathered.
There cause Your  ¹mighty ones to descend, O Jehovah!

Let the nations rouse themselves and come up
To the valley of Jehoshaphat.
For there I will sit to judge
All the surrounding nations.

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.

Multitudes, multitudes,
In the valley of decision;
For the day of Jehovah has drawn near
In the valley of decision.

The sun and the moon grow dark,
And the stars withdraw their shining.

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  ¹shelter to His people
And a stronghold to the children of Israel.

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.

And in that day
 ¹The 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  ²fountain will go forth from the house of Jehovah,
And it will water the valley of Shittim.

 ¹Egypt 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.

But Judah will abide forever,
And Jerusalem, from generation to generation;

And I will acquit them of their bloodshed that I had not acquitted them of,
For Jehovah dwells in Zion.