Joel 1:1-12

The LORD spoke his word to Joel son of Pethuel: Elders, listen to this message. Listen to me, all you who live in the land. Nothing like this has ever happened during your lifetime or during your ancestors’ lifetimes. Tell your children about these things, let your children tell their children, and let your grandchildren tell their children. What the cutting locusts have left, the swarming locusts have eaten; what the swarming locusts have left, the hopping locusts have eaten, and what the hopping locusts have left, the destroying locusts have eaten. Drunks, wake up and cry! All you people who drink wine, cry! Cry because your wine has been taken away from your mouths. A powerful nation has come into my land with too many soldiers to count. It has teeth like a lion, jaws like a female lion. It has made my grapevine a waste and made my fig tree a stump. It has stripped all the bark off my trees and left the branches white. Cry as a young woman cries when the man she was going to marry has died. There will be no more grain or drink offerings to offer in the Temple of the LORD. Because of this, the priests, the servants of the LORD, are sad. The fields are ruined; the ground is dried up. The grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, and the olive oil runs out. Be sad, farmers. Cry loudly, you who grow grapes. Cry for the wheat and the barley. Cry because the harvest of the field is lost. The vines have become dry, and the fig trees are dried up. The pomegranate trees, the date palm trees, the apple trees— all the trees in the field have died. And the happiness of the people has died, too.