1. Joel son of Pethuel received this message from the Lord:
2. Leaders, listen to this message! Listen to me, all you people who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your life? Did anything like this happen during your fathers’ lifetime?
3. You will tell these things to your children, and your children will tell their children, and your grandchildren will tell the people of the next generation.
4. What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten. And what the swarming locust has left, the hopping locust has eaten. And what the hopping locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten!
5. Drunks, wake up and cry! All of you who drink wine, cry because your sweet wine is finished. You will not taste it again.
6. A powerful nation came to attack my land. Its soldiers were too many to count. Its weapons were as sharp as a lion’s teeth and as powerful as a lion’s jaw.
7. It destroyed my grapevine. Its good vines withered and died. It destroyed my fig tree, stripped off the bark and threw it away.
8. Cry like a young woman crying because the man she was ready to marry has died.
9. Priests, servants of the Lord, cry because there will be no more grain and drink offerings in the Lord’S Temple.
10. The fields are ruined. Even the ground is crying because the grain is destroyed; the new wine is dried up, and the olive oil is gone.