1:1 The word of the Lord which came to Joel, the son of Pethuel.
1:2 Give ear to this, you old men, and take note, you people of
 the land. Has this ever been in your days, or in the days of
 your fathers?
1:3 Give the story of it to your children, and let them give it
 to their children, and their children to another generation.
1:4 What the worm did not make a meal of, has been taken by the
 locust; and what the locust did not take, has been food for the
 plant-worm; and what the plant-worm did not take, has been food
 for the field-fly.
1:5 Come out of your sleep, you who are overcome with wine, and
 give yourselves to weeping; give cries of sorrow, all you
 drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it has been
 cut off from your mouths.
1:6 For a nation has come up over my land, strong and without
 number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the back
 teeth of a great lion.
1:7 By him my vine is made waste and my fig-tree broken: he has
 taken all its fruit and sent it down to the earth; its branches
 are made white.
1:8 Make sounds of grief like a virgin dressed in haircloth for
 the husband of her early years.
1:9 The meal offering and the drink offering have been cut off
 from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord's servants,
 are sorrowing.
1:10 The fields are wasted, the land has become dry; for the
 grain is wasted, the new wine is kept back, the oil is poor.
1:11 The farmers are shamed, the workers in the vine-gardens
 give cries of grief, for the wheat and the barley; for the
 produce of the fields has come to destruction.
1:12 The vine has become dry and the fig-tree is feeble; the
 pomegranate and the palm-tree and the apple-tree, even all the
 trees of the field, are dry: because joy has gone from the sons
 of men.
1:13 Put haircloth round you and give yourselves to sorrow, you
 priests; give cries of grief, you servants of the altar: come
 in, and, clothed in haircloth, let the night go past, you
 servants of my God: for the meal offering and the drink
 offering have been kept back from the house of your God.
1:14 Let a time be fixed for going without food, have a holy
 meeting, let the old men, even all the people of the land, come
 together to the house of the Lord your God, crying out to the
 Lord.
1:15 Sorrow for the day! for the day of the Lord is near, and as
 destruction from the Ruler of all it will come.
1:16 Is not food cut off before our eyes? joy and delight from
 the house of our God?
1:17 The grains have become small and dry under the spade; the
 store-houses are made waste, the grain-stores are broken down;
 for the grain is dry and dead.
1:18 What sounds of pain come from the beasts! the herds of
 cattle are at a loss because there is no grass for them; even
 the flocks of sheep are no longer to be seen.
1:19 O Lord, my cry goes up to you: for fire has put an end to
 the grass-lands of the waste, and all the trees of the field
 are burned with its flame.
1:20 The beasts of the field are turning to you with desire: for
 the water-streams are dry and fire has put an end to the
 grass-lands of the waste.
2:1 Let the horn be sounded in Zion, and a war-cry in my holy
 mountain; let all the people of the land be troubled: for the
 day of the Lord is coming;
2:2 For a day of dark and deep shade is near, a day of cloud and
 black night: like a black cloud a great and strong people is
 covering the mountains; there has never been any like them and
 will not be after them again, from generation to generation.
2:3 Before them fire sends destruction, and after them flame is
 burning: the land is like the garden of Eden before them, and
 after them an unpeopled waste; truly, nothing has been kept
 safe from them.
2:4 Their form is like the form of horses, and they are running
 like war-horses.
2:5 Like the sound of war-carriages they go jumping on the tops
 of the mountains; like the noise of a flame of fire burning up
 the grain-stems, like a strong people lined up for the fight.
2:6 At their coming the people are bent with pain: all faces
 become red together.
2:7 They are running like strong men, they go over the wall like
 men of war; every man goes straight on his way, their lines are
 not broken.
2:8 No one is pushing against another; everyone goes straight on
 his way: bursting through the sword points, their order is not
 broken.
2:9 They make a rush on the town, running on the wall; they go
 up into the houses and in through the windows like a thief.
2:10 The earth is troubled before them and the heavens are
 shaking: the sun and the moon have become dark, and the stars
 keep back their shining:
2:11 And the Lord is thundering before his forces; for very
 great is his army; for he is strong who gives effect to his
 word: for the day of the Lord is great and greatly to be
 feared, and who has strength against it?
2:12 But even now, says the Lord, come back to me with all your
 heart, keeping from food, with weeping and with sorrow:
2:13 Let your hearts be broken, and not your clothing, and come
 back to the Lord your God: for he is full of grace and pity,
 slow to be angry and great in mercy, ready to be turned from
 his purpose of punishment.
2:14 May it not be that he will again let his purpose be changed
 and let a blessing come after him, even a meal offering and a
 drink offering for the Lord your God?
2:15 Let a horn be sounded in Zion, let a time be fixed for
 going without food, have a holy meeting:
2:16 Get the people together, make the mass of the people holy,
 send for the old men, get together the children and babies at
 the breast: let the newly married man come out of his room and
 the bride from her tent.
2:17 Let the priests, the servants of the Lord, be weeping
 between the covered way and the altar, and let them say, Have
 mercy on your people, O Lord, do not give up your heritage to
 shame, so that the nations become their rulers: why let them
 say among the peoples, Where is their God?
2:18 Then the Lord had a care for the honour of his land and had
 pity on his people.
2:19 And the Lord made answer and said to his people, See, I
 will send you grain and wine and oil in full measure: and I
 will no longer let you be shamed among the nations:
2:20 I will send the one from the north far away from you,
 driving him into a dry and waste land, with his front to the
 sea of the east and his back to the sea of the west, and the
 smell of him will go up, even his evil smell will go up.
2:21 Have no fear, O land; be glad with great joy; for the Lord
 has done great things.
2:22 Have no fear, you beasts of the field, for the grass-lands
 of the waste are becoming green, for the trees are producing
 fruit, the fig-tree and the vine give out their strength.
2:23 Be glad, then, you children of Zion, and have joy in the
 Lord your God: for he gives you food in full measure, making
 the rain come down for you, the early and the late rain as at
 the first.
2:24 And the floors will be full of grain, and the
 crushing-places overflowing with wine and oil.
2:25 I will give back to you the years which were food for the
 locust, the plant-worm, the field-fly, and the worm, my great
 army which I sent among you.
2:26 You will have food in full measure, and give praise to the
 name of the Lord your God, who has done wonders for you:
2:27 And you will be certain that I am in Israel, and that I am
 the Lord your God, and there is no other: and my people will
 never be shamed.
2:28 And after that, it will come about, says the Lord, that I
 will send my spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your
 daughters will be prophets, your old men will have dreams, your
 young men will see visions:
2:29 And on the servants and the servant-girls in those days I
 will send my spirit.
2:30 And I will let wonders be seen in the heavens and on the
 earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
2:31 The sun will be made dark and the moon turned to blood,
 before the great day of the Lord comes, a day to be feared.
2:32 And it will be that whoever makes his prayer to the name of
 the Lord will be kept safe: for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
 some will be kept safe, as the Lord has said, and will be among
 the small band marked out by the Lord.
3:1 For in those days and in that time, when I let the fate of
 Judah and Jerusalem be changed,
3:2 I will get together all the nations, and make them come down
 into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and there I will take up with
 them the cause of my people and of my heritage Israel, whom
 they have sent wandering among the nations, and of my land
 which has been parted by them.
3:3 And they have put the fate of my people to the decision of
 chance: giving a boy for the price of a loose woman and a girl
 for a drink of wine.
3:4 And further, what are you to me, O Tyre and Zidon and all
 the circle of Philistia? will you give me back any payment? and
 if you do, quickly and suddenly I will send it back on your
 head,
3:5 For you have taken my silver and my gold, putting in the
 houses of your gods my beautiful and pleasing things.
3:6 And the children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem you
 have given for a price to the sons of the Greeks, to send them
 far away from their land:
3:7 See, I will have them moved from the place where you have
 sent them, and will let what you have done come back on your
 head;
3:8 I will give your sons and your daughters into the hands of
 the children of Judah for a price, and they will give them for
 a price to the men of Sheba, a nation far off: for the Lord has
 said it.
3:9 Give this out among the nations; make ready for war: get the
 strong men awake; let all the men of war come near, let them
 come up.
3:10 Get your plough-blades hammered into swords, and your
 vine-knives into spears: let the feeble say, I am strong.
3:11 Come quickly, all you nations round about, and get
 yourselves together there: make your strong ones come down, O
 Lord.
3:12 Let the nations be awake, and come to the valley of
 Jehoshaphat: for there I will be seated as judge of all the
 nations round about.
3:13 Put in the blade, for the grain is ready: come, get you
 down, for the wine-crusher is full, the vessels are
 overflowing; for great is their evil-doing.
3:14 Masses on masses in the valley of decision! for the day of
 the Lord is near in the valley of decision.
3:15 The sun and the moon have become dark, and the stars keep
 back their shining.
3:16 And the Lord will be thundering from Zion, and his voice
 will be sounding from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth
 will be shaking: but the Lord will be a breastplate for his
 people and a strong place for the children of Israel.
3:17 And you will be certain that I am the Lord your God, living
 in Zion, my holy mountain: and Jerusalem will be holy, and no
 strange person will ever again go through her.
3:18 And it will come about in that day that the mountains will
 be dropping sweet wine, and the hills will be flowing with
 milk, and all the streams of Judah will be flowing with water;
 and a fountain will come out from the house of the Lord,
 watering the valley of acacia-trees.
3:19 Egypt will be a waste and Edom a land of destruction,
 because of the evil done to the children of Judah, because they
 have let blood be drained out in their land without cause.
3:20 But Judah will be peopled for ever, and Jerusalem from
 generation to generation.
3:21 And I will send punishment for their blood, for which
 punishment has not been sent, for the Lord is living in Zion.
