Joel 1:1-12 - An Invasion Of Locusts

¹ This is the Lord's message that was given to Joel the son of Pethuel:

² Listen to this, you elders; pay attention, all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your whole life or in the lifetime of your ancestors? ³ Tell your children about it, have your children tell their children, and their children the following generation. ⁴ What the gazam-locust left the 'arbeh-locust consumed, what the 'arbeh-locust left the yeleq-locust consumed, and what the yeleq-locust left the hasil-locust consumed!

⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you wine drinkers, because the sweet wine has been taken away from you. ⁶ For a nation has invaded our land. There are so many of them they are too numerous to count. Their teeth are like those of a lion; they tear apart their prey like a lioness. ⁷ They have destroyed our vines; they have turned our fig trees into mere splinters. They have completely stripped off the bark and thrown them aside; the twigs are stripped bare. ⁸ Wail like a young virgin clothed in sackcloth, lamenting the death of her husband-to-be. ⁹ No one brings grain offerings or drink offerings to the temple of the Lord anymore. So the priests, those who serve the Lord, are in mourning. ¹⁰ The crops of the fields have been destroyed. The ground is in mourning because the grain has perished. The fresh wine has dried up; the olive oil languishes. ¹¹ Be distressed, farmers; wail, vinedressers, over the wheat and the barley. For the harvest of the field has perished. ¹² The vine has dried up; the fig tree languishes -- the pomegranate, date, and apple as well. In fact, all the trees of the field have dried up. Indeed, the joy of the people has dried up!