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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And I will send punishment for their blood, for which punishment has not been sent, for the Lord is living in Zion.