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.

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.

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.

The fields are wasted, the land has become dry; for the grain is wasted, the new wine is kept back, the oil is poor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Have no fear, O land; be glad with great joy; for the Lord has done great things.

You will have food in full measure, and give praise to the name of the Lord your God, who has done wonders for you:

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.

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.

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.

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