Get dressed and lament, you priests! Wail, you who minister at the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you servants of my God, because no one brings grain offerings or drink offerings to the temple of your God anymore.

How awful that day will be! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come as destruction from the Divine Destroyer.

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm signal on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land shake with fear, for the day of the Lord is about to come. Indeed, it is near!

It will be a day of dreadful darkness, a day of foreboding storm clouds, like blackness spread over the mountains. It is a huge and powerful army -- there has never been anything like it ever before, and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come!

Gather the people; sanctify an assembly! Gather the elders; gather the children and the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom come out from his bedroom and the bride from her private quarters.

The sunlight will be turned to darkness and the moon to the color of blood, before the day of the Lord comes -- that great and terrible day!

Lend your aid and come, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves to that place." Bring down, O Lord, your warriors!

Rush forth with the sickle, for the harvest is ripe! Come, stomp the grapes, for the winepress is full! The vats overflow. Indeed, their evil is great!