Joel 1

1 ¹The word of our Father that came to Joel son of Pethuel. ^a a v1 The prophets themselves named the Father — Isaiah 63:16, Jeremiah 31:9, Malachi 2:10 — so FHB renders YHWH as "our Father" here, reflecting what they revealed. ²Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in this land. Has anything like this happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? ³Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children, and their children the next generation. ⁴What the cutting locust spared, the swarming locust ate; what the swarming locust spared, the hopping locust ate; and what the hopping locust spared, the destroying locust ate. ^b b v4 The four words name successive waves or kinds of locust; the Hebrew piles them up to show total devastation — what one wave spared, the next consumed. ⁵Wake up, you drunkards, and weep; wail, all you wine drinkers, over the sweet wine, for it has been cut off from your lips.

⁶"For a nation has invaded my land, mighty and beyond number; its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has the fangs of a lioness. ⁷It has devastated my vines and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and cast it aside, leaving their branches bare and white."

⁸Wail like a virgin dressed in mourning clothes for the husband of her youth. ⁹The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of our Father; the priests, the ministers of our Father, mourn. ^c c v9 "House of our Father" replaces "house of the LORD" of other English Translations to recover the relational meaning — God's house is the Father's home. ¹⁰The field is devastated, the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the new wine dries up, the oil fails. ¹¹Be ashamed, you farmers; wail, you grape growers, over the wheat and the barley, for the harvest of the field has perished. ¹²The vine is dried up, and the fig tree withers; the pomegranate, the palm, and the apple—all the trees of the field are dried up. Surely joy has withered away from all people.

Return to Your Father

¹³Put on mourning clothes and lament, you priests; wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in mourning clothes, you ministers of my Father; for the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your Father. ¹⁴Declare a fast; call a sacred assembly. Gather the elders and all who live in the land to the house of our Father, and cry out to our Father. ¹⁵Alas for the day! For the day of our Father is near, and it will come like destruction from the Almighty. ^d d v15 Other translations read "day of the LORD." FHB names the Person whose day this is: our Father, who comes to defend and restore his children. ¹⁶Is not the food cut off right before our eyes — joy and gladness gone from the house of our Father? ¹⁷The seeds shrivel in the parched ground; the storehouses are desolate, the granaries are torn down, for the grain has dried up. ¹⁸How the animals groan! The herds of cattle wander in confusion because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep suffer. ¹⁹To you, our Father, I call, for fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field. ²⁰Even the wild animals cry out to you, for the streams have dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.