11 The word of the Lord which came to Joel, the son of Pethuel. 2 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? 3 Give the story of it to your children, and let them give it to their children, and their children to another generation. 4 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. 5 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. 6 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. 7 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.
8 Make sounds of grief like a virgin dressed in haircloth for the husband of her early years. 9 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. 10 The fields are wasted, the land has become dry; for the grain is wasted, the new wine is kept back, the oil is poor. 11 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. 12 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. 13 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.
14 Let a time be fixed for going without food, have a holy meeting, let the old men, even all the people of the land, come together to the house of the Lord your God, crying out to the Lord. 15 Sorrow for the day! for the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Ruler of all it will come. 16 Is not food cut off before our eyes? joy and delight from the house of our God? 17 The grains have become small and dry under the spade; the store-houses are made waste, the grain-stores are broken down; for the grain is dry and dead. 18 What sounds of pain come from the beasts! the herds of cattle are at a loss because there is no grass for them; even the flocks of sheep are no longer to be seen. 19 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. 20 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.
31 And after that, it will come about, says the Lord, that I will send my spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will be prophets, your old men will have dreams, your young men will see visions: 2 And on the servants and the servant-girls in those days I will send my spirit. 3 And I will let wonders be seen in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. 4 The sun will be made dark and the moon turned to blood, before the great day of the Lord comes, a day to be feared. 5 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. 6 For in those days and in that time, when I let the fate of Judah and Jerusalem be changed, 7 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. 8 And they have put the fate of my people to the decision of chance: giving a boy for the price of a loose woman and a girl for a drink of wine.
9 And further, what are you to me, O Tyre and Zidon and all the circle of Philistia? will you give me back any payment? and if you do, quickly and suddenly I will send it back on your head, 10 For you have taken my silver and my gold, putting in the houses of your gods my beautiful and pleasing things. 11 And the children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem you have given for a price to the sons of the Greeks, to send them far away from their land: 12 See, I will have them moved from the place where you have sent them, and will let what you have done come back on your head; 13 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. 14 Give this out among the nations; make ready for war: get the strong men awake; let all the men of war come near, let them come up. 15 Get your plough-blades hammered into swords, and your vine-knives into spears: let the feeble say, I am strong.
16 Come quickly, all you nations round about, and get yourselves together there: make your strong ones come down, O Lord. 17 Let the nations be awake, and come to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there I will be seated as judge of all the nations round about.
18 Put in the blade, for the grain is ready: come, get you down, for the wine-crusher is full, the vessels are overflowing; for great is their evil-doing. 19 Masses on masses in the valley of decision! for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. 20 The sun and the moon have become dark, and the stars keep back their shining. 21 And the Lord will be thundering from Zion, and his voice will be sounding from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth will be shaking: but the Lord will be a breastplate for his people and a strong place for the children of Israel. 22 And you will be certain that I am the Lord your God, living in Zion, my holy mountain: and Jerusalem will be holy, and no strange person will ever again go through her. 23 And it will come about in that day that the mountains will be dropping sweet wine, and the hills will be flowing with milk, and all the streams of Judah will be flowing with water; and a fountain will come out from the house of the Lord, watering the valley of acacia-trees. 24 Egypt will be a waste and Edom a land of destruction, because of the evil done to the children of Judah, because they have let blood be drained out in their land without cause. 25 But Judah will be peopled for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. 26 And I will send punishment for their blood, for which punishment has not been sent, for the Lord is living in Zion.
