2 Hear this, you elders,
And listen, all you inhabitants of the land.
Has this ever happened in your days,
or in the days of your fathers? 3 Tell your children about it,
and have your children tell their children,
and their children, another generation. 4 What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten.
What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten.
What the grasshopper has left, the caterpillar has eaten. 5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine;
for it is cut off from your mouth. 6 For a nation has come up on my land, strong, and without number.
His teeth are the teeth of a lion,
and he has the fangs of a lioness. 7 He has laid my vine waste,
and stripped my fig tree.
He has stripped its bark, and thrown it away.
Its branches are made white.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Joel 1:2-7
Commentary on Joel 1:1-7
(Read Joel 1:1-7)
The most aged could not remember such calamities as were about to take place. Armies of insects were coming upon the land to eat the fruits of it. It is expressed so as to apply also to the destruction of the country by a foreign enemy, and seems to refer to the devastations of the Chaldeans. God is Lord of hosts, has every creature at his command, and, when he pleases, can humble and mortify a proud, rebellious people, by the weakest and most contemptible creatures. It is just with God to take away the comforts which are abused to luxury and excess; and the more men place their happiness in the gratifications of sense, the more severe temporal afflictions are upon them. The more earthly delights we make needful to satisfy us, the more we expose ourselves to trouble.