The Book of Joel

Chapter 1
1 The word of Yahweh, which came to Joel son of Pethuel:
2 Hear this, elders! And give ear, all dwellers of the land! Has this come in your days? Or in the days of your fathers?
3 Concerning it relate to your sons, And your sons to their sons, And their sons to an after generation!
4 The leavings of the larva, the locust eats, And the leavings of the locust, the young-locust eats, And the leavings of the young-locust, the beetle eats.
5 Awake, drunkards, and lament! And howl, all drinkers of wine, over the new wine! For it is cut off from your mouth.
6 For a nation, it comes up against My land, staunch and numberless; Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, And it has fangs of a parent lion.
7 It brings My vine to desolation And My fig tree to a stripped stump. It bares, yea bares it and flings it away; Its intertwining branches are whitened.
8 Sob like a virgin girded with sackcloth, Grieving over the plighted one of her youth.
9 The approach present and the libation are cut off from the house of Yahweh; The priests, ministers of Yahweh’s altar, mourn.
10 The field is devastated; The ground mourns. Indeed the grain, it is devastated; The grape juice is dried up; The clarified oil is wasted away.
11 Be ashamed, farmworkers! Howl, vineyardists! Over the wheat and over the barley, For the harvest of the field perishes.
12 The vine, it is dried up, And the fig tree, it is wasted away. The pomegranate as well as the palm tree and the apricot All the trees of the field, they are dried up; Indeed elation is dried up from the sons of humanity.
13 Gird sackcloth, and wail, priests! Howl, ministers of the altar! Come! Lodge in sackcloth, ministers of my Elohim; For the approach present and the libation are withheld from the house of your Elohim.
14 Hallow a fast! Proclaim a day of restraint! Gather, elders, all the dwellers of the land, to the house of Yahweh your Elohim, And cry out to Yahweh.
15 Alas! Alas! Alas for the day! For near is the day of Yahweh. And as devastation from Him Who-Suffices is it coming.
16 Is not the food cut off in front of our eyes, Rejoicing and exultation from the house of our Elohim?
17 The parted seeds wizen beneath their lumps of dirt; The storehouses, they are made desolate; The underground hoards are demolished, For the grain is dried up.
18 How the beast sighs! The droves of oxen are doleful, For there is no pasture for them. Even the droves of small cattle are exterminated.
19 To You, O Yahweh, am I calling, For fire, it devours the oases of the wilderness, And a blaze, it sets aflame all the trees of the field.
20 Even the beasts of the field are panting for You, For the channels of water are dried up, And fire, it devours the oases of the wilderness.

Chapter 2
1 Blow the trumpet in Zion! And raise a shout of alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the dwellers of the land be disturbed, For coming is the day of Yahweh! For it is near!
2 A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of cloud and murkiness! Like the dawn spreading across the mountains, A people numerous and staunch comes; Nothing like it has occurred from the eon, And after it, it shall not be again, unto years of generation after generation.
3 Before it a fire devours, And behind it is a blaze flaming. Like a garden of Eden is the land before it, Yet behind it is a wilderness of desolation. And, moreover, deliverance comes not to it.
4 Like the appearance of horses is its appearance, And like cavalry, so are they running.
5 Like the sound of chariots on the mountain tops are they bounding along. Like the sound of a blazing fire devouring stubble, Like a people numerous and staunch, arrayed for battle.
6 Before its face are the peoples travailing; All faces draw together in ashy paleness.
7 Like masters of war are they running. Like men of warfare are they ascending a wall. And they are marching, each man on his own way, And their paths are not crossing.
8 They are not jostling, each man his brother; They are marching, each master of war in his file; They are dodging the javelin; They are not breaking rank.
9 They are rushing upon the city; They are running on the wall; They are ascending into the houses; They are entering through the windows like a thief.
10 Before it the earth is disturbed; The heavens quake, The sun and the moon, they are somber, And the stars, they gather back their brightness.
11 Yahweh lifts up His voice before His army, For exceedingly great is His camp, For staunch is the doer of His word. For great is the day of Yahweh and exceedingly fearful; Who shall endure it?
12 Yet even now, averring is Yahweh, Return unto Me with all your heart And with fasting and with lamenting and with wailing;
13 Tear your heart and not your garments, And return to Yahweh your Elohim. For gracious and compassionate is He, Slow to anger and with much benignity, And regretting over the evil.
14 Who knows? He may turn back and regret, And let a blessing remain behind Him, An approach present and a libation for Yahweh your Elohim.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion! Hallow a fast! Proclaim a day of restraint!
16 Gather the people! Hallow the assembly! Convene the elders! Gather the infants and the sucklings at the breasts! The bridegroom shall go forth from his chamber, And the bride from her canopy!
17 Between the portico and the altar the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, shall lament; They shall say, Do commiserate, O Yahweh, over Your people; Do not make Your allotment a reproach, The nations ruling over them. Why should they say among the peoples, Where is their Elohim?
18 Then Yahweh shall be jealous for His land, And He shall spare His people.
19 And Yahweh shall respond and say to His people, Behold Me sending to you grain and grape juice and clarified oil, And you will be satisfied with it. And I shall not make you a reproach among the nations any more.
20 The northerner I shall put far off from you, And I will expel him to an arid country and a desolation, With his vanguard to the eastern sea, And his rear guard to the western sea. His stink will ascend, And his stench shall go up, For he has magnified his deeds.
21 Do not fear, ground! Exult and rejoice, for Yahweh magnifies His deeds.
22 Do not fear, beasts of the field, For the oases of the wilderness will become verdant. For the tree will bear its fruit; The fig tree and the vine, they will give their potency.
23 Exult, sons of Zion! And rejoice in Yahweh your Elohim! For He will give to you the former rain in just measure, And He shall bring down for you the downpour, The former rain and the latter rain as formerly.
24 The threshing sites will be full of cereal, And the winevats will run over with grape juice and clarified oil.
25 I will repay to you for the years which the locust devoured, The young-locust and the beetle and the larva, My great army which I sent among you.
26 Then you will eat, yea eat and be satisfied, And you will praise the Name of Yahweh your Elohim, Who deals with you marvelously; And My people shall not be ashamed for the eon.
27 You will know that within Israel am I, And I am Yahweh your Elohim, And there is none else beside Me; My people shall not be ashamed for the eon.
28 And it will be afterward, I shall pour out My spirit on all flesh; And your sons and your daughters will prophesy, Your elders shall dream dreams, Your choice youth shall see visions.
29 And surely on the menservants and on the maidservants In those days shall I pour out My spirit.
30 And I will give miracles in the heavens and on the earth, Blood and fire and pillars of smoke;
31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, And the moon to blood, Before the coming of the day of Yahweh, The great and advent day.
32 And it will be that everyone who shall call on the Name of Yahweh shall escape, For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, deliverance shall come, Just as Yahweh says, Among the survivors, whom Yahweh is calling.

Chapter 3
1 For, behold, in those days, And in that time, When I shall reverse the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,
2 I will also convene all the nations And bring them down to the Vale of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there concerning My people, And My allotment, Israel, whom they disperse among the nations, And My land which they apportion.
3 For My people, they cast the lot. They are giving a boy for a prostitute, And a girl they sell for wine, that they may drink.
4 Now what are you to Me, Tyre and Sidon, and all the circuits of Philistia? Are you repaying Me a requital? If you are requiting Me, fleetly, quickly I shall reverse your requital on your head,
5 you who have taken My silver and My gold, and have brought My good treasures to your temples.
6 You sell the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem to the sons of the Greeks, that you may remove them far from their own territory.
7 Behold, I shall rouse them from the place where you sell them, and I will reverse your requital on your head.
8 I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them into captivity, to a nation afar, for Yahweh has spoken.
9 Proclaim this among the nations! Hallow a war! Rouse the masters of war! Let all the men of warfare come close and ascend.
10 Pound your mattocks into swords And your pruners into lances! Let even the defeatist say, A master of war am I!
11 Mobilize and come, all nations from round about! Convene there! Settle there Your masters of war, O Yahweh!
12 Let all the nations be roused and ascend to the Vale of Jehoshaphat. For there I shall sit to judge all the nations from round about.
13 Send forth the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the winetrough is full; The winevats run over, for great is their evil.
14 Throngs, throngs in the vale of decision! For near is the day of Yahweh in the vale of decision!
15 The sun and the moon, they are somber, And the stars, they gather back their brightness.
16 Yahweh, from Zion He shall roar And from Jerusalem He shall lift up His voice, The heavens and the earth will quake. Yet Yahweh is a Refuge for His people, And a Stronghold for the sons of Israel.
17 And you will know that I am Yahweh your Elohim, Tabernacling in Zion, My holy mountain; Jerusalem will come to be a holy place, And aliens, they shall not pass in her any longer.
18 It will come in that day, The mountains shall drip with new wine, And the hills shall flow with milk. All the channels of Judah, they shall flow with water, And a spring from the house of Yahweh, it shall go forth, And it will irrigate the wadi Shittim.
19 Egypt, it shall become a desolation, And Edom, it shall become a desolate wilderness Because of wrong done to the sons of Judah, When they shed innocent blood in their land.
20 Judah, it shall be indwelt for the eon, And Jerusalem for generation after generation.
21 I will avenge their bloodshed; I will not hold it innocent, For Yahweh shall tabernacle in Zion.