The Word Comes to Joel
1 1 The 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. 2 Hear 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? 3 Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children, and their children the next generation. 4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten; and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. 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. 5 Wake 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. 7 It 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.
8 Wail like a virgin dressed in mourning clothes for the husband of her youth. c c v8 Sackcloth was coarse, rough cloth worn as a public sign of grief and mourning. 9 The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of our Father; the priests, the ministers of our Father, mourn. d d 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. 10 The field is devastated, the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the new wine dries up, the oil fails. 11 Be ashamed, you farmers; wail, you grape growers, over the wheat and the barley, for the harvest of the field has perished. 12 The 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
13 Put 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. 14 Declare 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. 15 Alas for the day! For the day of our Father is near, and it will come like destruction from the Almighty. e e 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. 16 Is not the food cut off right before our eyes — joy and gladness gone from the house of our Father? 17 The seeds shrivel in the parched ground the storehouses are desolate, the granaries are torn down for the grain has dried up. 18 How the animals groan! The herds of cattle wander in confusion because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep suffer. 19 To you, our Father, I call, for fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field. 20 Even the wild animals cry out to you, for the streams have dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.