Chapter 1

  The word of the Lord which came to Joel, the son of Pethuel.  

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  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?  

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  Give the story of it to your children, and let them give it to their children, and their children to another generation.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  Make sounds of grief like a virgin dressed in haircloth for the husband of her early years.  

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  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.  

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  The fields are wasted, the land has become dry; for the grain is wasted, the new wine is kept back, the oil is poor.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  Sorrow for the day! for the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Ruler of all it will come.  

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  Is not food cut off before our eyes? joy and delight from the house of our God?  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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