The Book of Joel

1 Jehovah’s word that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

2 Listen to this, old men, and give ear, all that live in the earth: has there been this in your days or in your fathers’ days? 3 Tell your children the story of it, and let them tell their children, and their children another generation. 4 What was left from the early grasshoppers the spring grasshoppers ate, and what was left from the spring grasshoppers the full-grown grasshoppers ate, and what was left from the full-grown grasshoppers the fall grasshoppers ate. 5 Wake up and weep, drunkards, and howl, all you wine-drinkers, over pomegranate-wine, because it is swept away from before you. 6 For against my country has come up a nation multitudinous, uncountable; its teeth are lions’ teeth, it has a lioness’s fangs. 7 It has made my grapevine a skeleton and my fig-tree a whittling; it has stripped it and thrown away the strippings, its shoots show white. 8 Lament like a maiden with a sackcloth tied round her for the spouse of her girlhood.

9 Grain-offering and libation are swept away from Jehovah’s house; the priests, the servitors of Jehovah, mourn. 10 The countryside is smitten, the soil is mourning: for grain is smitten, grape-juice is a failure, oil lies forlorn; 11 plowmen are disappointed, vineyardists howl, for wheat and for barley, because field harvests are lost, 12 the vines are a disappointment and the fig-tree stands forlorn; pomegranate, date-palm too and apple, all the trees in the fields, are dried out; for rejoicing has passed away in disappointment from the children of men. 13* Belt yourselves up and wail, priests; howl, altar servitors; go in and spend the night in sackcloths, servitors of my God; for grain-offering and libation are kept back from Jehovah’s house. 14 Ordain a fast, proclaim a holiday; elders, bring together all the inhabitants of the country at the house of your God Jehovah, and cry to Jehovah.

15 O, O, the day! for Jehovah’s day is near and like a shattering from Shaddai it comes. 16 Is not food swept away before your eyes, gladness and glee from the house of our God? 17** Kernels are befouled with dirt under their brooms; storehouses are desolate; bins are demolished, because grain is a disappointment; what should we put in them? 18* Herds of cows wander about at random because there is no pasturage for them; the flocks of sheep too stand aghast. 19* To you, Jehovah, they call; for fire has eaten up wilderness pastures and flame has set ablaze all the trees on the range. 20 Even range beasts stretch up to you because water-bearing gorges are dried out and fire has eaten up wilderness pastures.

2 Blow a ram-horn in Sion and sound an alarm on my sacred mountain; let all the inhabitants of the country quake, because Jehovah’s day is coming, it is almost here, 2* a day of darkness and gloom, a day of cloud and thick air. Over the mountains is spread like a daybreak a great and numerous people whose like has not come since the beginning of time nor will again be for generation after generation. 3 Before them a fire has eaten and behind them a flame blazes; the country is like the garden of ʽEden before them and is a desolate wilderness behind them, and there is not a thing that has escaped them. 4* Their looks are as if they were ponies, and just like horses they run; 5 with a sound as if of chariots they dance on the mountaintops, with a sound as if of a flame of fire eating up stubble, like a numerous soldiery drawn up for battle. 6 Before them peoples are unmanned, all faces are contorted. 7* They run like warriors, go up a wall like soldiers; and each goes along his own course, they do not borrow each other’s paths, 8 nor jostle each other, they go each along his own street; and they throw themselves in among the weapons without breaking their march. 9 They invade the city; they run on the wall, get up into the houses, get in through the windows like a thief. 10 Before them earth shook, sky quaked, sun and moon went dark and stars withheld their radiance, 11 and Jehovah made his voice heard before his troops, for very large is his army, numerous are they that carry out his will. For great is Jehovah’s day, and very terrible, and who will hold out through it?

12 But even now, quoth Jehovah, come back to me with all your hearts and with fasting and weeping and wailing, 13 and tear your hearts and not your clothes and turn back to your God Jehovah, because he is kindly and tenderhearted, patient and very friendly, and repents of evil. 14 Who knows but he will turn back and repent and leave a blessing remaining behind him, a grain-offering and libation for our God Jehovah?

15 Sound a ram-horn in Sion, ordain a fast, proclaim a holiday; bring people together, ordain an assembly, 16 gather old men, bring together children from play and babies at the breasts; let bridegroom come out from his chamber, bride from her bower; let the priests, the servitors of Jehovah, 17 weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say “Spare your people, Jehovah, and do not give your estate to be taunted and to be ruled by heathen nations; why should they say among the peoples ‘Where is their God?’”

18 And Jehovah was jealous for his country and had mercy on his people; 19 and Jehovah answered his people “Here, I am sending you the grain and the grape-juice and the oil, and you shall have your fill of them, and I will not give you to be taunted again among the nations. 20* And I will take the northerner off you far away, and banish him to a country of drought and desolation, his face to the eastern sea and his hinder end to the western sea, for his stench to come up, because he has done great things. 21* Do not be afraid, soil; jubilate and make merry, because Jehovah has done great things. 22 Do not be afraid, beasts on the range, for wilderness pastures have come out, for trees have borne their fruit, fig-trees and grapevines have yielded their wealth, 23* and the sons of Sion will jubilate and make merry in your God Jehovah because he has given you refreshment fairly and sent down showers for you, autumn rain and spring rain as he had at first, 24 and the threshing-floors will be full of grain and the presses brimming with grape-juice and oil; 25 and I will make good to you the years that the spring and summer and fall and early grasshoppers ate, my great corps that I sent among you; 26 and you shall eat your fill on and on, and praise the name of your God Jehovah who has worked with you in extraordinary fashion; and my people shall not be put to shame forever, 27 and you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I Jehovah am your God and there is no other, and my people shall not be put to shame forever.

28 And after this I will pour out my spirit on all mortals and your sons and daughters will be under the power, your old men will have dreams and your young men visions, 29 and on the very slaves I will pour out my spirit in those days; 30 and I will give prodigies in the sky and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke; 31 the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of Jehovah’s great and terrible day. 32 And everyone who calls on Jehovah’s name will come off safe; for on Mount Sion and in Jerusalem there will be escape, as Jehovah has said, and among the survivors whom Jehovah calls.

3* For lo, in those days and at that time, when I come back to Judah and Jerusalem, 2* I will gather all the nations and bring them down to Jehoshaphat Vale, and I will plead against them there the case of my people and of my estate Israel, whom they have dispersed among the nations and divided up my country; 3 and over my people they threw lots, and gave a boy for a prostitute and sold a girl for wine and drank it up. 4 And, too, what is your relation to me, Tyre and Sidon and all the marches of Philistia? are you paying off a score against me? and if you are starting dealings with me, with promptest speed I will send your dealings back on your own heads, 5* that you have taken my silver and gold and brought into your temples the best of my things of beauty, 6 and the sons of Judah and of Jerusalem you have sold to the sons of the Greeks so as to get them far away from their territory: 7 here I am going to rouse them out of the place to which you sold them, and will send your dealings back on your own heads 8 and sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Shebaites into a far-off nation, because Jehovah has spoken.

9 Proclaim this among the nations: ordain war, rouse the champions, let all the soldiers come on and come up. 10 Pound your hoes into swords and your pruning-hooks into lances; let the weakling declare himself a champion. 11** Come with a rush, all nations from all sides, and gather; there, Jehovah, have your champions come down. 12 Let the nations be roused and come up to Jehoshaphat Vale; for there I will sit to judge all the nations from all sides. 13* Reach out a sickle, because harvest is ripe; go in, tread, because winepress is full, the presses are brimming because there is so much of their foam. 14 Hosts, hosts, in Decision Vale! for Jehovah’s day is near in Decision Vale. 15 Sun and moon go dark and stars withhold their radiance, 16 and Jehovah roars out of Sion and raises his voice from Jerusalem, and sky and earth shake, but Jehovah is a refuge for his people and a citadel for the sons of Israel. 17* And you shall know that I your God Jehovah make my abode on my sacred mountain Sion; and Jerusalem shall be sacred, and outsiders shall not pass through it again.

18 And on that day the mountains will drip pomegranate-wine and the hills will run milk, and all the ravines of Judah will run water; and a spring will come out of Jehovah’s house and water Acacia Arroyo. 19 Egypt will become a desolation and Edom will become a desolate wilderness, for their outrage on the sons of Judah whose innocent blood they shed in their country; 20 but Judah will be settled forever and Jerusalem to generation after generation. 21* And I will avenge their blood which I did not avenge; and Jehovah makes his abode in Sion.

MARGINAL NOTES TO JOEL