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Joel 1

KJV · Chapter 1/3

1The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

2Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?

3Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

4That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.

5Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.

6For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.

7He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

8Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

9The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn.

10The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.

11Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished.

12The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.

13Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.

14Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord,

15Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

16Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

17The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered.

18How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

19O Lord, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.

20The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

A devastating locust plague destroys the crops of Judah, cutting off food, joy, and even the offerings at the temple. Joel calls priests and people to a solemn fast in the face of this disaster.

Explanation

The book of Joel opens with a real and visible agricultural catastrophe: successive waves of locusts (palmerworm, locust, cankerworm, and caterpillar) devour everything in their path, like an invading army. In Judah's agrarian economy, this meant widespread famine, since wheat, wine, and oil were the foundation of daily food and also of the offerings brought to the temple. Joel interprets this natural disaster as a wake-up call from God, not merely an accident of nature. His response is not panic, but calling an assembly for fasting and prayer. The application for today is that material crises can be opportunities to reexamine our relationship with God, rather than simply causes for despair.

Fun facts

  • Locust swarms in the ancient Near East could cover areas of hundreds of square kilometers and devour all vegetation within hours — a phenomenon well documented by historians and still observed today in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
  • The sequence of four insect names in verse 4 likely describes stages of the same insect (from young to adult) or successive waves of infestation, intensifying the idea of total, repeated destruction.

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Joel 1:1The book of Joel doesn't mention any king or name a foreign empire, so scholars don't even agree on which century it was written in, ranging from the ninth to the fifth century B.C. What can be said for certain is the setting: Judah and Jerusalem, hit by a locust plague so massive it became a symbol of God's own judgment.
  2. Joel 1:2Joel calls the elders to bear witness: a calamity of this magnitude — the locust plague — had never happened before, not even in the memory of their fathers.
  3. Joel 1:3Orders that this story be told from generation to generation, as a mark so serious that the people must never forget it.
  4. Joel 1:4The text uses four different words for locust (the palmerworm, the locust, the cankerworm, the caterpillar), which may be growth stages of the insect or names for successive swarms; either way, it is a plague that devastates in waves, leaving nothing behind for the next.
  5. Joel 1:5A direct call to the drunkards: wake up, because the locust plague even destroyed the wine they loved to drink.
  6. Joel 1:6The 'nation' here is the locust swarm itself, compared to an invading army with the teeth of a lion — as devastating as a real military invasion.
  7. Joel 1:7The plague wrecked the vineyards and fig trees, stripping even the bark off the plants and leaving the branches white and dead.
  8. Joel 1:8The land must mourn like a young widow who lost her husband right after the wedding — a deep, unexpected grief.
  9. Joel 1:9With no wheat and no wine, the priests could no longer make the temple's daily offerings — the famine became a religious crisis too, because normal worship simply stopped.
  10. Joel 1:10Summarizes the total agricultural devastation: wheat, wine, and oil, the three pillars of the era's economy, all destroyed at once.
  11. Joel 1:11Farmers and winemakers mourn publicly because the entire harvest, of wheat and barley, was lost.
  12. Joel 1:12A list of fruit trees all withered — the people's joy disappears along with the plants that sustained their lives.
  13. Joel 1:13A special summons to the priests to put on sackcloth, because without a harvest there is no way to keep making the daily offerings at the temple.
  14. Joel 1:14A call to a solemn fast, gathering everyone at the temple to cry out to God together in the face of the crisis.
  15. Joel 1:15'The day of the Lord' is a phrase that appears in almost every minor prophet: it isn't a date on a calendar, but any moment when God intervenes decisively to judge or to save — here, the locust plague itself is already treated as a preview of that day.
  16. Joel 1:16A rhetorical question: everyone can already see with their own eyes that the food is gone and the joy of the temple has vanished.
  17. Joel 1:17Even the seeds planted rot under the soil, and the barns stand empty and broken down for lack of wheat.
  18. Joel 1:18The animals suffer too, groaning for lack of pasture — the famine reaches even the cattle and the flocks of sheep.
  19. Joel 1:19The prophet himself cries out to God, describing the devastation as a fire that consumed everything — a strong image for the effect of the drought and the plague.
  20. Joel 1:20Even the wild animals 'cry' to God because the rivers have completely dried up — all of creation suffers along with the people.

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