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- ¶ THE word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Bethuel:
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- Hear this, O you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land!
Has such a calamity ever happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
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- Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.
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- What the palmerworm has left, the locust has eaten;
and what the swarming locust has left, the crawling locust has eaten;
and what the crawling locust has left, the cankerworm has eaten.
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- Awake, O you drunkards, and weep;
and howl, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine;
for it is cut off from your mouth.
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- A nation has come up against my land, strong, and without number;
whose teeth are like the teeth of a lion, and his fangs as the fangs of a lion’s whelp.
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- He has laid my vine waste, and has cut off my fig tree and thrown it away;
the branches thereof are made white.
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- ¶ Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
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- The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD;
the kings mourn, and the priests who minister to the LORD mourn.
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- The field is plundered, the land mourns;
for the wheat is plundered, the new wine is dried up, the olive orchards are destroyed.
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- Be ashamed, O you husbandmen;
howl, O you vinedressers, howl for the wheat and for the barley because the harvest of the fields is perished.
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- The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languishes;
the pomegranate tree, the palm tree, and the apple tree, all the trees of the field are withered;
joy is fled from the sons of men.
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- Gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament, O you priests;
howl, O you ministers of the altar;
go in, spend the night in sackcloth, O you ministers of my God, because the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
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- ¶ Sanctify 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 to the LORD your God, and say,
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- Alas, alas for the day!
for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as plunder from God shall it come.
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- And, behold, before our eyes the food is cut off from the house of our God, and gladness and joy have ceased.
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- The cows languish at their mangers, the granaries are laid waste, the winepresses are thrown down, and the grain is dried up.
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- How the beasts groan!
the herds of cattle cry because they have no pasture;
yea, the flocks of sheep also are perished.
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- O LORD, to thee will I cry;
for the fire has devoured the camps of shepherds in the wilderness, and the flame has burned all the trees of the field.
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- Also the beasts of the field cry out to thee because the ponds of water are dried up, and the fire has devoured the camps of shepherds in the wilderness.
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