2 Hear this, you elders,

≈ and listen, all you people that live in this country.

Has this sort of thing ever happened in your lifetime

≈ or in the days of your ancestors?

3 Tell your children about it,

and your children to their children,

and their children to the following generation.

4 What the cutting locusts left behind, the swarming locusts have eaten,

and what the swarming locusts left behind, the hopping locusts have eaten,

and what the hopping locusts left behind, the destroying locusts have eaten.

5 Wake up, drunkards, and weep.

Yes, wail, all you wine drinkers.

Wail about the sweet wine, because it’s all gone now.

6 Because a powerful nation (of locusts) with innumerable soldiers has come against my land,

Its teeth are like a lion’s teeth,

≈ and the fangs are like those of a lioness.[ref]

7 It’s made my grapevine into a piece of rubbish

≈ and my fig tree into splinters.

Stripping everything, it’s stripped it and thrown it away.

Its branches have become white (without the bark).

8 Mourn like a young woman dressed in sackcloth after losing her young husband.

9 The grain offering and the drink offering have been discontinued at Yahweh’s temple.

The priests mourn—Yahweh’s servants.

10 The countryside has been devastated.

The soil mourns, because the grain has been destroyed.

The new wine dried up,

≈ The fresh oil isn’t good.

11 Feel shame, farmers, for the wheat and for the barley.

≈ Wail, vinedressers, because the harvest from the countryside has perished.

12 The grapevine has dried up and the fig tree has been made weak.

≈ The pomegranate tree, also the palm tree and the apple tree, all of the trees across the countryside have dried up.

→ So humanity’s joy has dried up.

13 Get dressed in sackcloth and sing dirges, you priests.

≈ Wail, you servants of the altar.

Come, spend the night in sackcloth, servants of my god,

because the grain offering and the drink offering have been withheld from the house of your god.

14 Consecrate a fast,

≈ call an assembly.

Gather the elders and all the residents of the country

to the house of Yahweh your god,

and cry out to Yahweh.

15 What a terrible day,

because Yahweh’s day is near,

and it will come as destruction from the powerful one.[ref]

16 Hasn’t our food been cut off right in front of our eyes,

and joy and gladness cut off from God’s house?

17 The seeds have shrivelled under their clods.

The storehouses are in ruins.

The granaries have been torn down,

because the grain has dried up.

18 How the livestock groan.

≈ The herds of cattle are perplexed,

because there’s no pasture to graze.

Also the flocks of sheep have suffered.

19 I call for help to you, Yahweh,

because fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness,

and the flame has burnt all the trees in the countryside.

20 Even the wild animals pant for you,

because the streams of water have dried up,

and fire has destroyed the pastures in the wilderness.

28 And it will happen after that,

that I’ll pour out my spirit onto all peoples,

and your sons and your daughters will prophesy.

Your elderly will dream dreams,

Your young people will see visions.

29 At that time I’ll pour out my spirit

even on the male and female slaves.

3 Listen, in those days and at that time

when I return those who were taken away as captives from Yehudah and Yerushalem,

2 then I’ll gather all the nations,

and bring them down to Yehoshafat’s valley.

Then I’ll judge them there

because they scattered my people—Yisrael my inheritance—among the nations,

and they divided up my land.

3 Then they threw dice to decide who’d get my people—

they traded a boy for a prostitute,

≈ and sold a girl for wine so they could drink.

4 Tyre, Sidon, and all of the regions of Philistia, what are you to me?

Are you trying to get even with me?

If you are, I’ll very quickly deflect your actions back on yourselves,[ref]

5 because you took my gold and silver,

and you took my precious treasures into your temples.

6 Then you sold the people of Yehudah and Yerushalem to the Greeks,

so that they’d be taken far away from their homeland.

7 Listen, I’ll stir them up there in the place where you sold them,

and I’ll deflect your behaviour back on yourselves,

8 because I’ll sell your sons and daughters to the people of Yehudah,

and they’ll sell them to the Sabeans—to a faraway nation.”

Yes, Yahweh has spoken.

9 Proclaim this among the nations:

“Prepare for war.

≈ Arm the warriors!

Let them approach.

≈ Let all the men of war start coming.

10 Hammer your plough blades into swords

≈ and your pruning hooks into spears.

Let the weak say, ‘I am strong.’[ref]

11 Hurry and come all you surrounding nations,

and gather yourselves there.”

Yahweh, send down your warriors.

12 “Let the nations rouse themselves

and come to Yehoshafat’s valley,

because I’ll sit there to judge all the surrounding nations.

13 Swing the sickle, because the harvest has ripened.

Come on, go down, because the winepress is full.

The vats overflow, because their wickedness is great.”

14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision,

because Yahweh’s day is near in the valley of decision.

15 The sun and the moon become dark,

and the stars withhold their brightness.

16 Yahweh will roar from Tsiyyon (Zion),

≈ and from Yerushalem he’ll utter his voice,

and the heavens and the earth will shake.

But Yahweh will be a shelter for his people

and a stronghold for the Israelis.[ref]