Study Desk

Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers?

Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.

What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts ^(F1) have eaten.

Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips.

A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness.

It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.

Mourn like a virgin ^(F2) in sackcloth grieving for the husband ^(F3) of her youth.

Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the LORD . The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the LORD .

The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up ^(F4) ; the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails.

Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed.

The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree- all the trees of the field-are dried up. Surely the joy of mankind is withered away.