Joel 1:13

A Call to Repentance

13 ¹Put on sackcloth and lament, ²O priests; ³wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, ⁴pass the night in sackcloth, ⁵O ministers of my God! ⁶Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

Joel 1:13 Meaning and Commentary

Joel 1:13

Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests
Prepare and be ready to raise up lamentation and mourning; or gird yourselves with sackcloth, and mourn in that, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi supply the words; see ( Jeremiah 4:8 ) ; howl, ye ministers of the altar;
who served there, by laying on and burning the sacrifices, or offering incense: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God;
that is, come into the house of the Lord, as Kimchi; into the court of the priests, and there lie all night, in the sackcloth girded with; putting up prayers to God, with weeping and lamentations, that he would avert the judgments that were come or were coming upon theme: for the meat offering and the drink offering are withholden from the
house of your God; (See Gill on Joel 1:9).

Joel 1:13 In-Context

11 Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.

12 The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man.

13 Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

14 Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.

15 Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

Cross References

• 1. [ver. 8; Jeremiah 4:8]
• 2. [See ver. 9 above]
• 3. [ver. 8; Micah 1:8]
• 4. [ver. 8; Jeremiah 4:8]
• 5. [See ver. 9 above]
• 6. ver. 9; Joel 2:14