Joel 1:8-18

8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.
9 The cereal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD.
10 The fields are laid waste, the ground mourns; because the grain is destroyed, the wine fails, the oil languishes.
11 Be confounded, 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 withers, the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are withered; and gladness fails from the sons of men.
13 Gird 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 cereal offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
14 Sanctify 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 to the LORD.
15 Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.
16 Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?
17 The seed shrivels under the clods, the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are ruined because the grain has failed.
18 How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep are dismayed.
Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.