Joel 1:20

20 Wild animals, dying of thirst, look to you for a drink. Springs and streams are dried up. The whole country is burning up.

Joel 1:20 Meaning and Commentary

Joel 1:20

The beasts of the field cry also unto thee
As well as the prophet, in their way; which may be mentioned, both as a rebuke to such who had no sense of the judgments upon them, and called not on the Lord; and to express the greatness of the calamity, of which the brute creatures were sensible, and made piteous moans, as for food, so for drink; panting thorough excessive heat and vehement thirst, as the hart, after the water brooks, of which this word is only used, ( Psalms 42:1 ) ; but in vain: for the rivers of waters are dried up;
not only springs, and rivulets and brooks of water, but rivers, places where were large deep waters, as Aben Ezra explains it; either by the Assyrian army, the like Sennacherib boasts ( Isaiah 37:25 ) ; and is said to be done by the army of Xerxes, wherever it came; or rather by the excessive heat and scorching beams of the sun, by which such effects are produced: and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness;
(See Gill on Joel 1:19); and whereas the word rendered pastures signifies both "them" and "habitations" also; and, being repeated, it may be taken in one of the senses in ( Joel 1:19 ) ; and in the other here: and so Kimchi who interprets it before of "tents", here explains it of grassy places in the wilderness, dried up, as if the sun had consumed them.

Joel 1:20 In-Context

18 The farm animals groan - oh, how they groan! The cattle mill around. There's nothing for them to eat. Not even the sheep find anything.

19 God! I pray, I cry out to you! The fields are burning up, The country is a dust bowl, forest and prairie fires rage unchecked.

20 Wild animals, dying of thirst, look to you for a drink. Springs and streams are dried up. The whole country is burning up.