Episode 220: Beat your plowshares into swords

Joel 1-3

Wake up, you drunkards!

1 ¹ The word of God came to Joel, saying,

² Listen you old men, and everyone else in the land. Have you ever seen anything like this?

³ Tell your children about it, and have them tell their children, and so on.

⁴ What the cutting locusts haven't eaten, the swarming locusts have. Whatever the swarming locusts didn't eat, the hopping locusts did. And what the hopping locusts missed, the destroying locusts ate.

⁵ Wake up, you drunkards! Weep and howl, all you wine-drinkers! Your wine is now cut off.

^6-7 A nation with lion’s teeth has attacked our land and destroyed our vineyards and fig trees.

⁸ Lament like a virgin girded in sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

¹¹ Be ashamed, you farmers! Howl, you vine keepers!

¹³ Gird yourselves in sackcloth and howl, you priests!

¹⁵ Alas for the day! The day of the Lord is here! God is going to destroy everything!

¹⁸ The beasts are groaning, and the cows are perplexed!

^19-20 They are crying out to God, the waters have dried up, and our pastures and trees have all burned down.

An army of locusts

2 ¹ Blow the trumpet in Zion and sound the alarm on God's holy mountain. Let everyone tremble, for the day of the Lord is near.

² It is a dark, cloudy, and gloomy day.

³ A fire is burning everything, nothing will escape.

^4-5 They look like horses leaping on mountain tops,

sounding like a crackling fire, devouring the the stubble.

⁶ The people are in pain and all faces are blackened.

⁷ They run like mighty men, climbing walls, and staying together in a group.

⁸ When they fall on the sword, they won't be wounded.

⁹ They run up the wall and climb into houses, entering windows like a thief.

¹⁰ The earth shakes before them, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.

^12-13 Rend your heart, not your garments. For God is kind, merciful, and slow to anger.

¹⁴ Who knows? Maybe God will repent.

¹⁵ Blow the trumpet in Zion.

²² Don't be afraid, you beasts of the field.

²⁵ I [God] repay you for the years that I sent the locusts to eat all your crops.

²⁸ Someday, I will pour out my spirit on everyone.

Sons and daughters will prophesy, old men will dream, and young men will have visions.

³⁰ I'll show wonders in the heavens and on earth, with blood, fire, and pillars of smoke.

³¹ The sun will be darkened and the moon will turn into blood on the great and terrible day of the Lord.

³² But whoever calls on my name will be delivered.

Beat your plowshares into swords

3 ³ They've cast lots for my people, given a boy for a harlot, and a girl for wine, that they might drink.

⁵ You've taken my silver and gold and carried my pleasant things into your temples. You've sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks.

⁸ So I'll sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah.

⁹ Prepare for war.

¹⁰ Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears.

And let the weakling say, I am strong.

¹² Wake up the heathen and tell them to come to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will judge them.

¹⁴ The day of the Lord is near.

¹⁵ The sun, moon, and stars will be darkened.

¹⁶ God will roar, and the heavens and earth will shake.

¹⁷ So you'll know that I'm God, and that I live on a holy mountain in Zion.

Jerusalem will be holy, and no more strangers will pass through her anymore.

¹⁸ On that day, the mountains will be covered with wine, the hills will flow with milk, and a fountain will flow out of my house to water the valley of Shittim.

¹⁹ Egypt and Edom will be desolate.

²¹ I will clean their blood that I haven’t cleaned. Because God lives in Zion.