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BOOK 29 OF 66 · MINOR PROPHETS · KING JAMES BIBLE

Joel 1

Joel book home•Chapter 1 of 3•20 verses
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REVIEWED OVERVIEW

Joel 1 Overview

A devastating locust plague and drought have stripped Judah’s fields, vineyards, grain, and joy. Joel calls elders, priests, farmers, and all the inhabitants to recognize the disaster, lament before the LORD, sanctify a fast, and cry unto Him because the Day of the LORD is near.

JoelBook
1Chapter
20Verses
Minor ProphetsDivision

Before you read Joel 1

Coming from

Hosea ends by calling Israel to return to the LORD and promising healing, fruitfulness, and wise understanding. Joel opens with another prophetic call to wake up and return, this time through a catastrophic plague that has struck the land.

In this chapter

Joel describes unprecedented agricultural devastation, commands the memory of it to be passed to later generations, and summons the nation—especially the priests—to mourning, fasting, and prayer.

Leads into

The crisis becomes the doorway to a larger warning. Joel 2 sounds the alarm for the Day of the LORD, intensifies the call to heartfelt repentance, and then turns toward restoration and the promised outpouring of God’s Spirit.

Key understandingExplore deeper

Joel begins with a real disaster in Judah: successive locust devastation, crop failure, and drought. Whether the insect terms describe literal locust stages/species or a rhetorically stacked description of the swarm, the chapter presents agricultural ruin as an actual calamity calling the nation to seek the LORD.

The precise date of Joel is debated, and the book does not provide the kind of royal dating formula found in Hosea or Amos. The safest reading is to let the chapter’s own setting and message carry the weight rather than forcing a date the text does not state.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Calamity should awaken serious spiritual attention

Joel does not tell the people merely to rebuild agriculture; he calls them to hear, lament, fast, and cry unto the LORD.

Corporate worship can be affected by national disaster

The loss of grain and wine means the meat offering and drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD, bringing grief to the priests.

The Day of the LORD gives the present crisis a larger horizon

The plague is terrible in itself, but Joel uses it to direct attention toward divine judgment that is greater than the immediate disaster.

Memory matters

The people are told to tell the event to their children and succeeding generations so the warning is not forgotten.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Deuteronomy 28:38–42

The Mosaic covenant warned Israel that disobedience could bring crop destruction by locusts. Joel’s setting belongs to that covenant world.

2 Chronicles 7:13–14

Solomon’s temple prayer context includes drought and locust devastation and calls God’s people to humble themselves and seek Him.

Joel 2:12–17

The next chapter makes explicit the response already demanded here: a whole-hearted return to the LORD, fasting, weeping, and prayer.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Do not make every natural disaster a direct judgment you can interpret with prophetic certainty.

Joel is an inspired prophet explaining this particular crisis. Modern readers do not possess automatic authority to assign the same meaning to every catastrophe.

Do not reduce the Day of the LORD to the locust plague alone.

The plague supplies the immediate setting, but Joel’s prophecy expands beyond it into future judgment and restoration.

Do not confuse covenant discipline with the condition for receiving eternal life.

The chapter addresses Judah’s national and covenant situation, not a works-based plan of salvation.

Read Joel 1 watching for…

How completely the locust plague has affected food, worship, work, and joy.

Who is commanded to mourn and who is commanded to lead the response.

The repeated movement from observing disaster to crying unto the LORD.

How the present crisis introduces the larger theme of the Day of the LORD.

The command to preserve the memory of the event for later generations.

TWBC REVIEW STANDARD

Plain language. Scripture first. Fact distinguished from inference. No filler. No fake certainty. Designed to help you read the Bible itself.

Chapter outline3 sections
1-7Joel announces an unmatched locust devastation that must be told to future generations8-13The ruined harvest stops offerings and brings mourning to farmers, priests, and the whole land14-20A fast and solemn assembly are called as the day of the LORD approaches and the land cries out
1

The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

2

Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?

3

Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

4

That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.

5

Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.

6

For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.

7

He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

8

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

9

The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD's ministers, mourn.

10

The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.

11

Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished.

12

The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.

13

Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.

14

Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD,

15

Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

16

Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

17

The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered.

18

How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

19

O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.

20

The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.