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Joel
Joel 1 — A locust plague, a land stripped bare, and one desperate cry to God
7 min read
Something hit the land of that nobody had ever seen before. Wave after wave of locusts — not just one swarm, but four — consuming everything in their path until there was literally nothing left. Grapevines, fig trees, grain — all of it, gone.
The word of the Lord came to a named , son of Pethuel. We know almost nothing about him — no backstory, no dramatic calling scene. Just his name, his father's name, and this urgent message. What he saw in this plague, and what it pointed to, would echo across generations.
Joel turned to the and everyone in the land with a question — and the answer was supposed to be no:
"Has anything like this ever happened in your lifetime? Or in your parents' lifetime? Tell your children about this. Let your children tell their children. And let their children tell the next generation.
What the cutting locusts left, the swarming locusts ate. What the swarming locusts left, the hopping locusts ate. And what the hopping locusts left, the destroying locusts finished off."
Four waves. Four different kinds of locusts. Each one stripping clean whatever the last one missed. This wasn't a bad season or a rough year. It was total devastation — layer after layer after layer, until there was nothing left to take.
And Joel's first instruction wasn't to fix it — it was to remember it. Tell your kids. Tell their kids. Because when a community forgets what devastation looks like, they tend to walk straight back into the conditions that caused it. Joel wanted this seared into the national memory for generations.
Joel's first audience might surprise you. He didn't start with the or the leaders. He started with the people who were too numb to notice what was happening:
"Wake up, you who've been drinking, and weep. Cry out, all you wine drinkers — the sweet wine has been ripped from your lips.
A nation has marched against my land — powerful, beyond counting. Its teeth are like a lion's teeth. Its fangs are like a lioness's.
It has destroyed my grapevines and splintered my fig trees. It stripped the bark clean off and threw it down. The branches are left white and bare."
Joel described the locusts like an invading army — countless, with teeth like lions, stripping everything to bone. Grapevines and fig trees weren't just crops. They were the backbone of the economy, the source of celebration, the living symbols of God's provision. And now they were reduced to white, bare branches. Skeletal.
And the people who had been numbing themselves with wine? Their supply just got cut off. Sometimes the thing that finally wakes you up is losing the thing you were using to stay asleep.
Then the tone shifted. Joel reached for an image that would have stopped everyone in their tracks:
"Grieve like a young woman dressed in , mourning for the husband of her youth.
The and the drink are cut off from the . The mourn — the ministers of the Lord themselves.
The fields are ruined. The ground itself mourns. The grain is destroyed. The wine has dried up. The oil is gone."
A young bride who just lost the person she was supposed to spend her whole life with. That's the depth of grief Joel called for — not a moment of silence or a sad few days. Deep, disorienting, life-altering loss.
And notice what happened to the : the couldn't be made because there was nothing left to offer. When the land died, went silent. The who served God every day suddenly had nothing to bring him. When there's nothing left to give, even the rituals stop. And the silence that replaces them says more than the noise ever did.
Joel turned next to the people whose entire lives depended on the land:
"Be devastated, you farmers. Cry out, you who tend the vineyards — the wheat and the barley are gone. The harvest of the field has perished.
The grapevine has dried up. The fig tree has withered. Pomegranate, palm, apple — every tree in the field is dead. And itself has dried up among the people."
Every tree. Not some. All of them. Joel listed them like a roll call — pomegranate, palm, apple, fig, vine — and then that final line, quiet and devastating: itself has dried up.
There's something profoundly honest in that connection. When everything that sustains you disappears, goes with it. Not because is fragile — but because prolonged, total loss has a weight that presses the life out of a community. Joel wasn't exaggerating. He was describing what comprehensive devastation actually does to people.
Now Joel addressed the spiritual leaders directly. And he didn't soften it:
"Put on and grieve, you . Cry out, you who minister at the . Come and spend the night in , you ministers of my God — because the and the drink have been withheld from the house of your God.
Declare a . Call a solemn assembly. Gather the and everyone in the land to the your God — and cry out to the Lord."
This wasn't a suggestion. It was an emergency order. Stop everything. Gather everyone — not just the regular worshipers, not just the people who show up every week. Everyone. , farmers, families, the whole nation. Come to God's house. And cry out.
Here's what's striking about the prescription. Joel didn't say "figure out a solution." He didn't say "develop a recovery plan." He said . Gather. Cry out. When the devastation is this total, the only adequate response is to turn — completely, desperately — toward God. Not as a last resort. As the only one.
Here Joel pulled back the curtain on what was really underneath all of this:
"The day is coming. The is near — and it comes like destruction from the Almighty.
Isn't the food disappearing right before our eyes? Isn't and gladness vanishing from the ?
The seeds shrivel beneath the soil. The storehouses sit empty. The granaries are falling apart because the grain has dried up.
Listen to the animals groaning. The herds of cattle wander in confusion — there's no pasture left. Even the flocks of sheep are suffering."
The . It's a phrase the used again and again — not for a bad week or a hard season, but for the moment when God steps directly into history. Sometimes that means rescue. Sometimes it means . Here, Joel was saying: what you're watching happen all around you? This is a preview.
Even the animals felt it. Cattle wandering aimlessly, confused, with nothing to eat. Sheep suffering. The whole created order groaning under the weight of what was coming. Nobody — and nothing — would be untouched. That's what makes the so heavy. It isn't something you can opt out of.
Joel ended the chapter the only way he could. No more commands to others. No more accusations. Just a man standing in the wreckage, turning his face upward:
"To you, O Lord, I call.
has consumed the pastures of the wilderness. Flames have burned every tree in the field.
Even the wild animals cry out to you — because the streams have dried up, and has devoured the open land."
That last image is extraordinary. The animals — who don't know theology, who can't form a — even they are reaching toward God. The land is scorched. The water is gone. Everything that was green is ash.
And in the middle of all that devastation, Joel didn't end with despair. He ended with a cry. Directed. Personal. "To you, O Lord." Not into the void. Not to no one. To God. That's the thread Joel would pull for the rest of his book — the stubborn conviction that even when everything has been stripped away, the right response isn't to shut down. It's to call out. And the one you're calling to is actually listening.
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