Despair, all you farmers! Wail, all you vine growers! Weep, because the wheat and barley— all the crops of the field—are ruined.
Parallel translations
- WEB Be confounded, you farmers! Wail, you vineyard keepers; for the wheat and for the barley; for the harvest of the field has perished.
- KJV 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.
- BSB Be dismayed, O farmers, wail, O vinedressers, over the wheat and barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.
- NKJV Be ashamed, you farmers, Wail, you vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley; Because the harvest of the field has perished.
- NASB Be ashamed, you farm workers, Wail, you vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley; Because the harvest of the field is destroyed.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Farmers and vineyard keepers are called to shame and wailing because the harvest has perished. Those who labored on the land must grieve their lost livelihood.
Overview
Joel addresses the agricultural workers whose wheat, barley, and vines have been destroyed, leaving them confounded. Their dismay reflects the collapse of the ordinary means of life under God's judgment. The verse presses home that no human industry can secure a harvest when God withholds His blessing, calling all who trust in their own labor to humble themselves before Him.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 5
- Jer 14:3–4Their nobles send their little ones to the waters. They come to the cisterns, and find no water. They return with their vessels empty. They are disappointed and confounded, and cover their heads.
- Isa 17:11In the day of your planting, you hedge it in. In the morning, you make your seed blossom, but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
- Jer 9:12Who is wise enough to understand this? Who is he to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?
- Amos 5:16Therefore Yahweh, the God of Armies, the Lord, says: “Wailing will be in all the wide ways; and they will say in all the streets, ‘Alas! Alas!’ and they will call the farmer to mourning, and those who are skillful in lamentation to wailing.
- Rom 5:5and hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
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Christ at the center
The promised outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh and the call to 'everyone who calls on the name of the LORD' are fulfilled at Pentecost in the name of Jesus.
How Joel 1:11 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.