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.
Parallel translations
- WEB Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God’s house.
- BSB Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
- NKJV Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; Wail, you who minister before the altar; Come, lie all night in sackcloth, You who minister to my God; For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the house of your God.
- NASB ¶Put on sackcloth And mourn, you priests; Wail, you ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, You ministers of my God, For the grain offering and the drink offering Have been withheld from the house of your God.
- NLT Dress yourselves in burlap and weep, you priests! Wail, you who serve before the altar! Come, spend the night in burlap, you ministers of my God. For there is no grain or wine to offer at the Temple of your God.
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
Joel commands the priests to clothe themselves in sackcloth and mourn all night because the offerings have ceased. The spiritual leaders must lead the nation in repentance.
Overview
The priests, who minister at the altar, are summoned to public, prolonged lament over the suspension of the meal and drink offerings. Their mourning is to be wholehearted, even through the night. By calling the leaders to repent first, Joel models how genuine renewal begins with those entrusted with God's worship, and how mourning over broken fellowship with God is the heart of true contrition.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 17
- Jer 4:8For this gird you with sackcloth, lament and howl: for the fierce anger of the LORD is not turned back from us.
- Joel 1:8–9Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
- 1 Kgs 21:27And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.
- Jer 9:10For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone.
- Jonah 3:5–8So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
- Joel 2:17Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?
- Ezek 7:18They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads.
- Heb 7:13–14For he of whom these things are spoken pertaineth to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar.
- 1 Cor 9:13Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?
- Num 29:6Beside the burnt offering of the month, and his meat offering, and the daily burnt offering, and his meat offering, and their drink offerings, according unto their manner, for a sweet savour, a sacrifice made by fire unto the LORD.
- 1 Cor 4:1Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.
- Lev 2:8–10And thou shalt bring the meat offering that is made of these things unto the LORD: and when it is presented unto the priest, he shall bring it unto the altar.
- 2 Sam 12:16David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night upon the earth.
- Isa 61:6But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves.
- 2 Cor 6:4But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses,
- 2 Cor 3:6Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
- 2 Cor 11:23Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.
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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.
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Original language
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