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.
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.
- KJV 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.
- 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.
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 clothe yourself with sackcloth, lament and wail; for the fierce anger of Yahweh hasn’t turned back from us.
- Joel 1:8–9Mourn like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth!
- 1 Kgs 21:27When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.
- Jer 9:10I will weep and wail for the mountains, and lament for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are burned up, so that no one passes through; neither can men hear the voice of the livestock. Both the birds of the sky and the animals have fled. They are gone.
- Jonah 3:5–8The people of Nineveh believed God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least.
- Joel 2:17Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare your people, Yahweh, and don’t give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
- Ezek 7:18They will also clothe themselves with sackcloth, and horror will cover them. Shame will be on all faces, and baldness on all their heads.
- Heb 7:13–14For he of whom these things are said belongs to another tribe, from which no one has officiated at the altar.
- 1 Cor 9:13Don’t you know that those who serve around sacred things eat from the things of the temple, and those who wait on the altar have their portion with the altar?
- Num 29:6besides the burnt offering of the new moon, and its meal offering, and the continual burnt offering and its meal offering, and their drink offerings, according to their ordinance, for a pleasant aroma, an offering made by fire to Yahweh.
- 1 Cor 4:1So let a man think of us as Christ’s servants, and stewards of God’s mysteries.
- Lev 2:8–10You shall bring the meal offering that is made of these things to Yahweh: and it shall be presented to the priest, and he shall bring it to the altar.
- 2 Sam 12:16David therefore begged God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night on the ground.
- Isa 61:6But you will be called Yahweh’s priests. Men will call you the servants of our God. You will eat the wealth of the nations, and you will boast in their glory.
- 2 Cor 6:4but in everything commending ourselves, as servants of God, in great endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses,
- 2 Cor 3:6who also made us sufficient as servants of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
- 2 Cor 11:23Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as one beside himself) I am more so; in labors more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths often.
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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 1:13 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
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