Tell it to your children; let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.
Parallel translations
- WEB Tell your children about it, and have your children tell their children, and their children, another generation.
- KJV Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
- NKJV Tell your children about it, Let your children tell their children, And their children another generation.
- NASB Tell your sons about it, And have your sons tell their sons, And their sons the next generation.
- NLT Tell your children about it in the years to come, and let your children tell their children. Pass the story down from generation to generation.
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
The people are to recount this event to their children for generations. The disaster is to become a lasting lesson about God's dealings.
Overview
Joel commands that the locust plague be passed down through successive generations as instruction. Israel was repeatedly charged to teach God's mighty acts to their children (Deuteronomy 6:7), so that memory would shape faith. This generational telling preserves the testimony of God's judgment and mercy, a pattern fulfilled as the church proclaims the greater acts of God in Christ to those who follow.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Deut 6:7And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
- Ps 145:4One generation will commend Your works to the next, and will proclaim Your mighty acts—
- Exod 13:14In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you are to tell him, ‘With a mighty hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
- Ps 71:18Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, until I proclaim Your power to the next generation, Your might to all who are to come.
- Isa 38:19The living, only the living, can thank You, as I do today; fathers will tell their children about Your faithfulness.
- Exod 10:1–2Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials, that I may perform these miraculous signs of Mine among them,
- Ps 78:3–8that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.
- Ps 44:1For the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us the work You did in their days, in the days of old.
- Josh 4:21–22Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What is the meaning of these stones?’
- Josh 4:6–7to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 1:3 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.