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.
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.
- BSB Tell it to your children; let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next 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.
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 shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.
- Ps 145:4One generation will commend your works to another, and will declare your mighty acts.
- Exod 13:14It shall be, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What is this?’ that you shall tell him, ‘By strength of hand Yahweh brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage.
- Ps 71:18Yes, even when I am old and gray-haired, God, don’t forsake me, until I have declared your strength to the next generation, your might to everyone who is to come.
- Isa 38:19The living, the living, he shall praise you, as I do today. The father shall make known your truth to the children.
- Exod 10:1–2Yahweh said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I may show these my signs among them,
- Ps 78:3–8Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
- Ps 44:1For the Chief Musician. By the sons of Korah. A contemplative psalm. We have heard with our ears, God; our fathers have told us, what work you did in their days, in the days of old.
- Josh 4:21–22He spoke to the children of Israel, saying, “When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean?’
- Josh 4:6–7that this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask in the future, saying, ‘What do you mean by these stones?’
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.