CHAPTER 1 Nov. 18 
Locusts 
The Word of Yahweh that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel. 2Hear this, you elders, and listen, all of you inhabitants of the land. Has this ever happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? 3Tell your children about it, and have your children tell their children, and their children tell another generation. 4What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten. What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten. What the grasshopper has left, the caterpillar has eaten. 5Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. 6For a nation has come up on my land, strong, and without number. His teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a lioness. 7He has laid My vine waste, and stripped My fig tree. He has stripped its bark, and thrown it away.  Its branches are made white. 8Mourn like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth! The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from Yahweh’s house; the priests, Yahweh’s ministers, mourn. 10The field is laid waste, the land mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the new wine has dried up and the oil wastes away. 11Be confounded, you farmers! Wail, you vineyard keepers; for the wheat and for the barley and the harvest of the field has perished. 12The vine has dried up, and the fig tree withered; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all of the trees of the field are withered away; for  joy is withered away from the sons of men.
Repent! 
13Put 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. 14Sanctify a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of Yahweh your God, and cry to Yahweh. 15Alas for the day! For the day of Yahweh is at hand, and it will come as a destruction from the Almighty. 16Isn’t the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? 17The seeds rot under their clods. The granaries are laid desolate. The barns are broken down, for the grain has withered. 18How the animals groan! The herds of livestock are confused because they have no pasture. Yes, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. 19Yahweh, I cry to you because the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame has burned up all the trees of the field. 20Yes, the animals of the field pant to You, for the water brooks have dried up, and the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

Commentary

1:2 Elders… all of you- Often the Bible brackets the elders with all the ordinary people, thus emphasizing that God relates with individuals; His appeal isn’t merely to religious specialists or leaders, but to all of us. 
1:12 If we lose joy, we have lost our faith. It was the same with Israel. “The vine [of Israel is] withered… for joy is withered”; the people of God were to be a people of joy, and when their joy was no more, they were no longer God’s people; for “joy and gladness” were cut off from the house of God (:16). The experience of joy is the litmus test for a community of God’s people. This thought gives rise to some sober self-examination, especially for those who may have come to feel that ‘holding the faith’ is a matter of glumly trudging onwards through this evil world, grimly gripping hold of our faith as we bemoan the state of those around us. To hold on to the Faith is described as holding on to the rejoicing of the hope unto the end (Heb. 3:6).