8
Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth
grieving for the husband of her youth.
9
Grain offerings and drink offerings
are cut off from the house of the Lord.
The priests are in mourning,
those who minister before the Lord.
10
The fields are ruined,
the ground is dried up;
the grain is destroyed,
the new wine is dried up,
the oil fails.
11
Despair, you farmers,
wail, you vine growers;
grieve for the wheat and the barley,
because the harvest of the field is destroyed.
12
The vine is dried up
and the fig tree is withered;
the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—
all the trees of the field—are dried up.
Surely the joy of mankind
is withered away.
13
A Call to Repentance
Put on sackcloth, O priests, and mourn;
wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings
are withheld from the house of your God.
14
Declare a holy fast;
call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders
and all who live in the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
and cry out to the Lord.
15
Alas for that day!
For the day of the Lord is near;
it will come like destruction from the Almighty.
16
Has not the food been cut off
before our very eyes—
joy and gladness
from the house of our God?
17
The seeds are shriveled
beneath the clods.
The storehouses are in ruins,
the granaries have been broken down,
for the grain has dried up.
18
How the cattle moan!
The herds mill about
because they have no pasture;
even the flocks of sheep are suffering.