Joel 1:9 (DRB)

Passage

Sacrifice and libation is cut off from the house of the Lord: the priests, the Lord's ministers, have mourned:

Nearby Context

Joel 1:7 He hath laid my vineyard waste, and hath pilled off the bark of my fig tree: he hath stripped it bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

Joel 1:8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

Joel 1:9 Sacrifice and libation is cut off from the house of the Lord: the priests, the Lord's ministers, have mourned:

Joel 1:10 The country is destroyed, the ground hath mourned: for the corn is wasted, the wine is confounded, the oil hath languished.

Joel 1:11 The husbandmen are ashamed, the vinedressers have howled for the wheat, and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "sacrifice", "libation", "house", "lord", "priests", "lord's", "ministers", and "mourned". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "sacrifice" and "libation", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 8's "Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth..." into verse 10's "The country is destroyed the ground hath...", so "sacrifice" and "libation" belong inside that flow. In Joel context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "sacrifice" and "libation" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.