Joel 1:13 (LSB)

Passage

Gird yourselves with sackcloth And lament, O priests; Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God; For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the house of your God.

Nearby Context

Joel 1:11 Be ashamed, O farmers, Wail, O vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley, Because the harvest of the field perishes.

Joel 1:12 The vine dries up, And the fig tree fails; The pomegranate, the palm also, and the apple tree, All the trees of the field dry up. Indeed, rejoicing dries up From the sons of men.

Joel 1:13 Gird yourselves with sackcloth And lament, O priests; Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God; For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the house of your God.

Joel 1:14 Set apart a fast as holy, Call for a solemn assembly; Gather the elders And all the inhabitants of the land To the house of Yahweh your God, And cry out to Yahweh.

Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the day of Yahweh is near, And it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "gird", "yourselves", "sackcloth", "lament", "priests", "wail", "ministers", and "altar". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "gird" and "yourselves", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 12's "The vine dries up And the fig..." into verse 14's "Set apart a fast as holy Call...", so "gird" and "yourselves" 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 "gird" and "yourselves" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.