Joel 1:5 (LSB)

Passage

Awake, drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you wine drinkers, On account of the sweet wine That is cut off from your mouth.

Nearby Context

Joel 1:3 Recount about it to your sons, And let your sons recount about it to their sons, And their sons to the next generation.

Joel 1:4 What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has consumed; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has consumed; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has consumed.

Joel 1:5 Awake, drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you wine drinkers, On account of the sweet wine That is cut off from your mouth.

Joel 1:6 For a nation has come up against my land, Mighty and without number; Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, And it has the fangs of a lioness.

Joel 1:7 It has made my vine a desolation And my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; Their branches have become white.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "awake", "drunkards", "weep", "wail", "wine", "drinkers", "account", and "sweet". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "awake" and "drunkards", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 4's "What the gnawing locust has left the..." into verse 6's "For a nation has come up against...", so "awake" and "drunkards" 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 "awake" and "drunkards" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.