Bible Strands
Joel 1:10
The field is ruined; the land mourns. For the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, and the oil fails.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet Joel speaks to Israel during a sudden agricultural collapse, positioned between the cessation of temple grain and drink offerings (Joel 1:9) and the summons for farmers and vinedressers to wail over the lost harvest (Joel 1:11).
The words — The Hebrew שֻׁדַּ֣ד (shu.Dad, "it is devastated") modifies both the field (שָׂדֶ֔ה, sa.Deh) and the grain (דָּגָ֔ן, da.Gan), while the ground (אֲדָמָ֑ה, 'a.da.Mah) is paired with אָבְלָ֖ה ('a.ve.Lah, "it mourns/is dried up").
The thread — This pattern of devastated land and failed agricultural infrastructure recurs in Hosea 4:3, Jeremiah 12:11, and Hosea 9:2, where ecological ruin mirrors covenantal breakdown.
Why it lands — The text records concrete crop failure and mourning soil to force the reader to acknowledge that disrupted worship produces immediate, tangible scarcity, leaving no room to minimize the physical cost of spiritual abandonment.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.
Cross-references
- Hosea 4:3 Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea disappear.
- Jeremiah 12:11 They have made it a desolation; desolate before Me, it mourns. All the land is laid waste, but no man takes it to heart.
- Hosea 9:2 The threshing floor and winepress will not feed them, and the new wine will fail them.
- Joel 1:5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep; wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth.
- Leviticus 26:20 and your strength will be spent in vain. For your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit.
- Jeremiah 12:4 How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field be withered? Because of the evil of its residents, the animals and birds have been swept away, for the people have said, “He cannot see what our end will be.”
- Jeremiah 14:2 “Judah mourns and her gates languish. Her people wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem.
- Jeremiah 48:33 Joy and gladness are removed from the orchard and from the fields of Moab. I have stopped the flow of wine from the presses; no one treads them with shouts of joy; their shouts are not for joy.
- Joel 1:12 The grapevine is dried up, and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, palm, and apple—all the trees of the orchard—are withered. Surely the joy of mankind has dried up.
- Joel 1:17 The seeds lie shriveled beneath the clods; the storehouses are in ruins; the granaries are broken down, for the grain has withered away.