Bible Strands
Joel 1:3
Tell it to your children; let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet addresses the elders and all inhabitants of the land immediately following a severe locust devastation, demanding they acknowledge an unprecedented crisis.
The words — The command סַפֵּ֑רוּ (saPe.ru) means "recount" or "tell," paired with the phrase דֹּור אַחֵֽר (dor aCher) for "another generation," structuring the event as a multi-stage oral chain.
The thread — This directive to transmit historical reality across generations runs in Deuteronomy 6:7, Psalm 71:18, and Psalm 145:4.
Why it lands — It requires the reader to actively preserve and verbally pass the disaster's details to descendants, treating collective memory as a mandatory duty rather than a personal reflection.
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
Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 6:7 And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
- Psalms 71:18 Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, until I proclaim Your power to the next generation, Your might to all who are to come.
- Psalms 145:4 One generation will commend Your works to the next, and will proclaim Your mighty acts—
- Exodus 13:14 In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you are to tell him, ‘With a mighty hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
- Psalms 78:3 that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.
- Exodus 10:1 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials, that I may perform these miraculous signs of Mine among them,
- Joshua 4:21 Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What is the meaning of these stones?’
- Psalms 44:1 For the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us the work You did in their days, in the days of old.
- Isaiah 38:19 The living, only the living, can thank You, as I do today; fathers will tell their children about Your faithfulness.
- Joshua 4:6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’