Bible Strands
Joel 1:7
It has laid waste My grapevine and splintered My fig tree. It has stripped off the bark and thrown it away; the branches have turned white.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks through Joel to the people of Judah at the moment a powerful, innumerable invading army has already devastated the land. The prophecy immediately follows the description of that army's lion-like teeth and fangs.
The words — The Hebrew verb שׂם (sam) means "it has made," combined with לְשַׁמָּה (le-shammah), literally "into a waste." The text also employs חָשׂוֹף (chasof), rendered "completely strip bare," to describe the removal of bark.
The thread — This agricultural ruin parallels Isaiah 5:6, where God declares He will make a vineyard a wasteland, and Amos 4:9, where blight and locusts consume fig and olive trees. Joel 1:12 directly echoes this imagery by listing the grapevine and fig tree as fully withered.
Why it lands — The text requires readers to identify the invading force as the direct agent of total crop destruction. It demands a clear-eyed assessment of stripped bark and bleached branches as concrete evidence of divine judgment on the land's fertility.
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
He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 5:6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and thorns and briers will grow up. I will command the clouds that rain shall not fall on it.”
- Amos 4:9 “I struck you with blight and mildew in your growing gardens and vineyards; the locust devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.
- 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.
- Exodus 10:15 They covered the face of all the land until it was black, and they consumed all the plants on the ground and all the fruit on the trees that the hail had left behind. Nothing green was left on any tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.
- Psalms 105:33 He struck their vines and fig trees and shattered the trees of their country.
- Isaiah 24:7 The new wine dries up, the vine withers. All the merrymakers now groan.
- Jeremiah 8:13 I will take away their harvest, declares the LORD. There will be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the tree, and even the leaf will wither. Whatever I have given them will be lost to them.”
- Hosea 2:12 I will destroy her vines and fig trees, which she thinks are the wages paid by her lovers. So I will make them into a thicket, and the beasts of the field will devour them.
- Habakkuk 3:17 Though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls,