Bible Strands
Joel 1:9
Grain and drink offerings have been cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests are in mourning, those who minister before the LORD.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet addresses Judah during a severe agricultural crisis that has physically and ritually crippled temple worship.
The words — מִנְחָ֛ה (min.Chah) = grain offering and וָנֶ֖סֶךְ (va./Ne.sekh) = and drink offering, paired with הָכְרַ֥ת (ha.khe.Rat) = it has been cut off and אָֽבְלוּ֙ ('a.ve.Lu) = they are in mourning.
The thread — Joel 2:14 describes grain and drink offerings returning as a future blessing if God relents. Joel 2:17 depicts priests weeping between the portico and altar while pleading for mercy. Hosea 9:4 warns that wine offerings will stop and sacrifices will not please God.
Why it lands — The text states that agricultural ruin directly severs the prescribed rituals and leaves the ministers in mourning. It requires a reader to see how material devastation halts religious duty and demands sober recognition of worship's fragility.
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 meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn.
Cross-references
- Joel 2:14 Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him—grain and drink offerings for the LORD your God.
- Joel 2:17 Let the priests who minister before the LORD weep between the portico and the altar, saying, “Spare Your people, O LORD, and do not make Your heritage a reproach, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
- Hosea 9:4 They will not pour out wine offerings to the LORD, and their sacrifices will not please Him, but will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat will be defiled. For their bread will be for themselves; it will not enter the house of the LORD.
- Joel 1:13 Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
- Isaiah 61:6 But you will be called the priests of the LORD; they will speak of you as ministers of our God; you will feed on the wealth of nations, and you will boast in their riches.
- Lamentations 1:16 For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears. For there is no one nearby to comfort me, no one to revive my soul. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.
- 2 Chronicles 13:10 But as for us, the LORD is our God. We have not forsaken Him; the priests who minister to the LORD are sons of Aaron, and the Levites attend to their duties.
- Lamentations 1:4 The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she herself is bitter with anguish.
- Joel 1:16 Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes—joy and gladness from the house of our God?
- Exodus 28:1 “Next, have your brother Aaron brought to you from among the Israelites, along with his sons Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, to serve Me as priests.