Joel 1:15
“Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Joel cries out that the locust plague is a foreshadowing of the day of the LORD, drawing near as destruction from the Almighty.
What Does Joel 1:15 Mean?
With a sharp cry, Alas for the day, Joel names the great theme that will dominate the rest of the book: the day of the LORD. The present calamity is a preview of something larger, a day at hand that will come as destruction from the Almighty. The Hebrew sound here links destruction to the very name of God as the all-sufficient One, the Almighty whose power no one withstands.
The day of the LORD is that appointed time when God acts decisively to judge and to set things right. The locusts are a small herald of it. Joel does not let the people treat their suffering as merely natural; he reads it as a summons to take God seriously before a far greater reckoning. Yet this same day, terrible to the unrepentant, becomes salvation to all who call on the LORD, as the later chapters will show. The cry of alarm is finally a mercy, granting time to turn.
In the Original Language
The wordplay shod mishadday ('destruction from the Almighty') ties the coming ruin to El Shadday, God in His overwhelming sufficiency and power.