Joel 1:3
“Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →This calamity is to be retold down four generations, becoming a lasting lesson handed from parent to child.
What Does Joel 1:3 Mean?
What the elders have witnessed is not to be buried with them. Joel commands a chain of telling: parents to children, those children to theirs, and on to another generation. In a culture that carried its faith by word of mouth, this is how meaning survived. The locust plague was to become a story the community kept retelling, a marker of God's dealings with His people.
Scripture repeatedly entrusts faith to the family table. What we have seen of God's seriousness and His mercy is meant to be spoken aloud to the young. A disaster remembered rightly becomes a warning and a witness; forgotten, it teaches nothing. There is pastoral wisdom here for every household: tell the next generation what God has done, both His severity and His grace, so that they may know Him and not have to learn the same lessons from scratch.