7 By him my vine is made waste and my fig-tree broken: he has taken all its fruit and sent it down to the earth; its branches are made white.
8 Make sounds of grief like a virgin dressed in haircloth for the husband of her early years. 9 The meal offering and the drink offering have been cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord's servants, are sorrowing. 10 The fields are wasted, the land has become dry; for the grain is wasted, the new wine is kept back, the oil is poor. 11 The farmers are shamed, the workers in the vine-gardens give cries of grief, for the wheat and the barley; for the produce of the fields has come to destruction. 12 The vine has become dry and the fig-tree is feeble; the pomegranate and the palm-tree and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are dry: because joy has gone from the sons of men.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Joel 1:7-12
Commentary on Joel 1:1-7
(Read Joel 1:1-7)
The most aged could not remember such calamities as were about to take place. Armies of insects were coming upon the land to eat the fruits of it. It is expressed so as to apply also to the destruction of the country by a foreign enemy, and seems to refer to the devastations of the Chaldeans. God is Lord of hosts, has every creature at his command, and, when he pleases, can humble and mortify a proud, rebellious people, by the weakest and most contemptible creatures. It is just with God to take away the comforts which are abused to luxury and excess; and the more men place their happiness in the gratifications of sense, the more severe temporal afflictions are upon them. The more earthly delights we make needful to satisfy us, the more we expose ourselves to trouble.
Commentary on Joel 1:8-13
(Read Joel 1:8-13)
All who labour only for the meat that perishes, will, sooner or later, be ashamed of their labour. Those that place their happiness in the delights of sense, when deprived of them, or disturbed in the enjoyment, lose their joy; whereas spiritual joy then flourishes more than ever. See what perishing, uncertain things our creature-comforts are. See how we need to live in continual dependence upon God and his providence. See what ruinous work sin makes. As far as poverty occasions the decay of piety, and starves the cause of religion among a people, it is a very sore judgment. But how blessed are the awakening judgments of God, in rousing his people and calling home the heart to Christ, and his salvation!