Joel 2:12-18

Rend Your Heart 12“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

13Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

14Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing— grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God.

15Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.

16Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber.

17Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, “Spare your people, LORD . Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”

The LORD’s Answer 18Then the LORD was jealous for his land and took pity on his people.