Joel 1:3

Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

Joel 1:3 (KJV)

Context

The book of Joel is one of the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament. The prophet addresses the people of Judah during a time of national crisis, most prominently a devastating locust plague that stripped the land. This event serves as a metaphor for coming judgment and a call to repentance. Joel 1:3 immediately follows the prophet’s appeal to the elders and all inhabitants to consider whether anything like this calamity had ever happened before (Joel 1:2).

Meaning

In Joel 1:3, the prophet commands the people to tell their children about the devastation, and for those children to tell their children, and so on to the next generation. The purpose is to ensure that the knowledge of God’s works—both His judgments and His mercy—is preserved and transmitted through the generations. The verse emphasizes communal responsibility: the entire community is charged with passing down this vital information, not just individual families.

The command is not merely to remember a past event but to actively recount it, ensuring that the lessons learned are not lost. The instruction is to give a particular account of the event: describe the creatures, their number, when they began, how long they continued, the devastations they made, and the cause of such a judgment—the people’s sins and transgressions.

Biblical connections

This generational transmission is a common biblical theme, paralleled in Psalm 78, where the psalmist declares that God established a testimony in Jacob and commanded our fathers to teach them to their children, so that the next generation might know them and tell their children (Psalm 78:5-6). The verse also connects to the Christian responsibility of passing down the truths of the Gospel and the principles of the Christian religion, as seen in Ephesians 6:4, which instructs parents to bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Application

As believers today, we can learn from Joel 1:3 by recognising our responsibility to pass on the knowledge of God to future generations. We can do this by sharing our testimonies, teaching the Bible, and modelling a godly life for our children and the younger ones in our community. By doing so, we participate in God’s plan to reveal Himself to successive generations and equip them to walk in His ways.