Joel 3 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Look, in those days, at that time, when I bring back everything that was taken from Judah and Jerusalem,

I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial over my people, over Israel, who belong to me, because they scattered them among the nations and carved up my land between them.

They threw dice for my people. They traded a boy for a prostitute and sold a girl for wine, and drank it.

And what have you got against me, Tyre and Sidon, and all you districts of Philistia? Are you paying me back for something? If you are, I will turn your payment on your own heads before you can blink.

You took my silver and my gold and carried my best treasures into your temples.

You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks so you could push them far away from their own borders.

Watch me. I am rousing them out of the place you sold them to, and I will turn your payment on your own heads.

I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the people of Judah, and they will sell them on to the Sabeans, a nation far away. Yahweh has spoken.

Announce this among the nations: Declare a war. Wake up the fighting men. Bring every soldier forward. Let them all come up.

Beat your plough blades into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak man say, I am a fighter.

Hurry and come, all you nations around, and gather yourselves there. Send your fighters down, Yahweh.

Let the nations rouse themselves and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, because there I will sit to judge all the nations around.

Swing the sickle, the crop is ripe. Come and tread, the press is full, the vats are running over, because what they have done is that bad.

Crowds on crowds in the valley where it is decided. The day of Yahweh is close in the valley where it is decided.

Sun and moon go dark and the stars pull back their light.

Yahweh roars from Zion and raises his voice from Jerusalem. Sky and earth shake. But Yahweh is a shelter for his people, a fort for the children of Israel.

Then you will know that I am Yahweh your God, living on Zion, the mountain that belongs to me. Jerusalem will be off-limits, and strangers will never march through her again.

On that day the mountains will drip with new wine and the hills will run with milk. Every dry streambed in Judah will run with water, and a spring will come up out of the house of Yahweh and water the Valley of Acacias.

Egypt will become a waste and Edom an empty desert, for the violence they did to the people of Judah, because they spilled innocent blood in Judah's own land.

But Judah will be lived in forever, and Jerusalem for generation after generation.

I will settle the account for blood I have not settled yet, and Yahweh will make his home on Zion.