Joel 2:3

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Interconfessional

Fire devours in front of them, and behind them a flame burns. Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, but after them a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them.

Cross References

Genesis 13:10

Lot looked about him, and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Genesis 2:8

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Psalm 50:3

Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.

Psalm 97:3

Fire goes before him, and consumes his adversaries on every side.

Exodus 10:15

They covered the surface of the whole land, so that the land was black; and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left; nothing green was left, no tree, no plant in the field, in all the land of Egypt.

Exodus 10:5

They shall cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land. They shall devour the last remnant left you after the hail, and they shall devour every tree of yours that grows in the field.

Isaiah 14:17

who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who would not let his prisoners go home?”

Isaiah 15:6

the waters of Nimrim are a desolation; the grass is withered, the new growth fails, the verdure is no more.

Isaiah 33:4

Spoil was gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, they leaped upon it.

Isaiah 51:3

For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

Isaiah 9:18

For wickedness burned like a fire, consuming briers and thorns; it kindled the thickets of the forest, and they swirled upward in a column of smoke.

Isaiah 9:19

Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land was burned, and the people became like fuel for the fire; no one spared another.

Jeremiah 5:17

They shall eat up your harvest and your food; they shall eat up your sons and your daughters; they shall eat up your flocks and your herds; they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees; they shall destroy with the sword your fortified cities in which you trust.

Ezekiel 36:35

And they will say, “This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined towns are now inhabited and fortified.”

Amos 7:4

This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land.

Habakkuk 1:6

For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.

Zechariah 7:14

and I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro, and a pleasant land was made desolate.