Joel 2:3

Revised Standard Version (RSV-CI)

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

Cross References

Genesis 13:10

And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan valley 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 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, he does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, round about him a mighty tempest.

Psalm 97:3

Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about.

Exodus 10:15

For they covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened, and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left; not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field, through all the land of Egypt.

Exodus 10:5

and they shall cover the face of the land, so that no one can see the land; and they shall eat what is left to you after the hail, and they shall eat every tree of yours which grows in the field,

Isaiah 14:17

who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did 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

and spoil is gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, men leap 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 burns like a fire, it consumes briers and thorns; it kindles the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke.

Isaiah 9:19

Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land is burned, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no man spares his brother.

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; your fortified cities in which you trust they shall destroy with the sword.”

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 cities are now inhabited and fortified.’

Amos 7:4

Thus the Lord God showed me: behold, the Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land.

Habakkuk 1:6

For lo, I am rousing the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize habitations not their own.

Zechariah 7:14

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