And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
Through the prophet Joel, God speaks to people who've experienced devastating loss — probably from actual locust plagues that destroyed crops and years of hard work. The "years the locusts have eaten" represents stolen time, lost opportunities, and seasons of hardship that felt wasted. God's promise isn't just to restore what was lost, but to somehow redeem even the time itself.
God of restoration, You see the years that feel hollowed out by loss and disappointment. I bring You my locust-eaten seasons — the ones I can't get back and the ones I fear I've wasted. Teach me to trust Your strange economy where nothing is truly lost in You. Amen.
Years eaten by locusts — that's a visceral image for anyone who's watched addiction steal a decade, or seen grief hollow out three years of their life, or felt depression turn months into gray mush. The locusts aren't always literal; sometimes they're divorce papers, or the slow erosion of a relationship, or the job that never materialized despite your best efforts. But God's math works differently than ours. While we're calculating what's gone forever, He's multiplying loaves and fishes with our broken years. The Hebrew word for "repay" here means to make complete restitution — not just replacing what was lost, but somehow making even the devastation productive. Your wilderness years aren't dead space; they're compost for something you can't yet imagine.
What are the "locusts" that have eaten years of your life?
How do you personally understand God's promise to "repay" lost time?
What's the difference between forgetting the past and having it redeemed?
How might this verse change how you support someone who's lost significant time to illness, addiction, or poor choices?
If God can restore lost years, what does that free you to risk or hope for now?
And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
Revelation 9:3
Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings.
Amos 7:1
"And I will compensate you for the years That the swarming locust has eaten, The creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust— My great army which I sent among you.
AMP
I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.
ESV
'Then I will make up to you for the years That the swarming locust has eaten, The creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you.
NASB
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten— the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm— my great army that I sent among you.
NIV
“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you.
NKJV
The LORD says, “I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts. It was I who sent this great destroying army against you.
NLT
"I'll make up for the years of the locust, the great locust devastation— Locusts savage, locusts deadly, fierce locusts, locusts of doom, That great locust invasion I sent your way.
MSG