28:26 When he imposed a limit 1 for the rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm, 2
65:9 You visit the earth and give it rain; 3
you make it rich and fertile 4
with overflowing streams full of water. 5
You provide grain for them, 6
for you prepare the earth to yield its crops. 7
65:10 You saturate 8 its furrows,
and soak 9 its plowed ground. 10
With rain showers you soften its soil, 11
and make its crops grow. 12
65:11 You crown the year with your good blessings, 13
and you leave abundance in your wake. 14
147:8 He covers 15 the sky with clouds,
provides the earth with rain,
and causes grass to grow on the hillsides. 16
5:24 They do not say to themselves, 17
“Let us revere the Lord our God.
It is he who gives us the autumn rains and the spring rains at the proper time.
It is he who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.” 18
10:13 When his voice thunders, 19 the heavenly ocean roars.
He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons. 20
He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain.
He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it. 21
14:22 Do any of the worthless idols 22 of the nations cause rain to fall?
Do the skies themselves send showers?
Is it not you, O Lord our God, who does this? 23
So we put our hopes in you 24
because you alone do all this.”
4:7 “I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. 25
I gave rain to one city, but not to another.
One field 26 would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.
1 tn Or “decree.”
2 tn Or “thunderbolt,” i.e., lightning. Heb “the roaring of voices/sounds,” which describes the nature of the storm.
3 tn The verb form is a Polel from שׁוּק (shuq, “be abundant”), a verb which appears only here and in Joel 2:24 and 3:13, where it is used in the Hiphil stem and means “overflow.”
4 tn Heb “you greatly enrich it.”
5 tn Heb “[with] a channel of God full of water.” The divine name is probably used here in a superlative sense to depict a very deep stream (“a stream fit for God,” as it were).
6 tn The pronoun apparently refers to the people of the earth, mentioned in v. 8.
7 tn Heb “for thus [referring to the provision of rain described in the first half of the verse] you prepare it.” The third feminine singular pronominal suffix attached to the verb “prepare” refers back to the “earth,” which is a feminine noun with regard to grammatical form.
8 tn Heb “saturating” [the form is an infinitive absolute].
9 tn Heb “flatten, cause to sink.”
10 tn Heb “trenches,” or “furrows.”
11 tn Heb “soften it,” that is, the earth.
12 tn Heb “its vegetation you bless.” Divine “blessing” often involves endowing an object with special power or capacity.
13 tn Heb “your good,” which refers here to agricultural blessings.
14 tn Heb “and your paths drip with abundance.”
15 tn Heb “the one who covers.”
16 tn Heb “hills.”
17 tn Heb “say in their hearts.”
18 tn Heb “who keeps for us the weeks appointed for harvest.”
19 tn Heb “At the voice of his giving.” The idiom “to give the voice” is often used for thunder (cf. BDB 679 s.v. נָתַן Qal.1.x).
20 tn Heb “from the ends of the earth.”
21 tn Heb “he brings out the winds from his storehouses.”
22 tn The word הֶבֶל (hevel), often translated “vanities”, is a common pejorative epithet for idols or false gods. See already in 8:19 and 10:8.
23 tn Heb “Is it not you, O
24 tn The rhetorical negatives are balanced by a rhetorical positive.
25 sn Rain…three months before the harvest refers to the rains of late March-early April.
26 tn Heb “portion”; KJV, ASV “piece”; NASB “part.” The same word occurs a second time later in this verse.
27 tn The participle ἀγαθουργῶν (agaqourgwn) is regarded as indicating means here, parallel to the following participles διδούς (didou") and ἐμπιπλῶν (empiplwn). This is the easiest way to understand the Greek structure. Semantically, the first participle is a general statement, followed by two participles giving specific examples of doing good.
28 tn Or “from the sky” (the same Greek word means both “heaven” and “sky”).
29 tn Grk “satisfying [filling] your hearts with food and joy.” This is an idiomatic expression; it strikes the English reader as strange to speak of “filling one’s heart with food.” Thus the additional direct object “you” has been supplied, separating the two expressions somewhat: “satisfying you with food and your hearts with joy.”
30 sn God’s general sovereignty and gracious care in the creation are the way Paul introduces the theme of the goodness of God. He was trying to establish monotheism here. It is an OT theme (Gen 8:22; Ps 4:7; 145:15-16; 147:8-9; Isa 25:6; Jer 5:24) which also appears in the NT (Luke 12:22-34).