Leviticus 26:16

26:16 I for my part ¹  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ²  You will sow your seed in vain because ³  your enemies will eat it. ⁴ 

Deuteronomy 28:30-33

28:30 You will be engaged to a woman and another man will rape ⁵  her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it. 28:31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you. 28:32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it. ⁶  28:33 As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives.

Deuteronomy 28:51

28:51 They ⁷  will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, ⁸  or lambs of your flocks ⁹  until they have destroyed you.

Job 31:8

31:8 then let me sow ¹⁰  and let another eat,

and let my crops ¹¹  be uprooted.

Isaiah 65:21-22

65:21 They will build houses and live in them;

they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

65:22 No longer will they build a house only to have another live in it, ¹² 

or plant a vineyard only to have another eat its fruit, ¹³ 

for my people will live as long as trees, ¹⁴ 

and my chosen ones will enjoy to the fullest what they have produced. ¹⁵ 

Micah 6:15

6:15 You will plant crops, but will not harvest them;

you will squeeze oil from the olives, ¹⁶  but you will have no oil to rub on your bodies; ¹⁷ 

you will squeeze juice from the grapes, but you will have no wine to drink. ¹⁸ 

¹ tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).

² tn Heb “soul.” These expressions may refer either to the physical effects of consumption and fever as the rendering in the text suggests (e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452, 454, “diminishing eyesight and loss of appetite”), or perhaps the more psychological effects, “which exhausts the eyes” because of anxious hope “and causes depression” (Heb “causes soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] to pine away”), e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 185.

³ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.

⁴ tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.

⁵ tc For MT reading שָׁגַל (shagal, “ravish; violate”), the Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate presume the less violent שָׁכַב (shakhav, “lie with”). The unexpected counterpart to betrothal here favors the originality of the MT.

⁶ tn Heb “and there will be no power in your hand”; NCV “there will be nothing you can do.”

⁷ tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).

⁸ tn Heb “increase of herds.”

⁹ tn Heb “growth of flocks.”

¹⁰ tn The cohortative is often found in the apodosis of the conditional clause (see GKC 320 §108.f).

¹¹ tn The word means “what sprouts up” (from יָצָא [yatsa’] with the sense of “sprout forth”). It could refer metaphorically to children (and so Kissane and Pope), as well as in its literal sense of crops. The latter fits here perfectly.

¹² tn Heb “they will not build, and another live [in it].”

¹³ tn Heb “they will not plant, and another eat.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “for like the days of the tree [will be] the days of my people.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “the work of their hands” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “their hard-won gains.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “you will tread olives.” Literally treading on olives with one’s feet could be harmful and would not supply the necessary pressure to release the oil. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 119. The Hebrew term דָּרַךְ (darakh) may have an idiomatic sense of “press” here, or perhaps the imagery of the following parallel line (referring to treading grapes) has dictated the word choice.

¹⁷ tn Heb “but you will not rub yourselves with oil.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “and juice, but you will not drink wine.” The verb תִדְרֹךְ (tidrokh, “you will tread”) must be supplied from the preceding line.