4:6 “But surely I gave 6 you no food to eat in any of your cities;
you lacked food everywhere you live. 7
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:7 “I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. 8
I gave rain to one city, but not to another.
One field 9 would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.
4:8 People from 10 two or three cities staggered into one city to get 11 water,
but remained thirsty. 12
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:9 “I destroyed your crops 13 with blight and disease.
Locusts kept 14 devouring your orchards, 15 vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. 16
I killed your young men with the sword,
along with the horses you had captured.
I made the stench from the corpses 17 rise up into your nostrils.
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God 18 overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 19
You were like a burning stick 20 snatched from the flames.
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel.
Because I will do this to you,
prepare to meet your God, Israel! 21
1 tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
2 tn Grk “seven thousand names of men.”
3 tn Grk “people, saying.” In the Greek text this is a continuation of the previous sentence. For the translation of λέγω (legw) as “declare,” see BDAG 590 s.v. 2.e.
4 tn Heb “give glory to.”
5 tn Heb “Get from there.” The words “from there” are not necessary to the English sentence. They would lead to a redundancy later in the verse, i.e., “from there…bury there.”
6 tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic (pronoun + verb). It underscores the stark contrast between the judgments that the Lord had been sending with the God of blessing Israel was celebrating in its worship (4:4-5).
7 tn Heb “But I gave to you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of food in all your places.” The phrase “cleanness of teeth” is a vivid way of picturing the famine Israel experienced.
8 sn Rain…three months before the harvest refers to the rains of late March-early April.
9 tn Heb “portion”; KJV, ASV “piece”; NASB “part.” The same word occurs a second time later in this verse.
10 tn The words “people from” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
11 tn Heb “to drink.”
12 tn Or “were not satisfied.”
13 tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.
14 tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).
15 tn Or “gardens.”
16 tn Heb “in the manner [or “way”] of Egypt.”
17 tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”
18 tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
19 tn Heb “like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The divine name may be used in an idiomatic superlative sense here, in which case one might translate, “like the great [or “disastrous”] overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
20 tn Heb “like that which is burning.”
21 tn The