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, ¹ 

or plant a vineyard only to have another eat its fruit, ² 

for my people will live as long as trees, ³ 

and my chosen ones will enjoy to the fullest what they have produced. ⁴ 

Leviticus 26:16

26:16 I for my part ⁵  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ⁶  You will sow your seed in vain because ⁷  your enemies will eat it. ⁸ 

Leviticus 26:20

26:20 Your strength will be used up in vain, your land will not give its yield, and the trees of the land ⁹  will not produce their fruit.

Deuteronomy 28:30

28:30 You will be engaged to a woman and another man will rape ¹⁰  her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it.

Deuteronomy 28:38-42

The Curse of Reversed Status

28:38 “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. 28:39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. 28:40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe. ¹¹  28:41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 28:42 Whirring locusts ¹²  will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil.

Jeremiah 12:13

12:13 My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds. ¹³ 

They will work until they are exhausted, but will get nothing from it.

They will be disappointed in their harvests ¹⁴ 

because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger. ¹⁵ 

Amos 5:11

5:11 Therefore, because you make the poor pay taxes on their crops ¹⁶ 

and exact a grain tax from them,

you will not live in the houses you built with chiseled stone,

nor will you drink the wine from the fine ¹⁷  vineyards you planted. ¹⁸ 

Zephaniah 1:13

1:13 Their wealth will be stolen

and their houses ruined!

They will not live in the houses they have built,

nor will they drink the wine from the vineyards they have planted.

[65:22]  ¹ tn Heb “they will not build, and another live [in it].”

[65:22]  ² tn Heb “they will not plant, and another eat.”

[65:22]  ³ tn Heb “for like the days of the tree [will be] the days of my people.”

[65:22]  ⁴ tn Heb “the work of their hands” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “their hard-won gains.”

[26:16]  ⁵ tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).

[26:16]  ⁶ 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.

[26:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.

[26:16]  ⁸ tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.

[26:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “the tree of the land will not give its fruit.” The collective singular has been translated as a plural. Tg. Onq., some medieval Hebrew mss, Smr, LXX, and Tg. Ps.-J. have “the field” as in v. 4, rather than “the land.”

[28:30]  ¹⁰ 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.

[28:40]  ¹¹ tn Heb “your olives will drop off” (נָשַׁל, nashal), referring to the olives dropping off before they ripen.

[28:42]  ¹² tn The Hebrew term denotes some sort of buzzing or whirring insect; some have understood this to be a type of locust (KJV, NIV, CEV), but other insects have also been suggested: “buzzing insects” (NAB); “the cricket” (NASB); “the cicada” (NRSV).

[12:13]  ¹³ sn Invading armies lived off the land, using up all the produce and destroying everything they could not consume.

[12:13]  ¹⁴ tn The pronouns here are actually second plural: Heb “Be ashamed/disconcerted because of your harvests.” Because the verb form (וּבֹשׁוּ, uvoshu) can either be Qal perfect third plural or Qal imperative masculine plural many emend the pronoun on the noun to third plural (see, e.g., BHS). However, this is the easier reading and is not supported by either the Latin or the Greek which have second plural. This is probably another case of the shift from description to direct address that has been met with several times already in Jeremiah (the figure of speech called apostrophe; for other examples see, e.g., 9:4; 11:13). As in other cases the translation has been leveled to third plural to avoid confusion for the contemporary English reader. For the meaning of the verb here see BDB 101 s.v. בּוֹשׁ Qal.2 and compare the usage in Jer 48:13.

[12:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “be disappointed in their harvests from the fierce anger of the Lord.” The translation makes explicit what is implicit in the elliptical poetry of the Hebrew original.

[5:11]  ¹⁶ tn Traditionally, “because you trample on the poor” (cf. KJV, ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). The traditional view derives the verb from בּוּס (bus, “to trample”; cf. Isa. 14:25), but more likely it is cognate to an Akkadian verb meaning “to exact an agricultural tax” (see H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena [SBLDS], 49; S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 172-73).

[5:11]  ¹⁷ tn Or “lovely”; KJV, NASB, NRSV “pleasant”; NAB “choice”; NIV “lush.”

[5:11]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Houses of chiseled stone you built, but you will not live in them. Fine vineyards you planted, but you will not drink their wine.”