Leviticus 26:18-21

26:18 “‘If, in spite of all these things, ¹  you do not obey me, I will discipline you seven times more on account of your sins. ²  26:19 I will break your strong pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze. 26:20 Your strength will be used up in vain, your land will not give its yield, and the trees of the land ³  will not produce their fruit.

26:21 “‘If you walk in hostility against me ⁴  and are not willing to obey me, I will increase your affliction ⁵  seven times according to your sins.

Leviticus 26:23-24

26:23 “‘If in spite of these things ⁶  you do not allow yourselves to be disciplined and you walk in hostility against me, ⁷  26:24 I myself will also walk in hostility against you and strike you ⁸  seven times on account of your sins.

Leviticus 26:27-28

26:27 “‘If in spite of this ⁹  you do not obey me but walk in hostility against me, ¹⁰  26:28 I will walk in hostile rage against you ¹¹  and I myself will also discipline you seven times on account of your sins.

Deuteronomy 28:23-24

28:23 The ¹²  sky ¹³  above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron. 28:24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.

Deuteronomy 28:1

The Covenant Blessings

28:1 “If you indeed ¹⁴  obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments I am giving ¹⁵  you today, the Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations of the earth.

Deuteronomy 8:1

The Lord’s Provision in the Desert

8:1 You must keep carefully all these commandments ¹⁶  I am giving ¹⁷  you today so that you may live, increase in number, ¹⁸  and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. ¹⁹ 

Deuteronomy 8:1-2

The Lord’s Provision in the Desert

8:1 You must keep carefully all these commandments ²⁰  I am giving ²¹  you today so that you may live, increase in number, ²²  and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. ²³  8:2 Remember the whole way by which he ²⁴  has brought you these forty years through the desert ²⁵  so that he might, by humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not.

Deuteronomy 7:13-14

7:13 He will love and bless you, and make you numerous. He will bless you with many children, ²⁶  with the produce of your soil, your grain, your new wine, your oil, the offspring of your oxen, and the young of your flocks in the land which he promised your ancestors to give you. 7:14 You will be blessed beyond all peoples; there will be no barrenness ²⁷  among you or your livestock.

Isaiah 5:6

5:6 I will make it a wasteland;

no one will prune its vines or hoe its ground, ²⁸ 

and thorns and briers will grow there.

I will order the clouds

not to drop any rain on it.

Jeremiah 3:3

3:3 That is why the rains have been withheld,

and the spring rains have not come.

Yet in spite of this you are obstinate as a prostitute. ²⁹ 

You refuse to be ashamed of what you have done.

Jeremiah 5:24-25

5:24 They do not say to themselves, ³⁰ 

“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.” ³¹ 

5:25 Your misdeeds have stopped these things from coming. ³² 

Your sins have deprived you of my bounty.’ ³³ 

Jeremiah 14:4

14:4 They are dismayed because the ground is cracked ³⁴ 

because there has been no rain in the land.

The farmers, too, are dismayed

and bury their faces in their hands.

Jeremiah 14:22

14:22 Do any of the worthless idols ³⁵  of the nations cause rain to fall?

Do the skies themselves send showers?

Is it not you, O Lord our God, who does this? ³⁶ 

So we put our hopes in you ³⁷ 

because you alone do all this.”

Haggai 1:10-11

1:10 This is why the sky ³⁸  has held back its dew and the earth its produce. ³⁹  1:11 Moreover, I have called for a drought that will affect the fields, the hill country, the grain, new wine, fresh olive oil, and everything that grows from the ground; it also will harm people, animals, and everything they produce.’” ⁴⁰ 

Zechariah 14:17

14:17 But if any of the nations anywhere on earth refuse to go up to Jerusalem ⁴¹  to worship the King, the Lord who rules over all, they will get no rain.

James 5:17

5:17 Elijah was a human being ⁴²  like us, and he prayed earnestly ⁴³  that it would not rain and there was no rain on the land for three years and six months!

Revelation 11:6

11:6 These two have the power ⁴⁴  to close up the sky so that it does not rain during the time ⁴⁵  they are prophesying. They ⁴⁶  have power ⁴⁷  to turn the waters to blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague whenever they want.

[26:18]  ¹ tn Heb “And if until these.”

[26:18]  ² tn Heb “I will add to discipline you seven [times] on your sins.”

[26:20]  ³ 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.”

[26:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “hostile with me,” but see the added preposition בְּ (bet) on the phrase “in hostility” in v. 24 and 27.

[26:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “your blow, stroke”; cf. TEV “punishment”; NLT “I will inflict you with seven more disasters.”

[26:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “And if in these.”

[26:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “with me,” but see the added preposition בְּ (bet) on the phrase “in hostility” in vv. 24 and 27.

[26:24]  ⁸ tn Heb “and I myself will also strike you.”

[26:27]  ⁹ tn Heb “And if in this.”

[26:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “with me.”

[26:28]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in rage of hostility with you”; NASB “with wrathful hostility”; NRSV “I will continue hostile to you in fury”; CEV “I’ll get really furious.”

[28:23]  ¹² tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”

[28:23]  ¹³ tn Or “heavens” (also in the following verse). The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[28:1]  ¹⁴ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “indeed.”

[28:1]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today” (likewise in v. 15).

[8:1]  ¹⁶ tn The singular term (מִצְוָה, mitsvah) includes the whole corpus of covenant stipulations, certainly the book of Deuteronomy at least (cf. Deut 5:28; 6:1, 25; 7:11; 11:8, 22; 15:5; 17:20; 19:9; 27:1; 30:11; 31:5). The plural (מִצְוֹת, mitsot) refers to individual stipulations (as in vv. 2, 6).

[8:1]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation (likewise in v. 11).

[8:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “multiply” (so KJV, NASB, NLT); NIV, NRSV “increase.”

[8:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 16, 18).

[8:1]  ²⁰ tn The singular term (מִצְוָה, mitsvah) includes the whole corpus of covenant stipulations, certainly the book of Deuteronomy at least (cf. Deut 5:28; 6:1, 25; 7:11; 11:8, 22; 15:5; 17:20; 19:9; 27:1; 30:11; 31:5). The plural (מִצְוֹת, mitsot) refers to individual stipulations (as in vv. 2, 6).

[8:1]  ²¹ tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation (likewise in v. 11).

[8:1]  ²² tn Heb “multiply” (so KJV, NASB, NLT); NIV, NRSV “increase.”

[8:1]  ²³ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 16, 18).

[8:2]  ²⁴ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[8:2]  ²⁵ tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NRSV, NLT); likewise in v. 15.

[7:13]  ²⁶ tn Heb “will bless the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[7:14]  ²⁷ sn One of the ironies about the promises to the patriarchs concerning offspring was the characteristic barrenness of the wives of the men to whom these pledges were made (cf. Gen 11:30; 25:21; 29:31). Their affliction is in each case described by the very Hebrew word used here (עֲקָרָה, ’aqarah), an affliction that will no longer prevail in Canaan.

[5:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “it will not be pruned or hoed” (so NASB); ASV and NRSV both similar.

[3:3]  ²⁹ tn Heb “you have the forehead of a prostitute.”

[5:24]  ³⁰ tn Heb “say in their hearts.”

[5:24]  ³¹ tn Heb “who keeps for us the weeks appointed for harvest.”

[5:25]  ³² tn Heb “have turned these things away.”

[5:25]  ³³ tn Heb “have withheld the good from you.”

[14:4]  ³⁴ tn For the use of the verb “is cracked” here see BDB 369 s.v. חָתַת Qal.1 and compare the usage in Jer 51:56 where it refers to broken bows. The form is a relative clause without relative pronoun (cf., GKC 486-87 §155.f). The sentence as a whole is related to the preceding through a particle meaning “because of” or “on account of.” Hence the subject and verb have been repeated to make the connection.

[14:22]  ³⁵ 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.

[14:22]  ³⁶ tn Heb “Is it not you, O Lord our God?” The words “who does” are supplied in the translation for English style.

[14:22]  ³⁷ tn The rhetorical negatives are balanced by a rhetorical positive.

[1:10]  ³⁸ tn The Hebrew text has “over you” (so KJV), but this is redundant in contemporary English and has been left untranslated.

[1:10]  ³⁹ sn This linkage of human sin to natural disaster is reminiscent of the curse brought upon the earth by Adam’s disobedience (Gen 3:17-19; see Rom 8:20-22).

[1:11]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “all the labor of hands” (similar KJV, NASB, NIV); cf. NAB “all that is produced by hand.”

[14:17]  ⁴¹ sn The reference to any…who refuse to go up to Jerusalem makes clear the fact that the nations are by no means “converted” to the Lord but are under his compulsory domination.

[5:17]  ⁴² tn Although it is certainly true that Elijah was a “man,” here ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo") has been translated as “human being” because the emphasis in context is not on Elijah’s masculine gender, but on the common humanity he shared with the author and the readers.

[5:17]  ⁴³ tn Grk “he prayed with prayer” (using a Hebrew idiom to show intensity).

[11:6]  ⁴⁴ tn Or “authority.”

[11:6]  ⁴⁵ tn Grk “the days.”

[11:6]  ⁴⁶ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation. Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[11:6]  ⁴⁷ tn Or “authority.”