Deuteronomy 28:22
20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you in everything you undertake until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. 21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 22 He will afflict you with weakness, fever, inflammation, infection, sword, blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 23 The sky above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron. 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.
Haggai 2:17
15 Now therefore reflect carefully on the recent past, before one stone was laid on another in the Lord’s temple. 16 From that time when one came expecting a heap of 20 measures, there were only 10; when one came to the wine vat to draw out 50 measures from it, there were only 20. 17 I struck all the products of your labor with blight, disease, and hail, and yet you brought nothing to me,’ says the Lord. 18 ‘Think carefully about the past: from today, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, to the day work on the temple of the Lord was resumed, think about it. 19 The seed is still in the storehouse, isn’t it? And the vine, fig tree, pomegranate, and olive tree have not produced. Nevertheless, from today on I will bless you.’”
Notes and References
"... scorching and green-mold, and with hail: These three disasters are listed as part of the careful structure of the whole verse ... Agricultural products (compare 2:14) are failing because of natural disasters. All three of these disasters are associated in particular with either of the two transitional periods, April / May or October / November, falling between the dry season and the rainy season in the Palestinian calendar. “Scorching” refers to the destruction of standing crops by the sirocco or east wind; and hail damages plants during the unstable weather of the transitional season. Since this prophecy refers back to a time before temple work had begun - i.e., before the sixth month—the crucial spring shift from winter to summer must be involved. The fall harvest, which is the setting for this prophet’s activity, would have been severely limited because of damage to crops when buds were forming in the spring. Compare the language of Deuteronomy 28:22 (Amos 4:9), which omits “hail” but which describes God’s response to the people’s disobedience: “Yahweh will smite you with ... heat and drought, blight, and mildew.” ..."
Meyers, Carol L., and Eric M. Meyers Haggai, Zechariah 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (p. 61) Doubleday, 1987