Deuteronomy 28:21

Hebrew Bible

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.

Amos 4:9

Hebrew Bible

8 People from two or three cities staggered into one city to get water, but remained thirsty. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 9I destroyed your crops with blight and disease. Locusts kept devouring your orchards, vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 10I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. I killed your young men with the sword, along with the horses you had captured. I made the stench from the corpses rise up into your nostrils. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking.

 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

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