“I struck you with scorching wind and mildew; The caterpillar was devouring Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the Lord.
Parallel translations
- WEB “I struck you with blight and mildew many times in your gardens and your vineyards; and your fig trees and your olive trees have the swarming locust devoured: yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
- KJV I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
- BSB “I struck you with blight and mildew in your growing gardens and vineyards; the locust devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.
- NKJV “Iblasted you with blight and mildew. When your gardens increased, Your vineyards, Your fig trees, And your olive trees, The locust devoured them; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the Lord.
- NLT “I struck your farms and vineyards with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured all your fig and olive trees. But still you would not return to me,” says the Lord.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God struck their crops with blight, mildew, and locusts, yet they still would not return to him. Agricultural disasters were warnings they refused to heed.
Overview
Blight, mildew, and devouring locusts ruined gardens, vineyards, figs, and olives, the staples of their economy. These were covenant curses warning of God's displeasure (Deuteronomy 28). Each was an invitation to repent. The repeated refrain underscores their persistent, willful hardness despite God's patient appeals.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Hag 2:17I struck you with blight, mildew, and hail in all the work of your hands; yet you didn’t turn to me,’ says Yahweh.
- Deut 28:22Yahweh will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with fiery heat, with the sword, with blight, and with mildew. They will pursue you until you perish.
- Joel 1:4What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten. What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten. What the grasshopper has left, the caterpillar has eaten.
- Amos 7:1–2Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me: and behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s harvest.
- Amos 4:6“I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in every town; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
- Amos 4:8So two or three cities staggered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied: yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
- Isa 1:5Why should you be beaten more, that you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
- Joel 2:25I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the great locust, the grasshopper, and the caterpillar, my great army, which I sent among you.
- 2 Chr 6:28“If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence, if there is blight or mildew, locust or caterpillar; if their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is;
- Jer 5:3O Yahweh, don’t your eyes look on truth? You have stricken them, but they were not grieved. You have consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction. They have made their faces harder than a rock. They have refused to return.
- Joel 1:7He has laid my vine waste, and stripped my fig tree. He has stripped its bark, and thrown it away. Its branches are made white.
- Jer 3:10Yet for all this her treacherous sister, Judah, has not returned to me with her whole heart, but only in pretense,” says Yahweh.
- Isa 42:24–25Who gave Jacob as plunder, and Israel to the robbers? Didn’t Yahweh, he against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in his ways, and they disobeyed his law.
- Deut 28:42Locusts will consume all of your trees and the fruit of your ground.
- Job 36:8–13If they are bound in fetters, and are taken in the cords of afflictions,
- 1 Kgs 8:37“If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence, if there is blight, mildew, locust or caterpillar; if their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities; whatever plague, whatever sickness there is;
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Christ at the center
Amid judgment on injustice, Amos promises the raising up of David's fallen tent — read by James in Acts 15 as the ingathering of the nations into the kingdom of the risen Christ.
How Amos 4:9 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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