Your towns and your fields will be cursed.

你在城里必受咒诅，在田间也必受咒诅。

你在城里必受诅咒，在田间也必受诅咒。

你在城里必受诅咒，在田间也必受诅咒。

“无论你们住在城里还是乡村，都必受咒诅。

你在城里必受咒诅，在田间也必受咒诅。

你在城裏必受咒詛，在田間也必受咒詛。

你在城裏必受詛咒，在田間也必受詛咒。

你在城裏必受詛咒，在田間也必受詛咒。

「無論你們住在城裡還是鄉村，都必受咒詛。

你在城裡必受咒詛，在田間也必受咒詛。

在城裏你必受咒詛，在田間你必受咒詛。

在邑受詛、在田受詛、

在邑獲禍、在田獲禍。

在邑受禍、受禍或作負詛下同在田受禍、

You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

You will be cursed in the cities. You will be cursed out in the country.

Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field.

You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

“ Cursed will you be in the city, and cursed will you be in the country.

“ Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.

Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field.

You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

Cursed[ shalt] thou[ be] in the city, and cursed[ shalt] thou[ be] in the field.

You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field.

You will be cursed in the city, and you will be cursed in the field.

“ Judah wilts; commerce at the city gates grinds to a halt. All the people sit on the ground in mourning, and a great cry rises from Jerusalem.The nobles send servants to get water, but all the wells are dry. The servants return with empty pitchers, confused and desperate, covering their heads in grief.The ground is parched and cracked for lack of rain. The farmers are deeply troubled; they, too, cover their heads.Even the doe abandons her newborn fawn because there is no grass in the field.

I have cried until the tears no longer come; my heart is broken. My spirit is poured out in agony as I see the desperate plight of my people. Little children and tiny babies are fainting and dying in the streets.They cry out to their mothers,“ We need food and drink!” Their lives ebb away in the streets like the life of a warrior wounded in battle. They gasp for life as they collapse in their mothers’ arms.What can I say about you? Who has ever seen such sorrow? O daughter of Jerusalem, to what can I compare your anguish? O virgin daughter of Zion, how can I comfort you? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?Your prophets have said so many foolish things, false to the core. They did not save you from exile by pointing out your sins. Instead, they painted false pictures, filling you with false hope.All who pass by jeer at you. They scoff and insult beautiful Jerusalem, saying,“ Is this the city called‘ Most Beautiful in All the World’ and‘ Joy of All the Earth’?”All your enemies mock you. They scoff and snarl and say,“ We have destroyed her at last! We have long waited for this day, and it is finally here!”But it is the Lord who did just as he planned. He has fulfilled the promises of disaster he made long ago. He has destroyed Jerusalem without mercy. He has caused her enemies to gloat over her and has given them power over her.Cry aloud before the Lord, O walls of beautiful Jerusalem! Let your tears flow like a river day and night. Give yourselves no rest; give your eyes no relief.Rise during the night and cry out. Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord. Lift up your hands to him in prayer, pleading for your children, for in every street they are faint with hunger.“ O Lord, think about this! Should you treat your own people this way? Should mothers eat their own children, those they once bounced on their knees? Should priests and prophets be killed within the Lord’s Temple?“ See them lying in the streets— young and old, boys and girls, killed by the swords of the enemy. You have killed them in your anger, slaughtering them without mercy.“ You have invited terrors from all around, as though you were calling them to a day of feasting. In the day of the Lord’s anger, no one has escaped or survived. The enemy has killed all the children whom I carried and raised.”

Therefore, a curse consumes the earth. Its people must pay the price for their sin. They are destroyed by fire, and only a few are left alive.The grapevines waste away, and there is no new wine. All the merrymakers sigh and mourn.The cheerful sound of tambourines is stilled; the happy cries of celebration are heard no more. The melodious chords of the harp are silent.Gone are the joys of wine and song; alcoholic drink turns bitter in the mouth.The city writhes in chaos; every home is locked to keep out intruders.Mobs gather in the streets, crying out for wine. Joy has turned to gloom. Gladness has been banished from the land.The city is left in ruins, its gates battered down.

It was because the Lord could no longer bear all the disgusting things you were doing that he made your land an object of cursing— a desolate ruin without inhabitants— as it is today.

Weep like a bride dressed in black, mourning the death of her husband.For there is no grain or wine to offer at the Temple of the Lord. So the priests are in mourning. The ministers of the Lord are weeping.The fields are ruined, the land is stripped bare. The grain is destroyed, the grapes have shriveled, and the olive oil is gone.Despair, all you farmers! Wail, all you vine growers! Weep, because the wheat and barley— all the crops of the field— are ruined.The grapevines have dried up, and the fig trees have withered. The pomegranate trees, palm trees, and apple trees— all the fruit trees— have dried up. And the people’s joy has dried up with them.Dress yourselves in burlap and weep, you priests! Wail, you who serve before the altar! Come, spend the night in burlap, you ministers of my God. For there is no grain or wine to offer at the Temple of your God.Announce a time of fasting; call the people together for a solemn meeting. Bring the leaders and all the people of the land into the Temple of the Lord your God, and cry out to him there.The day of the Lord is near, the day when destruction comes from the Almighty. How terrible that day will be!Our food disappears before our very eyes. No joyful celebrations are held in the house of our God.The seeds die in the parched ground, and the grain crops fail. The barns stand empty, and granaries are abandoned.How the animals moan with hunger! The herds of cattle wander about confused, because they have no pasture. The flocks of sheep and goats bleat in misery.

The Lord curses the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the upright.

You hoped for rich harvests, but they were poor. And when you brought your harvest home, I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies in ruins, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, while all of you are busy building your own fine houses.It’s because of you that the heavens withhold the dew and the earth produces no crops.I have called for a drought on your fields and hills— a drought to wither the grain and grapes and olive trees and all your other crops, a drought to starve you and your livestock and to ruin everything you have worked so hard to get.”

Listen to me and make up your minds to honor my name,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies,“ or I will bring a terrible curse against you. I will curse even the blessings you receive. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you have not taken my warning to heart.

When you hoped for a twenty bushel crop, you harvested only ten. When you expected to draw fifty gallons from the winepress, you found only twenty.I sent blight and mildew and hail to destroy everything you worked so hard to produce. Even so, you refused to return to me, says the Lord.

If I go out into the fields, I see the bodies of people slaughtered by the enemy. If I walk the city streets, I see people who have died of starvation. The prophets and priests continue with their work, but they don’t know what they’re doing.”

His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me.Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies,“ I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test!Your crops will be abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not fall from the vine before they are ripe,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.“ Then all nations will call you blessed, for your land will be such a delight,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

After the cutting locusts finished eating the crops, the swarming locusts took what was left! After them came the hopping locusts, and then the stripping locusts, too!

Fire burns in front of them, and flames follow after them. Ahead of them the land lies as beautiful as the Garden of Eden. Behind them is nothing but desolation; not one thing escapes.

He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring— the flesh of one of his own children— because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.

“ I will make Jerusalem into a heap of ruins,” says the Lord.“ It will be a place haunted by jackals. The towns of Judah will be ghost towns, with no one living in them.”

And the Lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself,“ I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood. I will never again destroy all living things.As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”

then I will destroy this Temple as I destroyed Shiloh, the place where the Tabernacle was located. And I will make Jerusalem an object of cursing in every nation on earth.’”

How the gold has lost its luster! Even the finest gold has become dull. The sacred gemstones lie scattered in the streets!See how the precious children of Jerusalem, worth their weight in fine gold, are now treated like pots of clay made by a common potter.Even the jackals feed their young, but not my people Israel. They ignore their children’s cries, like ostriches in the desert.The parched tongues of their little ones stick to the roofs of their mouths in thirst. The children cry for bread, but no one has any to give them.The people who once ate the richest foods now beg in the streets for anything they can get. Those who once wore the finest clothes now search the garbage dumps for food.The guilt of my people is greater than that of Sodom, where utter disaster struck in a moment and no hand offered help.Our princes once glowed with health— brighter than snow, whiter than milk. Their faces were as ruddy as rubies, their appearance like fine jewels.But now their faces are blacker than soot. No one recognizes them in the streets. Their skin sticks to their bones; it is as dry and hard as wood.Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of hunger. Starving, they waste away for lack of food from the fields.Tenderhearted women have cooked their own children. They have eaten them to survive the siege.But now the anger of the Lord is satisfied. His fierce anger has been poured out. He started a fire in Jerusalem that burned the city to its foundations.Not a king in all the earth— no one in all the world— would have believed that an enemy could march through the gates of Jerusalem.Yet it happened because of the sins of her prophets and the sins of her priests, who defiled the city by shedding innocent blood.

So Elijah did as the Lord told him and camped beside Kerith Brook, east of the Jordan.

That is why I have disgraced your priests; I have decreed complete destruction for Jacob and shame for Israel.

Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother’s blood.No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work! From now on you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.”

And to the man he said,“ Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.

“ I brought hunger to every city and famine to every town. But still you would not return to me,” says the Lord.“ I kept the rain from falling when your crops needed it the most. I sent rain on one town but withheld it from another. Rain fell on one field, while another field withered away.People staggered from town to town looking for water, but there was never enough. But still you would not return to me,” says the Lord.“ 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.

Jerusalem, once so full of people, is now deserted. She who was once great among the nations now sits alone like a widow. Once the queen of all the earth, she is now a slave.

The famine has blackened our skin as though baked in an oven.

Lamech named his son Noah, for he said,“ May he bring us relief from our work and the painful labor of farming this ground that the Lord has cursed.”

Your towns and your fields will be blessed.Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed.Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed.Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed.“ The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven!“ The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.“ If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do.Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you.“ The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops.The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them.If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom.You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.

Now Elijah, who was from Tishbe in Gilead, told King Ahab,“ As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives— the God I serve— there will be no dew or rain during the next few years until I give the word!”

But she said,“ I swear by the Lord your God that I don’t have a single piece of bread in the house. And I have only a handful of flour left in the jar and a little cooking oil in the bottom of the jug. I was just gathering a few sticks to cook this last meal, and then my son and I will die.”