^13 (A)When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people,

²⁶ “When the ^(A)heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against You, when they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and turn from their sin because You afflict them, ²⁷ then hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of Your servants, Your people Israel, that You may teach them the good way in which they should walk; and send rain on Your land which You have given to Your people as an inheritance.

²⁸ “When there ^(B)is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever ^(C)sickness there is;

¹⁷ lest ^(A)the Lord’s anger be aroused against you, and He ^(B)shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and ^(C)you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.

⁶ These ^(A)have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire.

The Faithful Church

⁷ “And to the ^[a]angel of the church in Philadelphia write,

‘These things says ^(A)He who is holy, ^(B)He who is true, ^(C)“He who has the key of David, ^(D)He who opens and no one shuts, and ^(E)shuts and no one opens”:

¹³ So Gad came to David and told him; and he said to him, “Shall ^(A)seven^[a] years of famine come to you in your land? Or shall you flee three months before your enemies, while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ plague in your land? Now consider and see what answer I should take back to Him who sent me.”

¹⁴ And David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, ^(B)for His mercies are great; but ^(C)do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

¹⁵ So ^(D)the Lord sent a plague upon Israel from the morning till the appointed time. From Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men of the people died.

²⁵ But I tell you truly, ^(A)many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land;

¹⁹ “Or if I send ^(A)a pestilence into that land and ^(B)pour out My fury on it in blood, and cut off from it man and beast, ²⁰ even ^(C)though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live,” says the Lord God, “they would deliver neither son nor daughter; they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness.”

²¹ For thus says the Lord God: “How much more it shall be when ^(D)I send My four ^[a]severe judgments on Jerusalem—the sword and famine and wild beasts and pestilence—to cut off man and beast from it?