¹³ When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locust to devour the land or send pestilence among my people,^(A)

²⁶ “When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you and then they pray toward this place, confess your name, and turn from their sin because you punish them,^{(A) 27} then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel, when you teach them the good way in which they should walk, and grant rain on your land, which you have given to your people as an inheritance.

²⁸ “If there is famine in the land, if there is plague, blight, mildew, locust, or caterpillar; if their enemies besiege them in any of the settlements of the lands; whatever suffering, whatever sickness there is;^(B)

¹⁷ for then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will not yield its produce; then you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.^(A)

⁶ They have authority to shut the sky, so that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.^(A)

The Message to Philadelphia

⁷ “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:

¹³ So Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you on your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider and decide what answer I shall return to the one who sent me.” ¹⁴ Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great, but let me not fall into human hands.”^(A)

¹⁵ So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba.^(B)

²⁵ But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land,^(A)

¹⁹ Or if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out my wrath upon it with blood, to cut off humans and animals from it,^{(A) 20} even if Noah, Daniel,^[a] and Job were in it, as I live, says the Lord God, they would save neither son nor daughter; they would save only their own lives by their righteousness.

²¹ Therefore thus says the Lord God: How much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four deadly acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild animals, and pestilence, to cut off humans and animals from it!^(B)

⁴ For if you refuse to let my people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country.^{(A) 5} They shall cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land. They shall devour the last remnant left you after the hail, and they shall devour every tree of yours that grows in the field.^{(B) 6} They shall fill your houses and the houses of all your officials and of all the Egyptians—something that neither your parents nor your grandparents have seen, from the day they came on earth to this day.” Then he turned and went out from Pharaoh.^(C)