Your children ¹  will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks.

The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.

Then fire from the Lord fell from the sky. ¹  It consumed the offering, the wood, the stones, and the dirt, and licked up the water in the trench.

The clods of the torrent valley ¹  are sweet to him; behind him everybody follows in procession, and before him goes a countless throng.

May there be ¹  an abundance ²  of grain in the earth; on the tops ³  of the mountains may it ⁴  sway! ⁵  May its ⁶  fruit trees ⁷  flourish ⁸  like the forests of Lebanon! ⁹  May its crops be as abundant as the grass of the earth!

He will water the seed you plant in the ground, and the ground will produce crops in abundance. ¹  At that time ²  your cattle will graze in wide pastures.

The oxen and donkeys used in plowing ¹  will eat seasoned feed winnowed with a shovel and pitchfork. ² 

The dry soil will become a pool of water, the parched ground springs of water. Where jackals once lived and sprawled out, grass, reeds, and papyrus will grow.

Who has measured out the waters ¹  in the hollow of his hand, or carefully ²  measured the sky, ³  or carefully weighed ⁴  the soil of the earth, or weighed the mountains in a balance, or the hills on scales? ⁵ 

“Look, I am making you like ¹  a sharp threshing sledge, new and double-edged. ²  You will thresh the mountains and crush them; you will make the hills like straw. ³ 

Yes, ¹  the Lord has this to say to the people of Judah and Jerusalem: “Like a farmer breaking up hard unplowed ground, you must break your rebellious will and make a new beginning; just as a farmer must clear away thorns lest the seed is wasted, you must get rid of the sin that is ruining your lives. ² 

“Son of man, when the house of Israel was living on their own land, they defiled it by their behavior ¹  and their deeds. In my sight their behavior was like the uncleanness of a woman having her monthly period.

I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily, he will send down his roots like a cedar of ¹  Lebanon.

These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: Whenever they hear, immediately Satan ¹  comes and snatches the word ²  that was sown in them.

But the worker ¹  answered him, ‘Sir, leave it alone this year too, until I dig around it and put fertilizer ²  on it.

I tell you the solemn truth, ¹  unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself alone. ²  But if it dies, it produces ³  much grain. ⁴ 

But God gives it a body just as he planned, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.

that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love,

For the ground that has soaked up the rain that frequently falls on ¹  it and yields useful vegetation for those who tend it receives a blessing from God.

Now ¹  no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field ²  had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. ³