There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, ¹  because you will have disobeyed ²  the Lord your God.

David did not count the males twenty years old and under, for the Lord had promised to make Israel as numerous as the stars in the sky.

You multiplied their descendants like the stars of the sky. You brought them to the land you had told their ancestors to enter in order to possess.

whose foliage was attractive and its fruit plentiful, and from which there was food available for all, under whose branches wild animals ¹  used to live, and in whose branches birds of the sky used to nest –

it is you, ¹  O king! For you have become great and strong. Your greatness is such that it reaches to heaven, and your authority to the ends of the earth.

I will throw my bird net over them while they are flying, I will bring them down like birds in the sky; I will discipline them when I hear them flocking together.

But in truth I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, ¹  when the sky ²  was shut up three and a half years, and ³  there was a great famine over all the land.

Then ¹  the third angel blew his trumpet, and a huge star burning like a torch fell from the sky; ²  it landed ³  on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.

And gigantic hailstones, weighing about a hundred pounds ¹  each, fell from heaven ²  on people, ³  but they ⁴  blasphemed God because of the plague of hail, since it ⁵  was so horrendous. ⁶ 

Then ¹  I saw one angel standing in ²  the sun, and he shouted in a loud voice to all the birds flying high in the sky: ³  “Come, gather around for the great banquet ⁴  of God,

God said, “Let there be an expanse ¹  in the midst of the waters and let it separate water ²  from water.

and also seven ¹  of every kind of bird in the sky, male and female, ²  to preserve their offspring ³  on the face of the earth.

The waters completely inundated ¹  the earth so that even ²  all the high mountains under the entire sky were covered.

Instead, the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy ¹  is one of hills and valleys, a land that drinks in water from the rains, ² 

by serving other gods and worshiping them – the sun, ¹  moon, or any other heavenly bodies which I have not permitted you to worship. ² 

Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off.

There is no one like God, O Jeshurun, ¹  who rides through the sky ²  to help you, on the clouds in majesty.

The Philistine said to David, “Come here to me, so I can give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the field!” ¹ 

When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made, and see the moon and the stars, which you set in place, ¹ 

Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty extends over the earth and sky.