(Now she had taken them up to the roof and had hidden them in the stalks of flax she had spread out ¹  on the roof.)

the plague that comes in the darkness, or the disease that comes at noon. ¹ 

for on account ¹  of a prostitute one is brought down to a loaf of bread, but the wife of another man ²  preys on your precious life. ³ 

I want ¹  to climb the palm tree, ²  and take hold of its fruit stalks. May your breasts be like the clusters of grapes, ³  and may the fragrance of your breath be like apricots! ⁴ 

Make sure you pull out ¹  ears of grain for her and drop them so she can gather them up. Don’t tell her not to!” ² 

O my downtrodden people, crushed like stalks on the threshing floor, ¹  what I have heard from the Lord who commands armies, the God of Israel, I have reported to you.

But they do not know what the Lord is planning; they do not understand his strategy. He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed ¹  at the threshing floor.

However, suppose a person hates someone else ¹  and stalks him, attacks him, kills him, ²  and then flees to one of these cities.

It will be as when one gathers the grain harvest, and his hand gleans the ear of grain. It will be like one gathering the ears of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.

Like a lion that has come up from its lair ¹  the one who destroys nations has set out from his home base. ²  He is coming out to lay your land waste. Your cities will become ruins and lie uninhabited.

They sow the wind, and so they will reap the whirlwind! The stalk does not have any standing grain; it will not produce any flour. Even if it were to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it all up.