²⁴And if thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee; and shall turn again and confess thy name, and pray and make supplication before thee in this house: ²⁵then hear thou from heaven, and forgive the sin of thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest to them and to their fathers. ²⁶When the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when¹ thou dost afflict² them: ²⁷then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy people Israel, when² thou teachest them the good way wherein they should walk; and send rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance. ¹ Or, _because_. ² Or, _answerest_. =24.= _and shall turn again_] i.e. repent. ²⁸If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, if there be blasting or mildew, locust or caterpiller; if their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities¹; whatsoever plague or whatsoever sickness there be; ²⁹what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man his own plague and his own sorrow, and shall spread forth his hands toward this house: ³⁰then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render unto every man according to all his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men;) ³¹that they may fear thee, to walk in thy ways, so long as they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. ¹ Hebrew _gates_. =28.= _blasting_] The phrase applies to the damage to vegetation in Palestine which is caused by the winds that blow in from the deserts to the east and south (see Smith, _Historical Geography of the Holy Land_ p. 67). Such winds are spoken of as coming from the east (Genesis xli. 6; Hosea xiii. 15) or from the south (Luke xii. 55). _caterpiller_] Rather some kind of locust; see Driver on Joel i. 4. _in the land of their cities_] literally _in the land of their gates_. The text is probably corrupt: read either, =in any one of their cities= (compare LXX.), or, =by making a breach in their gates= (Hebrew _biphĕrōṣ_ for _b’ereṣ_). _whatsoever plague_] “Plague” is used here in the general sense of _calamity_, as in the phrase, “The Ten Plagues of Egypt.”