Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
If there be in the land famine - pestilence - The Fourth case includes several kinds of evils:
1.Famine; a scarcity or total want of bread, necessarily springing from the preceding cause, drought.
2.Pestilence; any general and contagious disease.
3.Blasting; any thing by which the crops are injured, so that the ear is never matured; but instead of wholesome grain, there is a black offensive dust.
4.Mildew; any thing that vitiates or corrodes the texture of the stalk, destroys the flowers and blossoms, or causes the young shaped fruits to fall off their stems.
5.Locust, a well known curse in the East, a species of grasshopper that multiplies by millions, and covers the face of the earth for many miles square, destroying every green thing; leaving neither herb nor grass upon the earth, nor leaf nor bark upon the trees.
6.Caterpillar; the locust in its young or nympha state. The former refers to locusts brought by winds from other countries and settling on the land; the latter, to the young locusts bred in the land.
7.An enemy, having attacked their defenced cities, the keys and barriers of the land.
8.Any other kind of plague; that which affects the surface of the body; blotch, blain, leprosy, ophthalmia, etc.
9.Sickness; whatever impaired the strength, or affected the intestines, disturbing or destroying their natural functions.
All such cases were to be brought before the Lord, the persons having a deep sense of the wickedness which induced God thus to afflict, or permit them to be afflicted: for only those who knew the plague of their own hearts, (I Kings 8:38), the deep-rooted moral corruption of their nature, and the destructive nature and sinfulness of sin, were likely to pray in such a manner as to induce God to hear and forgive.
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