After that, there will be seven years of famine, and all the good years will be forgotten, because the famine will ruin the country.

The time of plenty will be entirely forgotten, because the famine which follows will be so terrible.

Ahab said to Obadiah, "Let us go and look at every spring and every stream bed in the land to see if we can find enough grass to keep the horses and mules alive. Maybe we won't have to kill any of our animals."

The LORD said to me concerning the drought,

The rich people send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns, but find no water; they come back with their jars empty. Discouraged and confused, they hide their faces.

In the field the mother deer abandons her newborn fawn because there is no grass.

All through the night get up again and again to cry out to the Lord; Pour out your heart and beg him for mercy on your children--- Children starving to death on every street corner!

Look, O LORD! Why are you punishing us like this? Women are eating the bodies of the children they loved! Priests and prophets are being killed in the Temple itself !

Those who died in the war were better off than those who died later, who starved slowly to death, with no food to keep them alive.

Then there was a famine all over Egypt and Canaan, which caused much suffering. Our ancestors could not find any food,

I asked, " LORD, why is the land devastated and dry as a desert, so that no one travels through it? Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom have you explained it so that they can tell others?"

The fields are bare; the ground mourns because the grain is destroyed, the grapes are dried up, and the olive trees are withered.

The grapevines and fig trees have withered; all the fruit trees have wilted and died. The joy of the people is gone.