Verse 1

The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord handed them over to Midian for seven years.

Other Translations

Referenced Verses

  • Gen 25:2 : 2 She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.
  • Hab 3:7 : 7 I saw the tents of Cushan in distress; the dwellings of Midian trembled.
  • Lev 26:14-46 : 14 But if you will not listen to me and will not carry out all these commandments, 15 and if you reject my statutes and if your soul loathes my judgments so that you do not carry out all my commandments and thus break my covenant, 16 I, in turn, will do this to you: I will bring sudden terror upon you, wasting diseases and fever that destroy your eyes and drain your strength. You will plant your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it. 17 I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is chasing you. 18 If after all this you still do not listen to me, I will punish you seven times over for your sins. 19 I will break your stubborn pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze. 20 Your strength will be spent in vain, because your land will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit. 21 If you continue to walk contrary to me and are unwilling to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over as your sins deserve. 22 I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle, and reduce your numbers until your roads are deserted. 23 If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction and continue to walk contrary to me, 24 then I too will act with hostility against you, and I will strike you sevenfold for your sins. 25 I will bring the sword upon you to avenge the breaking of the covenant, and when you retreat into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be delivered into the hands of the enemy. 26 When I break your staff of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven and dole out your bread by weight, and you will eat but not be satisfied. 27 But if, after all this, you do not listen to me and continue to act with hostility against me, 28 then I in turn will act with furious hostility against you, and I will discipline you seven times over for your sins. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and my soul will reject you. 31 I will lay your cities in ruins, make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will no longer smell the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 32 I will bring the land to desolation so that even your enemies who live there will be appalled by it. 33 I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you. Your land will be desolate and your cities will lie in ruins. 34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate, it will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths while you lived there. 36 As for those of you who survive, I will bring weakness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight, and they will flee as though running from a sword, though no one pursues them. 37 They will stumble over one another as if fleeing from the sword, though no one pursues them. You will not be able to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you. 39 Those of you who remain will waste away in their iniquity in the lands of your enemies; and also because of the iniquities of their ancestors, they will waste away with them. 40 But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness with which they were unfaithful to me, and also how they walked contrary to me— 41 so that I also walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their punishment for their iniquity, 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land will be abandoned by them and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; they will accept their punishment for their iniquity, because they rejected my judgments and their soul abhorred my statutes. 44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God. 45 For their sake, I will remember the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God: I am the LORD. 46 These are the statutes, judgments, and laws the LORD established between himself and the sons of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai.
  • Num 25:15-18 : 15 And the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a family in Midian. 16 The LORD said to Moses, 17 ‘Treat the Midianites as enemies and strike them down. 18 For they treated you as enemies with their deceit, which they used to lure you away to worship Baal of Peor, and because of Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, their kinswoman, who was killed on the day of the plague that struck because of Peor.’
  • Num 31:1-3 : 1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 Take vengeance on the Midianites for the people of Israel. Afterward, you will be gathered to your people. 3 So Moses said to the people, 'Arm some of your men for battle, to go against Midian and execute the LORD's vengeance on Midian.'
  • Deut 28:15-68 : 15 But if you will not listen to the voice of the LORD your God and carefully follow all His commandments and statutes I am commanding you today, then all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. 16 Cursed will you be in the city, and cursed will you be in the field. 17 Cursed will be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 Cursed will be the fruit of your womb, the produce of your land, the offspring of your cattle, and the increase of your flocks. 19 Cursed will you be when you come in, and cursed will you be when you go out. 20 The LORD will send curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you undertake until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil of your deeds, by which you have forsaken Me. 21 The LORD will cause pestilence to cling to you until He has consumed you from the land that you are entering to possess. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, scorching heat, drought, blight, and mildew, which will pursue you until you perish. 23 The heavens over your head will be like bronze, and the earth beneath you like iron. 24 The LORD will turn the rain of your land into dust and powder; it will come down upon you from the sky until you are destroyed. 25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them in one direction but flee from them in seven directions. You will become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, scabs, and an incurable itch. 28 The LORD will strike you with madness, blindness, and confusion of heart. 29 At midday, you will grope around like a blind person in the dark. You will not prosper in your ways; you will be continually oppressed and robbed, with no one to save you. 30 You will become engaged to a woman, but another man will violate her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken forcibly from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you watch with longing eyes all day, but you will be powerless to act. 33 A people you don’t know will eat the fruit of your land and the result of your labor. You will be oppressed and crushed continually. 34 You will go mad because of the things you see with your own eyes. 35 The LORD will strike you with painful and incurable boils on your knees and legs, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. 36 The LORD will drive you and the king you set over yourself to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will serve other gods made of wood and stone. 37 You will become an object of horror, a byword, and a taunt among all the peoples to which the LORD will drive you. 38 You will sow much seed in the field but gather little, because locusts will consume it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink their wine or gather their grapes, for worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory, but you will not anoint yourself with oil, for your olives will drop off prematurely. 41 You will have sons and daughters, but they will not remain with you, because they will go into captivity. 42 Swarms of insects will take possession of all your trees and the produce of your land. 43 The foreigner who resides among you will rise higher and higher above you, but you will sink lower and lower. 44 He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail. 45 All these curses will come upon you, pursue you, and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God by keeping His commandments and statutes that He commanded you. 46 These curses will become a sign and a wonder against you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and wholeheartedly in the time of abundance. 48 You will serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and total destitution. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you. 49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand. 50 It will be a fierce and ruthless nation, showing no respect for the old and no mercy for the young. 51 They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, or fresh oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have wiped you out. 52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until your high fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down. They will besiege all the cities in the land the LORD your God has given you. 53 Because of the suffering your enemy inflicts upon you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of your womb—the flesh of your sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most tender and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children who are still alive. 55 He will not share with any of them the flesh of his children that he is eating, because he has nothing else during the suffering and siege that your enemy will inflict on all your cities. 56 The most tender and delicate woman among you, so refined that she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she loves, her son, and her daughter. 57 She will secretly eat her afterbirth and the children she bears during the siege and suffering that your enemy inflicts upon your cities, because she is in dire need of food. 58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law that are written in this book, and do not fear this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God— 59 then the LORD will bring extraordinary plagues upon you and your descendants, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and enduring diseases. 60 He will bring back upon you all the diseases of Egypt, which you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and plague not written in this Book of the Law, until you are completely destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God. 63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and multiply, so it will please Him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. 64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. 65 Among those nations, you will find no peace, and no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an anxious heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul. 66 Your life will hang in doubt before you. You will be filled with fear night and day, and you will not be sure of your life. 67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights your eyes will see. 68 The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships, in the way I said you would never see again. There, you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.
  • Judg 2:11 : 11 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals.
  • Judg 2:13-14 : 13 They abandoned the LORD and worshipped Baal and the Ashtaroth. 14 The anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, and they could no longer stand before their enemies.
  • Judg 2:19-20 : 19 But when the judge died, they returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods, serving them, and bowing down to them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways. 20 Therefore, the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he said, 'Because this nation has violated the covenant I commanded their ancestors and has not listened to my voice,'
  • Neh 9:26-29 : 26 But they were disobedient and rebelled against You. They cast Your law behind their backs and killed Your prophets who warned them to turn back to You. They committed terrible blasphemies. 27 So You handed them over to their enemies, who oppressed them. But in their time of distress, they cried out to You, and You heard from heaven. In Your great mercy, You gave them deliverers, who rescued them from the hand of their enemies. 28 But as soon as they had rest, they returned to doing evil in Your sight. So You abandoned them to their enemies, who ruled over them. Yet when they again cried out to You, You heard from heaven and rescued them many times in Your abundant mercy. 29 You warned them to return to Your law, but they acted arrogantly and did not obey Your commandments. They sinned against Your judgments, which, if a person does, they will live by them. Stubbornly, they turned their backs, stiffened their necks, and would not listen.
  • Ps 106:34-42 : 34 They did not destroy the peoples as the LORD had commanded them, 35 but they mingled with the nations and adopted their ways. 36 They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. 38 They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. 39 They defiled themselves by their actions and prostituted themselves by their deeds. 40 Therefore, the LORD's anger burned against His people, and He abhorred His inheritance. 41 He handed them over to the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them. 42 Their enemies oppressed them and subdued them under their power.