If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be;
If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew ... The mildew which committed such terrible ravages in their fields, and destroyed their cereal crops, producing famine, was not then known to be of vegetable origin, and to be traceable, as modern science has taught us to trace it, to various parasitic fungi of the Uredo and Puccinia families (Balfour's 'Biblical Botany'), but was ascribed to meteorological influences, or rather regarded as a pestilence inflicted by the direct hand of God (see the notes at Leviticus 26:25; Deuteronomy 28:22, upon the threatenings in which passages these petitions of Solomon are rounded).