If you plant goodness, you will harvest faithful love. Plow your ground, and you will harvest with the Lord. He will come, and he will make goodness fall on you like rain.
“May the clouds in the skies above pour goodness on the earth like rain. May the earth open up to let salvation grow. And may goodness grow with that salvation, which I, the Lord, created.
Let’s learn about the Lord. Let’s try very hard to know him. We know he is coming, just as we know the dawn is coming. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain that waters the ground.”
So begin planting early in the morning, and don’t stop working until evening. You don’t know what might make you rich. Maybe everything you do will be successful.
Hate evil and love goodness. Bring justice back into the courts. Maybe then the Lord God All-Powerful will be kind to the survivors from Joseph’s family.
Look at the people going down to Egypt for help. They think the horses they get will save them. They hope the many chariots and powerful soldiers will protect them. But the people don’t trust the Holy One of Israel. They didn’t ask the Lord for help.
The Israelites did a foolish thing—it was like trying to plant the wind. But they will get only troubles—they will harvest a whirlwind. The grain in the fields will grow, but it will give no food. Even if it grew something, strangers would eat it.
At that time the Lord will send you rain. You will plant seeds, and the ground will grow food for you. You will have a very large harvest. You will have plenty of food in the fields for your animals. There will be large fields for your sheep.
The Lord says, “At that time the people of Israel and the people of Judah will be together. They will cry and cry together, and together, they will go look for the Lord their God.
I will turn my vineyard into useless land. No one will care for the plants or work in the field. Weeds and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.”
God is the one who gives seed to those who plant, and he gives bread for food. And God will give you spiritual seed and make that seed grow. He will produce a great harvest from your goodness.
If you had obeyed me, then peace would have come to you like a full flowing river. Good things would have come to you again and again, like the waves of the sea.